The Barber’s Son

When the evening sky gave birth to a crescent moon above the small village of Qalyub north of Cairo, al-Hagg Ridwan found himself outside the barbershop. He turned to his wife and daughter and said, “Wait here.”

His wife, still angry from their previous quarrel, was impatient. “Don’t be long. It’s getting dark,” she snapped. Weary even before they had arrived at the shop, al-Hagg Ridwan had walked slowly that night, avoiding the eyes of the villagers who shook their heads and whispered to one another. He had not seen them sneer nor heard them ask each other What kind of man allows his wife and child to walk the streets at night? But he knew them well enough to guess as much.

Al-Hagg Ridwan had no choice. When he had returned from the clinic without having brought a doctor, his wife insisted that he take them to the shop. They had argued. In the end, he had resigned to her will.

She continued to exercise her will even now. “Tell him we’re waiting and that it must be done tonight—now,” she said.

Al-Hagg Ridwan lingered a moment to look at his daughter. Aisha was nine, but small for her age. Her pink dress, patterned with tiny red roses, reached to her ankles, which were thin and delicate. Her feet, though narrow, were much too large for the plastic sandals that she had long outgrown. A film of dust settled on her feet from the long walk on a dirt road. The girl had a round face and large brown eyes fringed with heavy lashes that were a lighter shade of brown than the color of the unkempt curls that fell just below her shoulders. She bit into a small square of sesame candy her father had bought her on the way to the shop. Al-Hagg Ridwan noted that the fine hairs on her forearms had turned nearly blonde from the sun’s rays.

“Baba, when will we go home?” she asked, tugging at the fabric of her father’s brown galabiyah, her fingers sticky from the sesame candy.

Al-Hagg Ridwan put his hand on her shoulder. “Soon, mama, soon.”

“Before I finish my candy?”

“Yes! Long before.”

“And will you buy me more on the way home?”

“As much as you want. Stay with your mother now until I return.”

“Where are you going?”

“Aisha” said her mother, “No more questions. Baba will not buy you sesame candy if you are naughty.”

Al-Hagg Ridwan looked into his daughter’s eyes and said, “Now you must stay with Mama. If you are a good girl, I will buy you Corona chocolates.”

Aisha smiled and hugged her father’s waist, burying her face in his galabiyah. Her mother pulled her back.

“Be quick,” his wife said as al-Hagg Ridwan turned toward the door. Having just finished the last of her sesame candy, Aisha licked the honey from her fingers. Her mother gently slapped Aisha’s hand from her mouth and wiped the girl’s fingers in the corner of her black wrap. Even though Aisha wanted to pull her hand out of her mother’s grip, the girl stood motionless, looking past her mother, into the darkness beyond the faint streetlamp in front of the barbershop. When her mother turned around to peer into the barbershop window, Aisha squatted in the lamplight, and put her finger to the ground. Slowly, carefully, Aisha moved her finger through the dust.

When al-Hagg Ridwan entered the shop, his distress was evident. His eyes darted from one side of the nearly empty room to the other. He had to clasp his hands together to keep them from trembling. It had been six months, around the time the barber had died and the barber’s son had assumed control of the shop, since al-Hagg Ridwan had visited. Now that his son had taken over, the clients who came to the shop for conversation and companionship had gradually stopped coming. Word had traveled that the barber’s son spoke little and laughed less...