The Submission - Amy Waldman [107]
“I know buildings are your religion,” Salman had answered, with something like bemusement. “But they shouldn’t keep you from God, and they can’t bring you to Him.”
The barbershop was tiny and nondescript, just four chairs and a newspaper rack, one barber to do the fourteen-dollar cuts and sweep up, an old-school place, an unbrilliantined patch of Manhattan. Mo stood outside for a moment, then ducked in and approached the white-shirted proprietor, face hidden behind his newspaper. The man folded his paper, revealing chalk-white hair and matching mustache, then folded his arms.
“Cut it short,” Mo said. “Neat.”
The barber directed him to a chair and necklaced him with the black bib. He lined up his tools with a surgeon’s precision and began to work. Dark locks sank to the floor. The barber whistled. Mo registered every clip as a concession. The hearing was two days off. He was cutting his hair—grown shoulder-length in the wake of his Afghanistan trip—at his mother’s behest, or so he told himself. His image, she had argued, was diverting attention from his design; perhaps a more conservative look would sap some of the opposition, allay fears. His answer had been that he shouldn’t tailor himself to prejudice. Yet here he was, tailoring.
“Shave?” the barber asked, hesitating before he removed the bib.
Mo shook his head.
The morning of the hearing, Mo woke early, his boxers sweaty, despite the cool fall air, and his sheets tangled. He palmed his face, its softness and bristle, showered, wiped a hole in the mirror fog, and leaned over the sink. His image, with its short hair, caught him off guard, as if someone else had slipped into the medicine cabinet. He locked eyes with himself and began the next argument. Doing this was practical. No, it was cowardly. It would grow back. It wouldn’t be the same. He was in control; he was caving. To do this was smart; no, shameful. “Next you’ll shave for them.” Laila’s words echoed.
He had grown the beard to play with perceptions and misconceptions, to argue against the attempt to define him. If he shaved, would he be losing the argument or ending it? Was he betraying his religion? No, but it would look that way. Was he betraying himself? That question shook the hand holding the razor.
In a bold swoop, he began clear-cutting, watching strips of paler skin emerge beneath the hair. When he finished, his countenance looked younger, wan, weak, just as his shorn head looked smaller, boyish. He was humbling himself, maybe only to rob others of the chance to do so. He opened his suitcase, took out his old, plainer titanium glasses, and folded up his tinted ones. He felt like he was putting himself away in the case.
The deodorant went on double, beneath his best-cut dark gray suit, a white shirt, a silk tie striped diagonally with dark gray and subtle silver. Not bad, he thought, studying his image, sedate and foreign, in the mirror. But this wasn’t a beauty contest.
The sky was an expressionless face. Mo took a cab to the city council chambers where the hearing was to be held. The police were setting up barricades in anticipation of the crowds. Bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled City Hall Park.
Mo entered through a side door, as Paul Rubin had instructed. A police officer checked his name, “Khan, Mohammad,” off a list, then instructed him to empty his pockets and pass through the metal detector blocking his path. He shoveled his coins, keys, and phone into the small plastic bin, slipped off his shoes, walked through, and heard a loud series of beeps.
“Belt,” the cop said, looking at Mo’s waist.
Mo removed the belt. He had been eating little, even apart from the fast, and the pounds had dropped off his already thin frame. That morning he had cinched his belt an extra hole. Now the suit pants gaped at the waist.
“Again,” the cop said, nodding toward the metal detector. Mo passed through again; again the alarm sounded. The cop eyed him with suspicion.
“Glasses?” Mo said, wondering if the titanium frames could be the problem. The officer snorted and mumbled something into his