TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Matthias Nawrat

face was clean-shaven. He was sweeping up hair and gestured at one of the two seats in front of the wall-length mirror.

When I sat down, the large man, who now suddenly seemed to have been talking before, began speaking again. He spoke fast, with a raised voice. He was holding his telephone in front of his face and as I leaned back and the slim hairdresser put an apron over my shoulders, the large man used the fingers of his other hand to swipe across the screen, as if commenting on something he’d just read. He sat on the very edge of his seat. The hairdresser fastened a strip of crepe paper around my neck, turned back to him and made affirmative noises. Then we had a brief conversation in German about what kind of haircut I wanted. The hairdresser had a quiet, friendly voice. Do you want a shave as well? he asked. In the mirror, I saw the fat man behind me and above him a muted television, showing people sitting at a table being served aesthetically arranged meals and having an animated conversation. While we had been talking about my hair, the fat man had started a telephone call. He laid one calf over the opposite knee and fiddled nervously with the sandal on his foot, enclosing a grey sock. He held the telephone to his ear and went on speaking at the same volume and in the same dramatic tone, but in his face, which I saw in the mirror, I thought I could now make out uncertainty, as if he were talking about something very important and the fervour of his speech were to do with excessive No thanks, I said.

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