I've spent the better part of the last three years in Iraq, far more [time] than my friends and family say they've been comfortable with (at least to my face that is). So as the anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion came around, I was asked again and again to sum up just what the situation here is like. Frankly, I was stumped. I couldn't come up with a quick, simple story to sum it all up. Then I went for a trim.
Hassan dresses in what must be the universal uniform for a "hair stylist": black shirt, black pants, hair perfectly coiffed. He walks to our Baghdad bureau because, as he tells me, gas is "very much expensive, very bad." That's about the extent of Hassan's English and my Arabic is terrible, so the rest of our conversation I pieced together with the help of Iraqi translators who, like me, converged on the converted bedroom where Hassan was setting up shop.
Hassan used to have a proper barbershop not far from where we stay, well away from the Green Zone. His glass storefront exploded one day due to the nearby blast of a roadside bomb. That one targeted Iraqi police. It wounded one of Hassan's customers. He borrowed money from his family to replace the glass. But a few months later, two bearded men walked in and told Hassan to close his shop or they would kill him and his family. His shop was being closed by religious extremists because they felt Hassan was giving western style haircuts. Hassan complied with their request.
As his scissors and electric razor whirled around my head, I have to admit I was perplexed by the men's criticism of this barber. Hassan never asks what kind of haircut you want. It doesn't seem like much of an option. Then the power goes off, a regular thing here in Baghdad, and with them the lights in the room. We wait because not much can be done with no lights and no electricity. So I ask Hassan to explain. He can't. But then Hassan slips -- he blames the Shiites for being too religious. Right then, I know he's a Sunni. He believes there is a civil war, and refuses to admit the Sunnis have anything to do with it. And then he says the classic Iraqi line, "But we are all brothers here in Iraq."
Lights come back on, razor starts blazing, and back to the task at hand. But Hassan keeps talking. He says he's happy and frustrated. Happy that Saddam is gone. Happy to vote. Happy to be alive. But frustrated at the lack of government months after the election. Frustrated that power, water and gas are in short supply. Frustrated that Baghdad is so dangerous and he still can't re-open his shop.
I ask about American soldiers, he says "shway-shway"... Iraqi for so-so. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. His tone reveals his total ambivalence.
With that, the scissors are put down, the razor turned off, my haircut finished…almost. Hassan sticks his hand in his pocket, rips out a strait razor and holds it to the back of my neck. Then he jokes, "Insurgent?" I laugh… kind of. He laughs a lot as he cuts the hairs from the nape of my neck.
Sometimes the most mundane of tasks can sum up an entire existence. Hassan seems to have lived almost the entirety of the new Iraq. Good and bad.
And he gives one hell of a good haircut.
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