the haircut

Pak Mat cuts everybody's hair in our kampung, under a big tree, with a mirror nailed to the trunk and a chair that has cut more heads than anyone can count. And Pak Mat gives every single kid in the kampung the exact same haircut.

Short at the sides, a bit longer on top, neat. The same one. Boy or girl, big or small, every kid comes out of that chair looking like every other kid in the kampung, like we were all printed off the same machine on the same morning. I had been getting that exact haircut my whole life, and I had had enough of it. My cousin Syafiq, across the Causeway, pays a whole lot of money at a salon in Singapore and comes out looking like a different boy every time, and he tells me the price, because Syafiq always tells you the price. I was nine. I wanted a proper haircut. A grown-up one. One that was mine, and not the kampung-kid special that everybody gets and nobody chooses.

So I went to make my case.

You do not just turn up and ask Pak Mat for a different haircut. He will say duduk, sit down, and give you the special before you have finished your sentence, the scissors already going. You have to come prepared, like for an exam, and I came prepared. I had a folder. In the folder were pictures I had torn out of old magazines at home, haircuts I liked, grown-up ones, film-star ones. And I had brought witnesses. By which I mean the gang followed me up to the tree, because they could smell that something was about to happen.

The queue of men was already there. There is always a queue of men under the tree, uncles waiting their turn, sitting on the bench, talking about nothing, in no hurry. A haircut at Pak Mat's is not a quick errand. It is a place you go to sit. They watched me come up with my folder and they nudged each other, because a kid with a folder is the most entertaining thing to happen at a barber all week.

An old uncle was in the chair when I arrived, getting the special. Pak Mat cut it the way he cuts everything, slow, with long pauses, standing back to look at the head like it was a thing he was thinking about rather than a job he was doing. Nobody hurried him. You do not hurry the only barber. The uncle had his eyes shut. He looked like he had come less for the haircut and more for the sit-down.

I laid the folder on the little table by the mirror, like a lawyer laying out the evidence. I showed Pak Mat picture one. I showed him picture two. Picture three was, I realised a moment too late, a cartoon. A drawing of a haircut that no human head has ever been able to grow. Pak Mat looked at it for a long, quiet moment. Then he looked at me. The uncles on the bench made a sound, and I moved on quickly to picture four.

"I am nine now," I told him. "I have my own taste. The special is a haircut for little kids. I am not a little kid anymore. I would like, just once in my life, a haircut that is a choice and not a habit."

I had practised that last line. I delivered it, and then I stood there breathing, waiting.

Pak Mat listened to all of it with the scissors resting in his hand, the way he listens to everything. He had the look of a man who has heard this exact speech before, years ago, from somebody who now has children of their own getting the special in that same chair.

And then the gang ruined it.

Because the moment the gang heard you were allowed to ask Pak Mat for a different haircut, the gang all wanted different haircuts. The chair was suddenly surrounded.

"Racing stripes," said Kavi. "On the side. With a number."

"Which number," said Pak Mat, mildly.

Kavi shouted his number to the whole street. Now the whole street knew Kavi's number and nobody knew why.

One kid wanted it long on one side and short on the other. One kid wanted a shape cut into the back, a shape he could not describe, only wave his hands about. And Aiman, who was not even getting a haircut, was selling places in the queue, taking deposits off little kids to stand closer to a chair they were never going to sit in.

Pak Mat put his scissors down.

When Pak Mat puts his scissors down, that is the kampung version of the whole sky going quiet. He looked at the crowd of us, all shouting our wild haircuts at him at once, the stripes and the number and the shape and the long-on-one-side. You could see him deciding, very calmly, to simply close up for the day. To send the whole noisy lot of us home with no haircut at all, and have his tree and his quiet bench of uncles back.

I saw it going. My one chance, drowning under racing stripes and a number and Aiman's queue deposits. So I did the thing I am worst at. I gave most of it up. I turned round and sent the gang back to the bench. I closed the folder. I left the cartoon, and the film stars, and the long-on-one-side, all of it, and I asked Pak Mat for one thing. One small change to the special. Just a little longer at the front, so that it was not exactly the kampung-kid special, so that it was a tiny bit mine. One reasonable thing, asked quietly, with the crowd gone and the noise gone.

Pak Mat picked his scissors back up.

And while he cut, he told me why he does it. He does not say much, Pak Mat, so it came out slow, between the snips.

"Same cut for every kid," he said. "You know why?" I did not. "A kid does not know what a wild haircut will look like later. He might really wish he had never asked for it. A wild haircut grows out crooked. The kid stands at the mirror crying at his own ears for a month, and there is no putting hair back. The special always looks fine. Nobody ever cried from the special."

I had spent the whole morning thinking he just could not be bothered to learn a second haircut.

He gave me the one small change. A little longer at the front. Just for me. Just slightly not the special.

He held up the hand mirror behind my head so I could see the back, the way he does it for every head in the kampung. I looked at the little new bit at the front in the big mirror nailed to the tree. It was not much. It was, to be honest, almost the special. But it was a tiny bit longer at the front, and I knew exactly where it was different, and that was the whole of the win.

Behind me, the gang had given up their wild haircuts and lined up on the bench for the special. The racing stripes forgotten. The number forgotten. Kavi was in the chair now, getting the exact same cut as everyone in the kampung has ever had, and when it was done he looked like all the rest of us, printed off the same machine, fine. I sat on the bench with my one new bit at the front and watched Pak Mat cut the next head, and the next, slow, with his long pauses. Every kid came out looking like all the rest of us. Nobody once cried at the mirror on the tree.