My backstreet barber is dying. There is no other word for it, no other explanation. He has lost far too much weight and some of his important front teeth have suddenly gone missing, leaving him with a hollow black mouth. Nowadays, when he finally gets around to trimming around my ears, my eyes grow wide, and I have to hold my breath. His hand trembles as he struggles to get a grip on the scissors, his tongue perched on his upper lip to help him concentrate. Finally, his snipping all done, I can breathe again but then there is always the other side, ear number two, and the process starts again.

According to Abdallah, that is his name, or maybe it is Abdullah, the latest gossip is that Khalid, a mutual friend, has decided to take a second younger wife. Who would have guessed it. Or, at least this is what I think he said because his English is no better than my Arabic, and as long as I nod at the right time, he seems happy. When he gets to the younger wife part, he makes a motion with his hand, smiling, his black mouth growing bigger, blacker. In the end, like always, we often have no choice but to resort to gestures, along with an assortment of Neanderthal grunts and sighs. It all seems to work out, and even though we cannot understand one another completely, it is okay because this is, after all, just some backstreet barbershop, not the UN. All the while the TV that is perched on the top shelf, just beneath the ceiling fan, is forever showing the Kaaba and its endless mass of circling worshippers. And sometimes in mid-snip he will stop to look up at the TV, at this flow of people, as if he has seen a flicker of something, someone important and needs to see it one last time, just to be sure. In the mirror I watch him watch. There once was a time not long ago before he started dying that his TV was all about Bollywood and sometimes a Turkish soap opera or two. But that was before his skin grew wrinkly, before his mouth became darker, and so nowadays the TV is all about bigger, more important things.

I want to help Abdullah and the best I can do is pay a little extra for my haircut. Actually, since day one I kept insisting he not cut a lot off, just a little, a trim, holding up that space between forefinger and thumb, “Just a little? See?”And eventually he does see and now when I walk in one of the first things he says is, ‘Baby cut’, right. Baby cut.” And of course, he thinks this is very funny and I do too but his black mouth and yellow skin these days ruins everything. Then there are his clothes; nowadays they sag, not even the stuff of clothing really, more like a kind of apologetic drapery.

Now he drops the comb that he has been using on my head, and it strangely clatters across the floor as if it has a mind of its own, and I watch as he stoops to pick it up, his pants desperately clinging on for dear life; and he hitches up his pants, blows some invisible dust off the comb and gives it a whack against the chair before returning it to my hair. I say nothing but continue to look straight ahead, into the mirror.

I was once told by a barber of some 30 years that the best compliment a customer could ever give him was to fall asleep in the chair while he is cutting his hair. “This,” he said, “has to be the ultimate compliment in the world of barbering. It is all about comfort and trust, you see.Trust.” These days, Abdallah’s barbering is nothing like that, not while he is in the process of dying.

The last time I saw him I asked him how he felt, wiggling my fingers to help him understand ‘felt’; he said nothing, but motioned to the TV with its Kaaba.

Photo by Nathon Oski on Unsplash.