… that when pretty much everyone you’ve run into has commented on your haircut with a smile, a nod, and a “That’s a nice haircut”, before looking away from you, it must be that you’ve messed up.

This is going to be rant. I am procrastinating. Read at your own peril.

Last weekend, I got a haircut. I normally try to get a haircut every four weeks, but the last three months have just been ridiculous in terms of busy-ness. Plus the hair really does help with keeping out the cold here. But the hair was getting out of hand. I couldn’t take my mid-afternoon nap without waking up and looking like Krusty the Clown the rest of the day. And so I walked over to the barber’s down the street ba’d jum’ah on Friday. It’s an Egyptian barber, and we exchange a few words in Arabic until my rapidly degenerating stock of vocabulary gets exposed for its shallowness. He then proceeds to take out his scissors - no, I think it’s pretty clear they were shears now - and starts clacking them threateningly. I should have know something was up then, I really should have.  

“How do you want it?” “Short on the sides, medium to longish on the sides; the skin really shouldn’t show on the sides.” Smile. Smile. ”Sure, my friend.” A rapid series of clicks and clacks.

And before I can tell him to stop, it’s gone. All gone. Not only is skin showing on the sides and the back, and skin’s showing on top as well. And it’s all uneven. And this is what I really hate: It stands up. My hair looks like a hairbrush.

I could have done a better job if I had cut it myself. (And yes, I have experimented with cutting my own hair before, but that’s a story from eighth grade that I do not want to recount right now. So buzz off.)  To add insult to injury, so shell-shocked was I that I tipped him extremely generously.

The week since then has been a continuous series of incidents where people I know (and I some I don’t know too well) stop me and tell me that it’s a nice haircut, really. My protests are met with the condescending, “No, it’s really not too bad.” No, if it wasn’t too bad you people would not stop me in the middle of the road to tell me that it’s a nice haircut when “it’s not too bad”. 

The worst incident was on Tuesday when one of my professors stopped in the middle of her lecture, squinted, and suddenly commented aloud, “I see you got a haircut, Mr. Shah Mohammed.” Oh, you know how bad it is when a law school professor stops her class and comments on your haircut.

“Yes,” I hissed. What else can you do?

“It’s a nice haircut.”

“Really?”

“It’s not too bad.”