The Sound of Scissors
The sound of scissors—how I dreaded it! It would all start when one of the neighbors shouted, “The barber is here!”
“Isaac,” Mama would say, “go get your hair cut.” Sad-faced, I headed for the door. “A chair—take a chair with you,” Mama would remind me.
I
would drag a tall chair out to the courtyard. When I sat
on the chair my feet dangled. I had the feeling of being
on wobbly stilts. There I waited for the barber to come
and mow down my hair with his silver scissors.
In Erin, the small village in Nigeria where I grew up, the village barber had no shop of his own. Popo Ola was his name. “Popo,” as the villagers called him, was a short, stocky man with smooth, round cheeks.
Popo would come unannounced on a Saturday or Sunday morning. His tools, which he carried in a wooden box with a handle, were two or three clippers, a few pairs of scissors, a flat sharp knife called an ajoyi (wind eater), a brush, a container of lathery soap, and a metal sharpener. The knife was called an ajoyi because the barber frequently had to blow off the wet hair that stuck to the blade.
My ordeal began. I shivered as the barber splashed the soapy brush against my neck. “Sit still!” Popo would say, sloshing on more soapy water. “When I’m done, you will look so handsome that all the girls will fall in love with you.”
Popo never asked me or my parents how my hair should be cut. He mowed my hair down so low that I didn’t need to comb it. Sometimes he shaved it all off. It depended on how he felt at the moment.
For a teenager, Popo would cut the hair short, not shave it off. However, he would trim the hair so high that the teenager’s ears stood out as if he had gotten a haircut just to show off his ears!
Sometimes Popo gave the teenager the luxury of having short sideburns, called sole. But he shaved off everybody’s mustache and eyebrows. Popo Ola asked no questions, and the customers raised no objections. I had no mustache, but I did have eyebrows. . . .
After a haircut, he would give the teenager a dingi—a mirror framed with dark wood—to check his hair. But when he shaved my head, he didn’t hand me a mirror. I always felt ashamed of my shaved head until I saw my friends. Their heads had all been shaved, too! But I loved my hair when it grew back again as thick as grass.
To hear the sound of scissors cost about a dime for a teenager and about a nickel for a young boy like me. If you didn’t have the money, you paid when you could. But if the barber liked you or your parents, you might have your head, mustache, and eyebrows shaved—free! Wasn’t that nice!
The
barber received no formal training. He just picked up tools
and the trade and learned as he went along. He made his
living not just by barbering but also by farming.
Nobody knew when the barber would show up. If he failed to come when my hair had grown really thick, Mama would say, “Isaac, go check on Popo.”
I would take a roundabout route to Popo’s house. “Do you want a haircut right now?” Popo would ask.
“No! Mama said to check to see if you are busy.”
“I will stop by,” Popo would say.
“You don’t have to come soon if you’re too busy,” I would tell him.
During a festival, when everybody got new clothes and a new haircut, I didn’t really mind having my hair cut.
But at other times, I dreaded hearing “The barber is here!” Once again it would be time for me to drag out a chair and to hear, whether I liked it or not, the awful sound of scissors.
