After Ms. Gawish started posting about treatments made of natural ingredients in 2016, her Facebook following leapt from 5,000 users to 80,000 in just a few months, she said. As she and her followers began growing their curls out, they traded tips and sympathy.

What should they do about an upcoming wedding? A job interview? A boss who eyed their curls and told them, “This isn’t the right company for you”?

Ghada el-Hindawy, 44, opened G Curls after researching treatments for her daughter’s curly hair, not wanting her to suffer through straightening.

The cultural disapproval of curly hair “is very harmful to the hair and to the soul,” Ms. el-Hindawy said. “When you go curly, it makes your hair healthier. Now people want to go natural, face themselves, accept themselves.”

The clientele at G Curls, in a suburban development called Beverly Hills, tends to skew young, well-off and well-traveled, with an education from one of Cairo’s international schools.

But that, too, has started to change.

Ms. el-Hindawy said that in the last year the salon had begun to draw more middle-class and veiled clients. Many of Hair Addict’s followers come from Upper Egypt, far from the curly hair hot spots of Cairo and Alexandria.

Men, too, are showing up at G Curls and in curly Facebook groups, despite rigid gender norms that frown on male grooming.

In Abdelwahab Badawy’s village in rural Menoufia, in the Nile Delta, the local curly population has grown in the last seven years from one man (him) to 10. As far as he can tell, that is, since the women are veiled.

When he was growing up, his father prescribed a standard-issue close-cropped style that Mr. Badawy, 24, an engineering student, thought made his ears stick out. When he started growing out his mass of coils at 17, the experiment was such a success — girls noticed him, guys asked for tips — that he was undeterred when a professor mocked him, when others quoted a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad that called for hair to be evenly cut, or when a stranger in the street yelled, “Should I get you a lice comb?”

“No,” he retorted. “Keep it for your mom.” (He said they quickly came to blows.)

Ahmed Sayed, 26, a photographer and engineering student in Cairo, used to comb or blow-dry his hair straight, gelling it for hold. Every time he washed before praying, he would have to redo the entire process, visit a hairdresser or simply leave it disheveled.

Going natural a few years ago saved him money and hair damage. It did not hurt that his hairstyle resembled that of Egypt’s most worshiped soccer player, or perhaps — as Mr. Sayed learned after some research — his ancient Egyptian ancestors, some of whom styled their hair into elaborate curls and plaits.

“In Egypt, we have this complex about foreigners where people want to look more Western,” he said. “It’s important to me to have my look reflect my heritage and where I come from.”

Modern Egypt is still a different story. After graduation, Mr. Sayed will begin his 18-month mandatory military service, where, he knows, he will be forced to shave his head.

Nada Rashwan and Farah Saafan contributed reporting.

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As Oil Prices Rise, Executives Aim to Keep Them High

HOUSTON — Even as oil and gasoline prices rise, industry executives are resisting their usual impulse to pump more oil out of the ground, which could keep energy prices moving up as the economy recovers.

The oil industry is predictably cyclical: When oil prices climb, producers race to drill — until the world is swimming in petroleum and prices fall. Then, energy companies that overextended themselves tumble into bankruptcy.

That wash-rinse-repeat cycle has played out repeatedly over the last century, three times in the last 14 years alone. But, at least for the moment, oil and gas companies are not following those old stage directions.

An accelerating rollout of vaccines in the United States is expected to turbocharge the American economy this spring and summer, encouraging people to travel, shop and commute. In addition, President Biden’s coronavirus relief package will put more money in the pockets of consumers, especially those who are still out of work.

to less than zero.

That bizarre day seems to have become seared into the memories of oil executives. The industry was forced to idle hundreds of rigs and throttle many wells shut, some for good. Roughly 120,000 American oil and gas workers lost their jobs over the last year or so, and companies are expected to lay off 10,000 workers this year, according to Rystad Energy, a consulting firm.

Yet, even as they are making more money thanks to the higher prices, industry executives pledged at a recent energy conference that they would not expand production significantly. They also promised to pay down debt and hand out more of their profits to shareholders in the form of dividends.

“I think the worst thing that could happen right now is U.S. producers start growing rapidly again,” Ryan Lance, chairman and chief executive of ConocoPhillips, said at the IHS CERAweek conference, an annual gathering that was virtual this year.

several million barrels of oil off the market. OPEC’s 13 members and nine partners are pumping roughly 780,000 barrels of oil a day less than at the beginning of the year even though prices have risen by 30 percent in recent months.

rising concerns about climate change reduce the demand for fossil fuels in favor of electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles. Russia has been pressing Saudi Arabia to loosen production caps, while Kazakhstan, Iraq and several other countries are exporting more. Even Iran and Venezuela, which have struggled to sell oil because of U.S. sanctions, are beginning to export more.

attacked American military forces.

Some tensions in the region could ease if the Biden administration and Iranian officials restart negotiations on a new nuclear agreement to replace the one that was negotiated by the Obama administration and abandoned by the Trump administration. Iran would then most likely export more oil.

Of course, U.S. oil executives have little control over those geopolitical matters and say they are doing what they can to avoid another abrupt reversal.

“We’re not betting on higher prices to bail us out,” Michael Wirth, Chevron’s chief executive, told investors on Tuesday.

Chevron said this week that it would spend $14 billion to $16 billion a year on capital projects and exploration through 2025. That is several billion dollars less than the company spent in the years before the pandemic, as the company focuses on producing the lowest-cost barrels.

“So far, these guys are refusing to take the bait,” said Raoul LeBlanc, a vice president at IHS Markit, a research and consulting firm. But he added that the investment decisions of American executives could change if oil prices climb much higher. “It’s far, far too early to say that this discipline will last.”

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