Haircut

When in a foreign country, I'd imagine the last thing a person ever would want to do is get a haircut. A couple times on music tours in college, I have witnessed the unfortunate effects of a cross-cultural hair collision. Fortunately, I have never been a victim. Today, I tested fate.

Being a person not blessed with, what's the appropriate word, permanent hair, I've become quite aware that it behooves me to keep it quite short. It had become about that time where looking at myself in the mirror was painful. Thus, a haircut was in order. I decided to try a haircutter near the university in Mile End, which seemed to have a reasonably large Anglo-Saxon clientele. The only reason I make a distinction is that, of course, hair styles between stout English folk and equally stout Indian or African folk vary considerably. However, that shop seemed to be quite busy, so I continued walking down the road. Fortunately enough, less than 4 storefronts away was another haircutter, conveniently labeled as a "gents hairdresser," or something to that effect. So I walked in.

The most charitable way to describe the place was as your traditional North African/British hybrid barber shop. Have any idea what that's like? Me neither, but I'm sure this place was indicative. There was a calendar from the nearby mosque, some various photos of London and what looked like Casablanca, and some ancient looking tins of hair pommade scattered about a vast wooden cabinet. An elderly looking Arab man wearing an Islamic cap was shaving a customer's neck with a straight edged razor while he chatted amiably with a friend in some incomprehensible language. I've never seen any of those barbershop movies, but imagine that sort of scene in Morocco transplanted to London, and there you have it. As I sat down to wait my turn, it crossed my mind that maybe I didn't quite belong. No Anglo-Saxon hairstyles to be found.

Anyways, my turn comes up, and I go and sit in the chair. The larger African man sitting down tells me that he is just a friend of the haircutter, so I didn't have to worry about budging in line. I sit down, and the haircutter asks me what sort of cut I want. I explain that I want it short, but not that short (pointing to the closer than buzz cut just given to the previous customer). The next question is, what language do I speak. A bit confused, I told him English, and as an aside to make myself feel better about being a monoglot, that I knew a little bit of French. The haircutter then proceeds to chat me up in flawless French for the duration of my cut. I, possessor of four years of high school French and one semester of college, stumbled my way through awkward sentences as I tried to answer his questions. I think we came to the mutual understanding that I was an American who was studying law, hadn't spoken French for a long time, and had been to England before.

Whenever confronted with such cross-cultural situations, I always try to be somewhat overtly friendly and respectful, to try and dispel any negative connotations of Americans. After my haircut, the haircutter's friend started asking me questions. The same old general thing, where I was from, what I was doing, etc. I asked him where he was from, and he said Sudan. The haircutter was Moroccan. We had a friendly chat, I paid, bid them both good day, and was off. I left with a fine cut, avoiding the pitfalls of many foreign coiffeurs, complete with razored neck.

Point being, I don't know what the point of this story is. At the least, it's a mundane account of my haircut, that most fascinating and exotic of activities. At the most, it's potentially a tale of the sort of friendly encounters that one can have if they ignore stereotypes. Of course, I didn't know the nationalities of the men in the salon, but I would venture to say that most Americans would think twice about an Islamic looking man with a straight edged blade cutting their hair. I'm not trying to say that I'm some sort of golden boy, springing forth with tolerance and understanding or anything. That's not the point. The real point I suppose, is that it is best to encounter others as actual people, not as caricatures.