He holds the blade above me. With dark eyes and no emotion, he positions the razor-sharp edge on my neck.
The way he handles this potentially lethal instrument is simultaneously clinical and affectionate. He has done this many times. He is the best barber in the neighborhood. I swallow uncomfortably and await his next swift movement.
“Allahu Akbar!” God is the greatest!
The distorted cry of the muezzin issues forth across the blue sky, calling the faithful to prayer. It affords me a brief moment of solitude as those surrounding me react with habit. They know their duty to Allah. Facing east and lining up shoulder to shoulder, they span the distance between Africa and Mecca, between God and man.
“Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim.” In the name of God, the most merciful and compassionate. It is a prayer of submission to the God of Islam.
I sit there watching them, my neck bared, waiting and exposed. My mind is preoccupied with that thin covering of skin between jugular and rupture, between life and death. I too am completely at His mercy.
My Muslim barber returns and stands above me crowned in a halo of light, the sun silhouetting his dark features and rendering the contours of his face and the depths of his thoughts indistinguishable. A broad smile frames his face, and in this instant, I see clearly the collision of violence and tenderness as he resumes his work and slides the blade softly across my skin.
The irony of this moment is not lost on me: my life is balanced on a knife-edge. And yet I must trust this man.
I have no reason to distrust him. He is a man, just like me. His wife is pregnant, just like mine. His lively Arabic is hard to understand, as is his religion, as are many aspects of this place. But in fact, there is a whole rich tapestry of goodness here, even though a thick wall of rhetoric and contempt often obscures it.
In this brief and vulnerable encounter, I have not only received a trim and a shave. I have also found friendship and overcome some of my stereotypes.
I pay and walk out of the shop, appreciating a new friend, a change of outlook, and a close shave.
**This account comes from a long-term worker living.**
Original article: FrontiersUSA.org/blog/article/life-on-the-knifes-edge
