Since I lost my hair, I wouldn’t leave the house with my head uncovered. Then I heard about the million transplant tourists who head to Istanbul every year. If it worked for them, could it work for me, too?
The breakfast spread at the Crowne Plaza hotel on the outskirts of Istanbul is vast, but I am advised to eat lightly. Everything is gleaming: the marble walls, the polished fruit, the cereal dispensers, the bloody wet crowns of the male guests, fresh from surgery.
I sit at a table in the corner with a dollop of strained yoghurt and have a good ogle. At least half of the guests are post-op guys. Two are with partners who bear longsuffering looks. A group of three have the mid-treatment horseshoe bandage. And one guy is alone, examining his red scalp in selfie mode while he devours his smörgåsbord. A woman pauses at the threshold of the restaurant, agape, and meets my eye. I smile apologetically by way of an explanation, for I, too, am part of this cult. The reborn. The second-chancers. I pat my breast pocket for the umpteenth time. Still there. The biggest wad I’ve ever carried: £4,800, withdrawn from a cash machine on a bleak December morning in east London three days earlier.
