Visits to Mosul salon refresh soldiers

Aina Isaeva gave a pedicure to Private Cortez Hamilton at Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq. Marez has become a cosmopolitan city within the volatile environs of Mosul. (Ernesto Londono/Washington Post)

MOSUL, Iraq - Private First Class Cortez Hamilton of St. Louis smiled blissfully as a 20-year-old beautician from Kyrgyzstan rubbed lotion on his left foot after spending a half-hour scraping off dead skin.

"It relaxes you," the 29-year-old cavalry soldier said halfway through a recent pedicure at Forward Operating Base Marez in this volatile northern Iraqi city. "You just go to sleep and it feels so good."

Marez, after six years of war, has become a cosmopolitan city within a city. Soldiers can buy tailored suits and knockoff designer purses, cigars and DVDs, lattes and burgers. After a long day of soldiering, a 30-minute, $17 back rub hits all the right spots.

"If not a need, there's certainly a demand," said Major Amanda Emmens-Rossi, a frequent customer at the beauty salon. "You come here on the weekend, and there's always Joes lined up to get manis and pedis. Just because you're deployed doesn't mean you have to look like a ragbag."

Full-body massages are forbidden, to eliminate the possibility of sexual conduct between soldiers and salon employees. Soldiers in Iraq are prohibited from having sex with foreigners.

Mosul, the country's third-largest city, has attracted little investment in recent years. Its economy is in shambles. Its politics are a contact sport. Many of its neighborhoods are crippled by years of fighting. Insurgents determined to elude capture sleep in vests rigged with explosives.

In December 2004, a suicide bomber attacked the Marez dining hall, killing 22 people, among them 14 US soldiers.

But Aina Isaeva, 45, a nurse from Kyrgyzstan, didn't think twice when the opportunity arose to work in Mosul for a year as a beautician. US defense contractors have brought thousands of laborers from Central and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America to keep American military bases humming and service members fed and comfortable.

"Nurses earn very little money" back home, Isaeva said as she worked on the feet of a former infantryman now employed by a nonprofit organization. "I have two sons and a girl. And I am a widow. I need the work."

Hamilton works 12-hour shifts fueling military vehicles. He heard about the beauty salon from one of his friends, Specialist Billy Scott, 33, of Washington, D.C., who says that living in a war zone is no excuse to let your hands and feet grow rough.

In this dusty base, where the temperature creeps into triple-digit territory, walking into the beauty salon after a 12-hour shift is transporting.

"It makes you go into a different world," Scott said while Isaeva rubbed lotion on his hand as his manicure was coming to an end. "You get here, and your mind goes blank. You have a pretty lady doing your nails."

There is almost always a waiting list for pedicures and manicures. Soldiers leave their rifles on a blue rack behind the counter and watch music videos or read old magazines as they wait for their names to be called. The magic happens in the back of the shop, where the masseuses and beauticians work in small cubicles with pink curtains.

The women at the salon work for a subcontractor of the Army & Air Force Exchange Service, a command that runs stores known as post exchanges, or PXs. The exchange service has about 1,500 "third-country nationals" staffing 89 stores, 228 fast-food restaurants, 642 concessions, and 72 phone centers at bases in the Middle East, spokesman Judd Anstey said.

As a beautician in Kyrgyzstan, Aizhan Alisherova, 20, thought she had seen the full spectrum of feet. "These military boots," she said, "not comfortable."