Sometimes, when I’m overwhelmed by that hard to describe eeriness, I feel like my whole life is a mystery. ‘It must be!’ my overthinking mind shouts out in those moments, for nothing ever seems to make any rational, cause-effect kinda sense to me. The only thing that brings solace in those instances is my faith, and I resort to raising my hands in the direction of heaven to pray.
After I did that this afternoon, I decided to treat myself, and get a little haircut and beard trim; not on account of any special occasion or anything, but rather because I’ve been looking like a caveman from 2000 BC for far too long lately. Fed up with the Afghan barber next door, who never gets my hairline requirements quite right, I decided to give this Greek fellow further down the block a chance. “Why not try out a new place?” I thought.
Honestly speaking, I initially believed that walking into his place was going to be hella awkward, since Alex’s shop is mostly frequented by white middle class looking guys, I also feared that none of the barbers would be able to handle my hair. But in the absence of better alternatives, I had to dispel all doubts. My only option was to march into the place with enthusiasm, which I did, sitting down on the guest couch as though the whole shopfloor belonged to my uncle Jama. To my surprise, I was greeted and welcomed by his excellency the shop-owner himself. Also refreshing was that I didn’t have to play around with my phone too much, as the store had been experiencing a quieter phase with barely any customers waiting to be served.
“Next please,” a Middle-Eastern looking man said aloud, trying to make eye-contact and calling me up to the spot next to the shop window, where the afternoon sun delighted me with its warm shine. Before sitting down, I pulled out a picture of the last haircut I liked and showed it to him, to make sure this dude doesn’t mess me up like the Afghan bloke always does. “Nice haircut,” he said and smiled, following it up with a “no problem,” pronouncing the p as a European tongue would pronounce the b, hinting at his being of Arab origin. What he said next somewhat shocked me.
“Hargeisa!?” he asked and exclaimed at the same time, with his eyebrows raised up as if he were an interrogator questioning a suspect. “No, Mogadishu,” I responded after a moment of hesitation, perplexed and petrified. It was an awkward moment since I have never experienced anything like it from a non-Somali before. How the hell did he know my ethnicity? And why did he want to dig deeper into finding out my exact place of origin? I laughed it off and every invisible barrier there had been between us prior to that moment evaporated.
“I’m from Yemen,” he said in a cheerful tone of voice, further adding: “We’re neighbours, and know each other well”. Then came my turn of questioning. From experience and personal research into the history of the region, I thought that the further south a Yemeni originates from in the Arabian Peninsula, the more likely he is to come into contact with Somalis, for only the Gulf of Aden separates the two brotherly nations. So Aden, and Hadhramaut being the two most southern two regions, I asked him if he was from either of the two. “No, I’m from the north, San’aa,” he proudly proclaimed.
Then he told me a rather long summary of his entire life story: how many children he had, how many marriages he went through and what his current state of affairs was like, ending the whole saga of storytelling and preaching with advice that had a religious twist. He wrapped his sermon up with, “be with Allah and he will be with you.” I found it strange that I felt like I needed to hear those words, that I was desperately in need of a servant of Allah reminding me of how he saves His beloved. That phrase and the story of his favourite wife, interestingly a Somali lady, I’ll never forget. I came back home smiling and laughing at how the Almighty time and time again answers my prayers…