Talking women’s health

IT’S the women’s heal topic that’s been makin the headlines and startin conversations.

And now Nico Sturgeon has confirme she’ll be talking abo menopause at the world only festival on the issue

The first minister will talking at FlushFest 202 with Kirsty Wark as part the live online festival.

And Rachel Weiss owner of the Perth-base Menopause Cafe Chari and organiser of the even tells us what it means have such a high-profi guest.

Rachel says: “I wa so excited when th first minister said she l i ke to par ticipate FlushFest 2022, to he start conversations aboo menopause.”

Ms Sturgeon has talkee on a number of occasions of t he i mportance of talking about womenn’ss health – recently, she spoke of her own journey during her recent appearances on Loose Women and t he Shift podcast.

The news of her i n v o lv e m e n t in the upcoming Flushfest 2022 comes as a newly published survey revealed insight into menopause and the workplace.

The survey highlights one i n 10 women who have worked during the menopause have left a job due to their symptoms.

The survey was used as part of the Channel 4 documentary Davina McCall: Sex, Mind And The Menopause.

Rachel says it makes starting conversations about women’s health issues important.

“Menopause Café events enable people to talk about menopause in a safe space, in order to empower them to talk about it more freely at home, at work and with friends,” she said.

His first memory was fleeing his hometown in Kurdistan to a village two hours away due to fears that the then Iraq president Saddam Hussein would embark on a gas attack.

Then, when he arrived at Dundee at the age of eight he was thrust into primary school while barely able to speak a word of English.

Such experiences are bound to cause a reaction and for Ary it was to mature faster than many of his peers.

As a young teen in Stobswell he recalls rejecting the afterschool temptation of drinking alcohol with his pals in the park to instead learn how to cut hair at A Class Barbers in Union Street.

His dedication paid off a year ago when he opened a barbershop in Fintry – Trimology – which now employs six staff.

Ary was born in 2001 into a large Muslim family in Chamchamal, Kurdistan. The town’s location, close to the disputed territories of Northern Iraq, made it a possible target for military action during the Saddam Hussein era following the Halabja gas attack in March 1988.

As speculation mounted in the early 2000s that Hussein would target Chamchamal next, Ary’s family fled.

“I remember the time we ran away from Saddam Hussein,” he recalls. “He was i nvading Kurdistan. We ran away to the villages because he was bombing some parts of the cities.”

He summarises the relationship between Kurdistan and Iraq as “a little like Scotland and England”.

“Scotland wants independence from England and Kurdistan wants the same from Iraq,” he says. Chamchamal is an “oldschool” town, according to Ary.

“People are strict in terms of manners. If you are young and the elders are speaking you are not allowed to speak.”

When Ary was eight years old he left Kurdistan with his mother Shano to join father Alan, who arrived in the UK months earlier as a refugee and was living in Dundee because he had friends in the city.

“He worked for me and my mum to come here for a better life,” Ary says.

“He worked really hard, working in takeaways. He did double time, extra shifts, whatever, just to get the money.

“Eventually he had enough money to get a visa for us and then we came here.”

Ary’s younger sister Raza initially opted to stay with her grandma in Kurdistan but now 19, she lives in the UK.

In Chamchamal the average maximum temperature in July and August is 40C so Ary was understandably confused when he moved to Dundee in 2008.

“The road was frosty – I thought, ‘wow, there’s actually glitter on the floor’,” he remembers.

On arrival he could only speak Kurdish but that soon changed as Ary settled into life at first Rosebank and then Dens Road primary schools. He later attended Morgan Academy.

“I knew no English,” he says. “I soon l earnt the l anguage because I went out a lot playing football. I always wanted to be a footballer. One of my primary teachers thought I would make it in football but I wasn’t dedicated enough,” Ary reflects.

While he never enjoyed the studying side of school, Ary showed at an early age that he had an eye for a deal. When he was 14, he had to make a significant choice about how to spend his after-school time.

He could either hang out with his friends drinking alcohol in the park, or with Sam, a friend of his father, at A Class Barbers in Union Street. Ary chose the latter.

“I spent more time in the shop with Sam than in my own house,” he says.

“It came to a point when I worked full time there.”

Ary left school at 16 and his father, who runs Corfu Kebabs, took him to Swansea where he was introduced to Imad Khalid, the owner of Trimology Barbers. “I was working at A Class and told him that I want a shop like this in Dundee when I am older,” recalls Ary.

This aspiration came to pass in 2021, after Ary suggested opening a Trimology on the site of a former Betfair in Fintry Road.

The shop, Trimology’s 11th and first outside Wales, took a month to refurbish ahead of its opening in June 2021.

“Imad owns it and I run it on his behalf,” says Ary. “I could open another Trimology and I could run it but it is his franchise. He has helped me out.

“In a year I’ve got a lot of regulars,” he adds. “I have six staff – five and one trainee. I have taught three of them myself.

“I just show people respect and when you do that they will show you it back,” he says.

Rachel Weiss.