The Braid

by Laetitia Colombani

  Giulia closed her eyes.

  Suddenly she was up there under the eaves, in the laboratorio. Her father was there, too, sitting and gazing out at the sea, like he always did. He didn’t seem to be in pain. He looked serene, at peace. He smiled at Giulia as if he had been expecting her. She sat beside him. She told him all her troubles, her sorrow, the feeling of powerlessness that gripped her. She told him she was sorry about the workshop.

  Don’t let anyone divert you from your path, he said. You must keep believing. You have great determination. I believe in your strength, your abilities. You must persevere. Life has great things in store for you.

  A sharp noise rang out. Giulia woke with a start. She had fallen asleep right there, sitting beside her father in his hospital bed. Around him, the machines that kept him alive were sounding their alarms. Nurses were hurrying to his bedside.

  At that moment, at that precise instant, Giulia swore she felt her father’s hand move.

  Smita

  Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India

  Dawn is breaking over Tirumala mountain.

  Smita and Lalita have rejoined the pilgrims lining up before the temple gates. A child steps forward and offers them laddus, round pastries made from dried fruit and condensed milk. Their weight and composition are strictly defined—the recipe was dictated by the god himself, says the boy. They are prepared inside the temple by the achakas—hereditary priests—who give them to the pilgrims. Eating them is part of the process of purification. Smita thanks Lord Vishnu for this providential feast. Revived by a few hours of sleep, and the sweet-tasting laddus, she feels ready for the sacrifices in store. She hasn’t told Lalita what lies ahead, inside. The wealthiest pilgrims leave offerings of food and flowers, jewelery, gold, and precious stones, but the poorest offer Lord Venkateswara the only thing they possess: their hair.

  It’s a tradition dating back thousands of years: to offer your hair is to renounce all vanity, all sense of self, to lay yourself bare and come before the god in total humility.

  Smita and Lalita enter the temple and begin their progress along the passages covered in wire mesh, where thousands of Dalits wait—as long as forty-eight hours, says a man sitting on the ground beside the entrance. The better-off buy tickets to jump the line. Whole families sleep in line, so as not to lose their place. After long hours in the makeshift cages, they come at last to the kalyanakatta, a huge building, four stories high, where hundreds of barbers are busy at work, night and day. The biggest barbershop in the world, people say. Smita learns that it costs fifteen rupees to shave your head. Truly, nothing in life is free.

  In the vast room, as far as the eye can see, men, women with babies in their arms, children, and old people, all submitting to the razors, each chanting a prayer to Vishnu. The sight of the endless lines of shaved heads terrifies Lalita. She begins to cry. She doesn’t want to give her hair away, she loves it. She hugs her doll for protection, the toy she has clung to throughout their journey, dressed in its scrap of cloth. Smita bends over her and whispers softly in her ear:

  Don’t be afraid.

  Vishnu is with us.

  Your hair will grow again—it will be even more beautiful than before.

  Don’t worry, I’ll go first.

  Her mother’s soft voice offers Lalita some comfort. She stares at a group of children whose heads have just been shaved. They stroke their scalps with their hands and laugh. They don’t seem to be suffering. The opposite, in fact—they seem amused by their new appearance. Their mother, her head freshly shaven, too, anoints them with sandalwood oil, a bright yellow liquid that is thought to protect the skin from the sun and from infections.

  It is their turn. The barber signals to Smita. Devoutly, she steps forward as asked. She kneels, closes her eyes, and begins to recite a prayer in a low whisper. What she asks Vishnu, there in the midst of the vast hall, is her secret. It is a moment that belongs to her alone. She has thought about it for days; she has thought about it for years.

  The barber manipulates his razor to quickly change the blade—the director of the temple is very strict, one blade per pilgrim, that’s the rule. In his family, they have been barbers from father to son for generations. Every day, he performs the same gestures, repeats them over and over so that he even dreams about them at night. He imagines oceans of hair, in which sometimes he drowns.

  He asks Smita to braid her hair—it makes the shaving easier, and the strands are easier to collect from the floor. Then he sprinkles her head with water and begins to shave. Lalita stares anxiously at her mother, but Smita smiles. Vishnu is with them, he is here, so close by. He is blessing her.

  Smita closes her eyes again. There are thousands of people all around her, in the same pose, praying for a better life, offering the only thing that has been given to them in this world, their hair, the ornament, the gift they have received from heaven and which they now return, with joined hands, kneeling on the floor of the kalyanakatta.

  When Smita opens her eyes, her scalp is as smooth as an egg. She stands up and feels suddenly, amazingly, light. It’s a new, almost intoxicating sensation. A shiver runs through her body. She stares at the hair that was once hers, lying in a small, jet-black heap at her feet like a remnant of herself, already a memory. Now her body and soul are pure. She feels at peace. Blessed. Protected.

  Lalita steps forward for her turn. She is trembling slightly. Smita takes her by the hand. The barber changes his blade and gazes admiringly at the braid reaching down the little girl’s back, almost to her waist. Her hair is magnificent, thick, silky. Gazing into her daughter’s eyes, Smita chants with her the prayer they have recited so many times before the little altar in their hut, in Badlapur. She thinks of their condition in life; she tells herself that they are poor now, but that perhaps, one day, Lalita will own a car. The thought makes her smile and gives her strength. Her daughter’s life will be better than hers, thanks to the offering they are making here and now.

  They emerge from the kalyanakatta, and the light dazzles their eyes. With no hair, their faces look more alike than ever. They seem younger, too, and more fragile. They hold hands and smile at one another. They have come this far. The miracle has been accomplished. Smita knows that Vishnu will keep his promise. A new life awaits them, tomorrow, with her cousins in Chennai.

  Smita walks toward the Golden Sanctuary with Lalita’s hand in hers. She feels no sadness. No, truly, she is not sad, because she is certain of one thing: they have made their gift, and Vishnu will show his thanks.

  Giulia

  Palermo, Sicily

  They did not know it was impossible, so they did it.

  Giulia remembers Mark Twain’s phrase, the one she had read and loved as a child. She thinks about it today, as she waits on the tarmac at Falcone Borsellino Airport. She feels moved, waiting for the plane that will change their lives. It is coming from so far away, bringing their first shipment of hair.

  Papà never woke up. He died that day, in the hospital, while she sat in the chair beside him, after the strange dream that she would remember for the rest of her life. When it was time to go, he had pressed her hand, as if to say goodbye. As if to say, Go on. He had passed her the baton and left this life. Giulia knew that. While the doctors had tried to resuscitate him, she had promised him that she would save the workshop. It was their secret, his and hers.

  She had insisted on holding the funeral in the chapel Papà loved. Her mother had protested—it was too small for everyone to have a seat, she said. Pietro had so many friends, he was always so popular, and there was all the family, too, from every corner of Sicily, and the workers . . . None of that mattered, Giulia told her. Anyone who loved him would stand. Her mother had given in, eventually.

  She hardly recognized this new daughter: Giulia, who was ordinarily so well behaved, so self-contained, so docile, had become strangely obstinate. She was gripped by a new determination. She had stubbornly refused to give up her fight for the workshop. To break the deadlock, Giulia had
suggested allowing the women to vote. It had been done elsewhere, she said, in other businesses under threat. They had every right to be consulted: it affected them, too. Her mother agreed, and her sisters had accepted the idea.

  The vote took the form of a secret ballot, to avoid the younger women being influenced by their elders. The workers were invited to choose between a new direction for the workshop, with imported hair from India, or its closure and a negotiated severance package, with a small sum as compensation. The first solution involved an element of risk, of course: an uncertain outcome that Giulia made no effort to conceal.

  The vote was held in the main workshop space. Mamma was present, together with Francesca and Adela. Giulia opened the ballot papers with trembling hands. Each had been folded and placed in Papà’s old hat—that was her idea, a final tribute to her father. So that he can be with us in a small way today, she said.

  There was a clear majority, seven votes to three. Giulia would remember that moment for years to come. She could barely conceal her joy.

  Through Kamal she established a trusted contact in India, a man based in Chennai. He had studied business at the university and toured the country’s temples looking for hair to buy. He struck a hard bargain, but Giulia proved a tough negotiator, too. Mia cara, anyone would think you had been doing this your whole life! chuckled La Nonna.

  At just twenty years old, she found herself at the head of the workshop. She was the youngest business owner in the neighborhood. She has taken over her father’s desk. She gazes at his photograph on the wall, next to the pictures of their forebears. She hasn’t dared add her own. That will come.

  In her sadder moments, she goes up to the attic, to the laboratorio under the eaves. There, she sits facing the sea and thinks about her father, and what he would say, what he would do. She never feels alone. Her Papà is at her side.

  Kamal stands beside her now. He insisted on coming with her to the airport. Lately, they have shared far more than their midday breaks. He has proved himself to be a source of tireless support, greeting each of her ideas with kind enthusiasm. He is inventive, enterprising. First, he was her lover, now he is her partner and confidant.

  At last, the plane appears. Giulia watches the slowly growing dot in the sky and thinks that their whole future lies there, in the potbellied freight hold. She takes Kamal’s hand. It seems to her now that they are no longer two separate beings, drifting through life by chance, but a man and a woman anchored to one another. It doesn’t matter what Mamma says, or the family, or the neighborhood, Giulia thinks. She is a woman now, standing with the man who has revealed her true self. She will hold tight to this hand.

  She will press it often in the years ahead, in the street, in the park, in the maternity wing, asleep, when they make love, when she cries, when she brings their children into the world. She will hold this hand for a long time to come.

  The plane lands and comes to a halt. Speedily, the containers are unloaded and taken to the sorting hangar, where the warehousemen are busy at work.

  In the storage depot, Giulia signs a receipt indicating that she has taken charge of the merchandise. The package is there in front of her, scarcely any bigger than a suitcase. With trembling hands, she takes a cutter and slits it open along one side. The first strands of hair appear. Delicately, she takes hold of a strand: long, very long, jet-black hair. A woman’s hair, unquestionably, incredibly thick and sleek. And another strand, just beside it, not quite as long, and as soft as silk or velvet. A child’s hair, by the feel of it. The batch was bought a month ago, at the temple in Tirupati, her contact told her: the busiest temple complex of any religion, anywhere in the world, busier than Mecca or the Vatican. Giulia had been impressed. Suddenly she thinks of all the men and women she doesn’t know and will never meet, who come to give the gift of their hair. Their offering is a gift from God, she thinks. She wants to take them in her arms and thank them. They will never know where their hair has been taken to, its extraordinary journey, its odyssey. But the journey is just beginning. One day, someone, somewhere in the world, will wear the strands that her workers have disentangled, washed, and treated. That person will have no inkling of the struggles involved. She will wear this hair, and perhaps it will be her pride and joy, just as it is for Giulia, here today. With that thought, she smiles.

  With Kamal’s hand in hers, she has found her place in the world. Her father’s workshop is saved. He can rest in peace. Their children will carry on the line, one day. She will teach them the trade and show them the roads she had ridden with Papà, on his Vespa.

  Sometimes, the dream returns. Giulia is no longer nine years old. Her father’s Vespa will never come back, but she knows now that the future is full of promise.

  Now, the future is hers.

  Sarah

  Montreal, Canada

  Sarah walks through the snowy streets. In the Arctic freeze of early February, she blesses the winter weather: it is her alibi. Thanks to the cold, her woolly hat blends with the crowd of passersby, each covered up like her. She sees a group of schoolchildren holding one another by the hand. One little girl wears a hat exactly like hers. They catch one another’s eye and grin.

  Sarah keeps on walking. In the pocket of her coat, she holds the small card given to her by a woman she met at the hospital a few weeks before. They had been sitting in the same room waiting for their treatment and had struck up a conversation, naturally, like two strangers on a café terrace. They had sat there chatting like that all afternoon, united by their illness—the invisible thread that bound them together. Their conversation had soon taken a more intimate, confessional turn. Sarah had read a great many personal stories in forums and blogs online. Sometimes, she almost felt she was part of a club, an enlightened band of women who knew, and who had gone through it. There were the hardened warriors, the Jedi, who had seen it all before. And then there were the neophytes, new to the disease, the Padawans—the ones who, like Sarah, had everything to learn. That day, the woman at the hospital—a Jedi, no doubt about it, fighting yet another battle in a long war, though she drew a veil over her own illness—had talked about a shop that sold “spare hair,” in her inimitable phrase. The staff were competent and discreet, she said. She had given Sarah a card with the salon’s address, for when the time came. In the fight to get well, no woman should lose her self-esteem, she said. The woman you see in the mirror should be your best friend, not your worst enemy, she added, with a knowing wink.

  Sarah had put the card away and thought no more about it. She had tried to put off the inevitable moment, just as she had tried to deny the illness itself for so long, but reality had caught up with her.

  The time has come. Sarah walks to the salon through the snowy streets. She could have taken a cab, but she chooses to walk. It is a kind of pilgrimage, a journey she must make on foot, a rite of passage.

  Going there means a lot. It means accepting the illness at last. Not rejecting it, not denying its existence. Looking it in the eye, facing it, not as a punishment or a twist of fate, an unavoidable curse, but as a fact, a life event, a challenge to overcome.

  As she draws nearer to the salon, Sarah has a curious feeling, not exactly déjà vu, not a premonition, no, this is something deeper, something that filters softly into her thoughts, her entire being, as if she has already made this journey, as if she knows the way. And yet this is the first time she has ever ventured into this neighborhood. Inexplicably, it seems as if something is waiting for her there. Like a meeting that was arranged a long time ago.

  She pushes the salon door. An elegantly dressed woman greets her politely and leads her along a hallway to a small room furnished with an armchair and a mirror.

  Sarah takes off her coat and puts her bag down on the floor. She pauses before removing her woolly hat. The woman stands looking at her for a moment, saying nothing.

  I’ll show you our models. Do you have an idea of the kind of thing you’re looking for?

  Her voice is neither obsequiou
s nor sympathetic. Straight and without affectation. Spot-on. Sarah immediately feels comfortable. Clearly, the woman knows what she’s doing. She must meet dozens, hundreds of women like her. She probably sees them all day long. But right now, Sarah feels unique—or at least, that she is being treated as if she were. It’s an art, not to dramatize or minimize, and this lady practices it with a delicate touch.

  Sarah feels awkward as she struggles to answer the woman’s question. She has no idea. She hasn’t thought about it. She wants . . . something with life to it, natural. Something that looks like her, really. What a stupid thing to say, she thinks, how can someone else’s hair “suit” her, match her face, her personality?

  The woman disappears for a moment, then returns with what looks like a pile of hatboxes. From the first, she takes out an auburn wig—synthetic, she says, made in Japan. She shakes it out vigorously, top down. Sometimes they get a bit squashed in the box, she says, they need shaking to get them back into shape. Sarah tries it on, unconvinced. She doesn’t recognize herself under the thick pile of hair. That isn’t her under the fur ball, she looks like a person in disguise. Good value for money, the woman remarks. But it’s not our premium range. She takes another wig from a second box, also artificial, but finer quality—from the “Top Comfort” range. Sarah doesn’t know what to say. She stares thoughtfully at the image reflected back at her in the mirror. It is definitely not her.

  The wig isn’t bad, there’s nothing wrong with it, but it looks like a wig. No, this is impossible, much better to wear a head scarf or a woolly hat. The woman takes a third box and produces one of her latest pieces, made with real hair, she notes. A rare and expensive model, but some women feel it’s worth spending the money. Sarah stares at the wig in surprise. The hair is exactly the same color as her own. It is long, silky, and incredibly soft and thick. Indian hair, the woman tells her. It’s treated, discolored, and dyed in Italy—at a family workshop in Sicily, actually. Then the strands are attached, one by one, onto a tulle cap, using the hand-tied braiding technique, she explains. It takes longer, but it’s much stronger than a crochet wig. Eighty hours of work, around 150,000 individual hairs. This is a very fine, rare piece. Truly a belle ouvrage, as we say in the trade, she adds proudly.