Mohammad Shahid's eyes lit up when he saw his once-bald cousin come home one day with a head full of hair and a strutting gait to match.

A handsome but folically challenged young man, he decided the time was ripe to restore his honor, battered by years of taunts that follow the barren-headed and the beardless in Pakistan.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar, home to underground Taliban hideouts and a gateway for trade to Afghanistan, men go about their business in the crowded dusty streets, their faces covered by bushy black beards that would make Captain Haddock proud.