Sarfraz Manzoor

I wonder if you have noticed how few Sikhs you see these days wearing turbans. Me, I like to keep count. There’s my dad, of course, and my brothers. And there’s me. My dad is what you might call old school: six foot two, built like a brick shithouse and with hair that’s not been cut since Indian independence. Years ago I bet there were loads of Sikhs like my old man but these days you don’t see them so much. My brothers both wear turbans but they’re older than me. I know I’m meant to be proud of my turban. ‘Do you know that during the war we Sikhs refused to remove our turbans and wear helmets?’ my dad would tell me when I was a young boy and he was teaching me how to tie a turban ‘that’s how important it is to our religion.’ It’s hard to argue with your dad when you’re eleven and he’s two foot taller than you so I went along with pretending to be proud of being Sikh.

You want to know the worst thing about wearing a turban? It’s not the wrapping seven yards of cloth around your head every morning, its not the gallons of shampoo and conditioner you have to use every time you wash your hair and its not even the headaches you get from wearing the thing. No, the worst thing about a turban is that its the world’s most effective contraceptive: you wear a turban and you might as well as resign yourself to a life of lonely Saturday nights in front of the computer downloading porn while everyone else is out shagging. Jas and Kal are both married but they had to go back to India and even they found it hard work finding girls who didn’t mind a guy with a turban. When I’m bored at home I sometimes browse the matrimonial websites, just to see what’s out there. It kills me how many girls make a point of saying how they’re looking for ‘clean shaven Sikhs’, they might as well be saying ‘Move along Harjit you’re not getting any from me.’ And that’s just the Asian girls, to the white girls I’ve always been less then invisible. If I was invisible they just wouldn’t notice me, but when you look like me its hard not to notice the maroon turban, the furry beard and whiskers and you can tell from their look that they’re repulsed. They have that horrified look that says they would rather go down on a Big Issue seller than even kiss me.

You would think that by now I wouldn’t be scared of my dad but truth is I’m terrified of what he is going to say. That’s why I’ve kept putting it off. For the past couple of weeks on my way to college and the way back I’ve stopped outside ‘Scissor Sisters’ and thought about walking in. I wonder if they have noticed the tall Asian lad gawping outside their window? Its better than television watching what goes on in a hair salon. There’s this one stylist short with tar black hair and tattoos curling up her arm who looks like she’s a part time stylist and full time satanist. Then there’s the tall blonde girl who looks like she’s trying to copy that forties look Christina Aguilera had in that video. And the customers! Its amazing what you can do with your hair when you can do anything you like. In my mind I have rehearsed the whole scene but each afternoon its like the DVD player ejects the film before it gets to that part; I just fill up with fear and back out and next thing I know I am back at home with mum and dad eating chapattis and no-one suspects a thing. If I was sensible I would wait until next year and I’m at uni, but that seems too far away right now. Every night when I unwrap my turban and look at myself in the mirror and see myself I ask myself the same question: what would I look like without the moustache and beard and turban? What would my life look like? If me and Holly get on so well now, might she be up for something more than friendship if I lost all that hair? I know its going to kill my parents and they’re probably going to want to kill me. I’m the last of their boys, the other two are married off to good Sikh girls, I bet they’re thinking that once I’m sorted their job is done and they can sell the store and spend half the year in India like they always planned. I know they’re going to hate me but I know I’m going to hate myself if I don’t go through with this. Time’s running out, Holly’s only just broken up with her boyfriend and she’s not going to stay single for long. It’s got to be today, this afternoon. I’m going to march into ‘Scissor Sisters’ and tell Blonde Who Thinks She’s Christina that I want a hair cut. And I’m going to sit back in one of those leather chairs and let her hack away at my long locks and trim and shave my beard and moustache until the old me is left in a pile of curls on the salon floor. I’ll stand up and feel the shape of my head and the curves of my jaw with my hand. I’ll pay the stylist and text Holly to ask if she’s free this weekend. I can’t say for sure what I am going to feel but I know this: its going to be a long walk home.