It was bad enough that I was considering something as metrosexual as a manicure. Add to that the fact that I was doing this in Karachi, Pakistan—a city stuffed with conservatively macho Muslim men—and I was frantically casting around for other ways to spend my afternoon. When my nails get too big, I chew them down. The closest I get to a facial is a bar of Lever. No way was I going through with this.

It wasn’t just my aversion to having some sort of paste smeared over my face. As far as I was concerned, this was a societal paradox. This was Pakistan! Why, as we speak, in the capital city of Islamabad, religious fanatics have gone into barber shops and threatened to tear the places down if they see men getting their beards shaved! If shaving is considered un-Islamic (by admittedly narrow-minded lunatics), where would a protein treatment fall? To what level of hell would that relegate me?

And if religious zeal wasn’t a good enough reason, there was the cultural irony of it all. As progressive as Karachi and other big cities have become, Pakistan is still a completely male-driven society. And the male ego here is roughly the same size (and shape) as Florida. Men in Karachi are kings, and the kings must be men: play cricket with the boys; smoke your lungs away at the club or at a dinner party; eat like the country’s running out of food; spit betel-nut juice onto the sidewalk all day long; drink like a fish if you can get away with it. Does getting a beauty treatment really fall into this picture?

Finally, there’s the environmental dilemma. See, getting a facial might be well and good when you’re in Europe or the U.S. Here, you take your rosy complexion right back out into the Karachi sun, which is hot enough to fry an egg on a bald man’s head. You expose your smooth skin immediately to a constant swirl of sand and dust (this is the desert, after all). And your cool, refreshing tingle evaporates the second you step three feet away from an air conditioner. While on the surface, these might seem like reasons that support getting such treatments, they seem to me so excessive that one would have to book hourly appointments just to enjoy the effects.

But there was nothing to be done; three of us had agreed to go through with it. My friend and I were complete novices to male professional grooming, and my step-brother was the architect of our afternoon of man meets make-up. So we headed for Clippers, one of the best known salons in Karachi. (There’s a Clippers for women too, with an equal reputation, but in a different part of the city; remember, this is Pakistan, and unisex salon has yet to breach the public conscience.)

Walking into the salon felt like entering a waterfall. The air conditioning instantly cooled us down, the flat-screen TV in the seating area was showing the cricket game, and an atmosphere of cleanliness permeated the place. We were given menus listing everything from a basic haircut to spa packages. After scanning the list, I decided against the manicure and pedicure and went for their basic package. This included an old-fashioned barbershop shave, facial and head massage. I also chose protein treatment for the hair. The other rookie went ahead with the whole enchilada.

We started with the shave, each of us equipped with a stylist who lathered our chins and went to work with a straight razor and a strop. If you’ve never had this kind of shave, I highly recommend it. After, we moved into the principal pampering room, where each of us had our own flat screen, leather chair, and one or two people attending to us at any given time. A facial massage with aromatherapy oil and puffing jets of steam was followed by the only uncomfortable portion of the spa package: blackhead removal. That was quickly remedied by a cool facial mask, and I was left to my own devices as the others tried to make me laugh. The one who was getting the manicure also had a finger/hand massage thrown into the mix. After relaxing to a state of near-total inertia, the mask was removed and I received an expert head, neck, and back massage.

Feeling a bit like a rag doll, I slumped in my chair and checked my face for the first time; my reflection beamed back at me, positively glowing. But we weren’t through yet. My stylist ran some oil through my hair, then applied a protein-rich gunk, and finally left me under my own personal head-sauna; a plastic dome with a temperature of about 10 million Kelvin that reached down to my mouth. I sweated it out, letting the nutrients penetrate my scalp and strengthen my hair.

By the time the three of us were done, we felt like someone had applied a shiny new coating to our faces. I was still getting used to the fact that I had just gotten the full beauty treatment in Karachi, of all places, but I was equally surprised to see the long line of men waiting in the lounge for their appointment. The man next to me seemed completely at ease, reclining in his chair and letting a small army go to work on his hands, feet, back, face and head. Men of all ages waited their turn. It was like seeing a football team waiting in line for tickets to a Brittney Spears concert.

It took me a few days to realize that, in a city of conservative machismo, I was the one who was being narrow-minded. I took my own biases against something as simple and refreshing as a facial and applied it to what I associated with a Muslim society. In the end, my facial opened my eyes … and my pores. And of all places, in Karachi, Pakistan.