People without place

Disconnection and absence in the twenty-first century

Five of us sit waiting in a barbers in a small Welsh town. Inexplicably, the man in the chair has been having his head coiffured for at least twenty five minutes despite being almost entirely bald. The barber, a Kurdish man in his forties, must have spent at least a minute silently working each strand of hair left on his subject’s head. It’s raining outside and I furtively glance at the four other people waiting their turn: a man younger than me. Another man is a bit older. A woman sits trying to avoid being poked by the waving fingers of her impatient son. First thought? They all got here before me and they’ve all got more hair than the guy in the chair. Second thing? Almost all of them are hunched over looking at their phones. Or, in the case of the mum, trying to look at her phone as her son successfully smites her on the cheek. An old phone lies on the table in front of the boy: a colourful game is on the screen being ignored. I know instinctively that my phone is in the right pocket of my jeans. I get it out and send a message to my partner: ‘Going to be a while x x’.

Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash

The atmosphere in that barber shop was awful. Awkward. The sound of the scissors cutting the silence and hanging in the air. Rustling coats as people tapped touchscreens. It makes the waiting worse. Weeks later, I start going…