Running a hair salon in Mekelle, capital of Ethiopia's troubled northern Tigray region, is not easy at the moment.
"People can't prioritise beauty over daily basic needs. For many residents, thinking about self-care is a luxury, at a time when they can't feed their kids," Firut Me'ar, who runs a salon in the city, tells the BBC.
After a brief war, the city is under the control of the national army but life is far from normal, says Firut, a single mother of a 10-year-old daughter.
"Things are better than during the war, but people still have no money, no morale. Business is almost non-existent," she says, her voice shaking with emotion.
Above all, she says people are worried about what the future holds. "There is uncertainty about what comes next."
Fighting broke out in late September between the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that had run Tigray for decades, and the national army - a resumption of the two-year civil war that officially ended in 2022.
But within less than two weeks, federal forces marched triumphantly into Mekelle. The TPLF made what it called a "strategic withdrawal" from the city and Tigray's other main towns so the army encountered little resistance.
