Welcome to new Glebe barber Issa!

By John McLeod

As of January 2018, the Glebe has welcomed a new entrepreneur, Issa Mousa, at the Glebe’s Barber Shop at 738A Bank Street, above Home Hardware and beside the Avalon Theatre. Mousa bought the business from the long-time Glebe barber Nabil, who has stepped back for the time being.

Now 34 years old, Mousa was born in 1984 in northern Iraq. A barber there taught him how to practise the barber trade. Mousa was also trained as a lawyer in Iraq. He spent eight years in Istanbul, Turkey, and came to Canada in 2015.

He is very focused on becoming a Canadian citizen, by improving his written English and learning and testing himself on the finer points of Canadian culture and history. He speaks four languages: Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish and English.

Mousa worked for several years in a barber shop in Ottawa and for a time had three or four jobs and only two hours sleep a night. He was looking for a small business and was very happy to find one here. He is married to Midya Sulaiman.

John McLeod, in addition to being a loyal reader and a sometime contributor to the Glebe Report, is a customer of the Glebe’s Barber Shop.