The room is big and airy, with one huge floor to ceiling window. I look out the window for a glimpse of the blue, distant mountain and nearer green tree-covered hills. Instead I see a narrow street packed with parked motor-scooters and a few people walking up and down its centre. Across the road where the mountain might have been is a gym. Green artificial vines cover it's ochre-coloured walls.
My memories of the Meeting House are frozen like the scar of the mountain’s landslide of 50 years ago. But over the road in the gym there’s movement. Inside there are people lifting weights or running on treadmills. There were no treadmills in the Meeting House.
The internal walls of this building are also redbrick but, unlike the Meeting House, rough-faced. The black and chrome chairs are in rows, and every one has a large mirror in front of it. The 3 or 4 rows are filled with people - about 30 in all. It’s quiet but buzzing - the Meeting House quiet notched up a bit and with a bit of music and TV added. In the shared buzz people look at their phones rather than into distant or inner space. They too are waiting but not, I know, for the spirit to move them.
By habit I begin to count the bricks in the wall opposite me. I count by row and then by column. Across and downwards like reading a book. Are there bricks behind the TVs which are broadcasting world news and dance shows? If not I’d need to subtract the number of those bricks that might have been there. After losing my place I count by column and then by row. I lose my place again.
A glass of water is placed in front of me. In the mirror I can see the other customers and hairdressers. The girls are amazingly beautiful. Long dresses matched by long tresses or jeans with short tops revealing flat stomachs. Like in another modern city the clothes are mostly black. The boys too are stylishly dressed in casual clothes. Black hair almost universally dyed blond.
On my right a girl is having her long, product-filled hair examined by two people. The long locks are drawn out and held in their hands. In my mirror I see a slim girl in a green dress passing the rows of mirrors. Someone else is having foils put in her hair and another using an App on her phone to chat.
I see the older people sitting toward the centre of the room. In concentric circles, they look across the central table on which is placed a small vase of flowers to the others facing them. Most wear dun-coloured clothes and with some obvious exceptions, their hair is mostly neatly but not fashionably groomed. Some men wear ties. Scattered among them are a few children and teenagers. They are 50 years and many silences away.
Someone appears behind me. She leads me to have my hair washed and my scalp massaged. I stretch out on the bed-like shampoo chair. How do I like living here? When might I go back to my country? Her top is short, displaying her navel. There is no need to reply at length. I’m hoping the wash and massage won’t finish too soon.
The girl in the green dress, dark hair in waves to her waist, crosses the room, weaving between chairs. She’s carrying fashion magazines. She hands me one but when I open it I find it’s The Story of Ferdinand by Leaf Munro. She continues on her way but looks back toward me with a slight shrug of her shoulders. “It’s variations on a theme,” she says. I protest but she ignores me.
One of the problems is, I’d like to say to the girl who has knelt to play with one of the dogs, that the Meeting House ceiling is angled across the columns of bricks so the topmost rows are partially obscured. It’s a similar problem here. It’s hard to know where the wall ends and the ceiling begins. I know I’ll not finish counting the bricks. I never have. She offers me a small cake.
“A goal without a plan is just a wish,” wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. But there are dreams and memories outside a plan, I'd like to reply. I can be here and not here. I can be there and not there. I don't really want a plan for counting the bricks.
How do you want it cut today? He speaks through the noise of the blow-drier and I reply as I always do and as he knows I will. He continues to cut and I to think. We converse occasionally, just as we always do.
Somebody stands and speaks about hair and hairstyling, the haired, the less-haired and the hairless. The speaker reminds us that there are those who suffer persecution because of what they have either chosen or been gifted, of penalties for different lengths, styles or colours. We are being asked to show a greater level of compassion to those who are different. I wonder if the length of dresses the Philippine school girls wear is also a form of persecution. There follows more silence.
The quiet busyness of the salon continues. Some of the hairdressers push trolleys filled with equipment to and from customers and others place capes over their customers and affix the neck with a velcro-backed cloth asking them how they’d like their hair styled today. All around is the quiet but consistent noise of clippers clipping and dryers blowing all with the aim of styling and sometimes shortening hair.
On my left someone snores softly. I make faces at my sister sitting opposite me each time the elderly lady’s eye twitches involuntarily. I stare at the pouf in front of me. Mouth to my sister “spelling?” while looking down at it. She tries not to grin. She looks at her wrist, she looks away towards the bricks then up at the mountain. The silence continues.
The hairdresser snips at her hair and says something to her. She and the children stand. The Sunday School children are leaving. She passes her wine glass to somebody and asks if I’m staying. She'll go outside for a cigarette. She followed where her sense of duty led, she’ll tell me later.
Another speaker discusses love. “You can’t buy me love,” the speaker says quoting a popular song. The speaker considers commitment. “Thus spake guru Nanak,” we used to say when someone spoke about topics which they thought important, deep or meaningful. Perhaps the speaker didn’t know that the same group also sang,”Money (That's What I Want).” Is there unconscious contradiction in religion? There follows more silence until the pianist plays.
Sometime later the two elders nod, turn to each other with half a smile and shake hands. People stand and slowly make their way outside. He shows me the result in the hand mirror. I see the back of my head and nod.
In the vestibule, the Meeting House offerings include a collection for poor people in tropical countries. The Christmas bowl appealed, we joked, but the umpire was unmoved. Those who can pay are more equal I think. Should I donate my receipt?
Near the main door are offerings to the ancestors including whisky, fruit, whole chickens, joss sticks and paper money for performing bai bai. There are also books on sex and the modern teenager. The guide through boyhood and A guide to womanhood. The paper money will be burnt, the books left unread.
One of the few buses trundles towards us on its way to the outer suburbs. If I catch it I’ll be there before lunchtime. The girl in the green dress is going the same way. "It’s rather more than that,” I now reply.
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