We have the feeling, reading “Anti-Hair Loss”, that you had no other choice but to have your hair transplanted …
In the book, I compare the wait for implants to organ donation. It may sound obscene but this emotion was nestled in me. At 22, when I started to lose my hair, while writing my first novel, I experienced it as an illness because the fall was spreading over its small territory … I who had spent my childhood and my adolescence to consider myself as a sub-man, I was taught that my too many male hormones were the cause of my onset of baldness. It was an irony that took my head. I spent ten years forbidding myself to swim and go out when it was too windy. Disguised, I had a very miserable image of myself, I saw myself hanging out in literary salons like a poor suffering soul. It’s quite amazing how trivial things can make your life impossible.
You tell in detail your stay in Istanbul. Was this trip akin to a mission?
I didn’t see myself strolling like a tourist. Yet Istanbul looks wonderful, it’s a huge city spanning two continents. But my whole being was concentrated around this operation which still lasts ten hours. I had the impression of doing “Koh-Lanta”! Everything is planned, but we are tossed from room to room. The day before, I was supposed to sleep ten hours but I couldn’t because it was jubilation in the streets. The Stambouliotes were celebrating the election of their new mayor, an opponent of President Erdogan… I was operated on Monday morning very early at Elithairtransplant, a clinic that I found on the Net after weeks of research. On Tuesday, I made a check-up, and on Wednesday, the bandages took off. It is the supermarket for balding men, much cheaper than an operation carried out in France [entre 1 500 et 4 000 euros en Turquie contre 10 000 euros en France]. When we take the taxi, we see other signs in the distance that have names specializing in hair.
Why did you make your approach public?
Originally, I had written the book under a nickname because I didn’t necessarily want to pass for the grafted author… But for once, I told myself that I was going to take the problem backwards and show me proud of my career. If it allows you to live better, to be more open to the world, to live far from your neuroses, then my operation is not ridiculous. With my new hair, I found a form of peaceful silence. However, it is not a happy ending. The result is at the height of a man: the regrowth is in my image, that of a 30-year-old man, not perfect, neither beautiful nor ugly, I have a little more hair but there are still areas that are missing density. I was convinced that once the follicles from the donor area were implanted, it would grow back immediately. In fact, it takes months… We gain 10% hair per month for a year. I felt a bit like Benjamin Button.
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