The barber is 19 years old.
His name is Mohamed Lamine ould Ahmed and he lives in the house directly behind (south) of mine, so close I could touch it across the 2 meter wide path which separates us. He is the son of an outrageously obnoxious sack of belly-laughing fat named Ahmed ould Asswaylou who I cannot stand.
Mohamed Lamine is not the 'barber' (hallaq) in the sense of having a shop, or a sign, or tools. Or skills, to be perfectly honest. Rather he just is the barber and almost all the young men I know at some point or another make their way over to his unassuming little plastic chair to take care of business.
He's a nice guy, though not uncommonly bright, and has always been one of my better friends here, being able to find that correct balance between familiarity and respectfulness that has proven so elusive for so many others.
He giggles a lot and has a giant, unashamed smile and a comical voice which tends to skip all over the place like a deer, jumping registers. He is very handsome, in a youthful sort of big-eared way - he has clear, milk-chocolatey skin and inherited his mother's full, dramatic eyebrows and dark lashes like the rest of his siblings (fyi, they're all gorgeous).
He tells me that, though my time here is up soon, I can't leave El Qidiya, that they are going to tie me down and make me stay. I smile, but inside I'm like, "girl, good luck..." He cherishes vague hopes of learning English, but who doesn't?
A few afternoons a week I'll see him out there on the gravel, set up in the long, cool shadow of his house, busily snipping away at someone's fuzzy head. Yesterday I stopped by on my way back from the well, loaded down with thirty pounds of water and watched him for a few minutes, as he passed a comb topped with a razorblade through Lemrobbit's coarse, black hair, which then ended up all over my arm when I went to shake his hand.
These are the poorman's (literally) electric hairclippers, and though the comb/razorblade combos seem to work well enough I won't let him try them on me. Even though all I ever do with my hair anymore is buzz it to within an 1/8 inch of its life, I still like to be the one in control.
Except of course, I have been known to duck into those little hole-in-the-wall (again, literally) establishments that are sprinkled around just about everywhere in Nouakchott, the ones with a billowing sheet hanging over the doorway, and the hand-painted pictures of sharply-coiffeured ethnic gentlemen out front, and get a 300 ougiya 'do', including a surly attitude, a razor-defined hairline, and a dusting of babypowder, because sometimes it's nice to be pampered.
His name is Mohamed Lamine ould Ahmed and he lives in the house directly behind (south) of mine, so close I could touch it across the 2 meter wide path which separates us. He is the son of an outrageously obnoxious sack of belly-laughing fat named Ahmed ould Asswaylou who I cannot stand.
Mohamed Lamine is not the 'barber' (hallaq) in the sense of having a shop, or a sign, or tools. Or skills, to be perfectly honest. Rather he just is the barber and almost all the young men I know at some point or another make their way over to his unassuming little plastic chair to take care of business.
He's a nice guy, though not uncommonly bright, and has always been one of my better friends here, being able to find that correct balance between familiarity and respectfulness that has proven so elusive for so many others.
He giggles a lot and has a giant, unashamed smile and a comical voice which tends to skip all over the place like a deer, jumping registers. He is very handsome, in a youthful sort of big-eared way - he has clear, milk-chocolatey skin and inherited his mother's full, dramatic eyebrows and dark lashes like the rest of his siblings (fyi, they're all gorgeous).
He tells me that, though my time here is up soon, I can't leave El Qidiya, that they are going to tie me down and make me stay. I smile, but inside I'm like, "girl, good luck..." He cherishes vague hopes of learning English, but who doesn't?
A few afternoons a week I'll see him out there on the gravel, set up in the long, cool shadow of his house, busily snipping away at someone's fuzzy head. Yesterday I stopped by on my way back from the well, loaded down with thirty pounds of water and watched him for a few minutes, as he passed a comb topped with a razorblade through Lemrobbit's coarse, black hair, which then ended up all over my arm when I went to shake his hand.
These are the poorman's (literally) electric hairclippers, and though the comb/razorblade combos seem to work well enough I won't let him try them on me. Even though all I ever do with my hair anymore is buzz it to within an 1/8 inch of its life, I still like to be the one in control.
Except of course, I have been known to duck into those little hole-in-the-wall (again, literally) establishments that are sprinkled around just about everywhere in Nouakchott, the ones with a billowing sheet hanging over the doorway, and the hand-painted pictures of sharply-coiffeured ethnic gentlemen out front, and get a 300 ougiya 'do', including a surly attitude, a razor-defined hairline, and a dusting of babypowder, because sometimes it's nice to be pampered.
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