#hajjam

He worked for a man out of Dubai who hired all nationalities. He came from a low caste, out of a village in Pakistan. The barber caste, the caste that cut hair and foreskins from infants and shame flowed through their veins.

His father as his grandfather before him had carried the burden but he, he had escaped, and he succeeded when they failed.

He was a proud man still. Even though the man out of Dubai told him the folly, he insisted on spending every dime he earned buying land, all the land, in and around his village. His old village. Had he lived there, he would have been king among the beggars.

The grandson of a man of a high and wealthy caste, a man who ran the village in his time, came to visit him in Dubai. He remembered this grandson, who had been a small boy living in his grandfather’s home when a young barber came to cut hair.

The maid let him in and had led him to the roof, where the hair was easier to sweep away. The sun shined, and the young man was tired, and he sat down on the corner of a manjaa left in the heat, waiting.

When the grandfather came, he saw and shrieked, disgusted by this low filth. The grandfather forced the young barber to put his nose to the ground and crawl backwards, wiping the floor clean in straight lines, until every inch of the mansion compensated for soiling his manjaa.