When the Light Dims.

I

I am due for a fresh haircut, and it’s almost heartbreaking to consider ending my decade-long relationship with my barber for a new one. But things don’t die the day they are pronounced dead. Dying (adj. or a noun) is the rung just beneath death on the ladder. It is the event, or a chain of events, that precedes death, even when death is abrupt or sudden. It could start as an injury that festered, a rod knock or the noisy grinding of an engine before its demise, a lie that can’t be forgotten, a pain that isn’t forgiven, or the many forms of injustice and incompetence that ruin people and places.

My last haircut was on a Sunday afternoon in September. The sun was distant, the air soothing, and the overcast sky delicately housed another downpour in its belly. Raindrops had painted patches of stain on cars as I drove to his barbershop. The city, too, wasn’t quiet or still – its energy symbolised the exciting preparation for the coronation of the new Olubadan.

I met him crouched outside his shop. His fingers were wrapped around the insulator of an oil-stained spark plug. He scratched the threads of the spark plug of the generator that serviced his barbershop against the alligator cracking of the tarred road that leads to the small barbershop he built nearly a decade ago. It was almost the same period I first allowed him to carefully carve my hairline and shape my beard.

“He’s struggling with his generator again,” I thought as we exchanged greetings. “Let me try it again,” he said, pulling the starter rope of his generator. Again, he pulled. His frustration echoed in the silence that settled over the shop as he gave up on the generator. Later, when he untied the strap of the barber cape from around my neck, I stared into the mirror again in his brother’s shop. I examined how he had trimmed my moustache, how the cheek line connected to it.

I have always put effort into looks and style. The symmetry of my haircut and the precision of my hairline are foundational to this effort. The importance of a barber who understands this concern through their expertise, or artistry, is not lost on me. This influenced my decade-long commitment to him. But beyond the cut, a core reason for my loyalty to him, even in the face of more sophisticated alternatives, is how much I enjoy the presence of people whose worlds didn’t intersect with mine.

These adults would often gather in his shop to discuss the hustle that rewarded them with little, the absence of things they pined for, or the presence of things they desperately wished away, Saheed Osupa and Pasuma, or the cruelty of broken promises by political leaders. I didn’t see them as a spectacle. I would sit in silence, listen, exhale and reflect on the simplicity and complexity of human behaviour. It was a window into lives and outlooks that didn’t occupy the centre of the landscape I shared with others. I saw them as important members of an intricate society.

That Sunday, when I stepped out of his brother’s shop, the worn-out generator that had driven us there pronounced decline which did not start that day. He had apologised for the discomfort caused by the power failure and assured me of the same result, explaining why he suggested his brother’s shop to save my time.

Isolated events that once unsettled or evoked criticism from me were no longer isolated events. They all pointed to something disturbing, a distortion of the order he worked to preserve, the evaporation of tranquillity, the shrinking of people and places, suffocation from the pain inflicted by the failure of others. The steriliser I had once insisted he fix, the fan he took too long to repair, the gradual disappearance of disinfectants from his work board and the sudden presence of boys begging or flattering customers for a few naira notes before their departure pointed to a decline that took me years to see in its bare state.

II

It will finally be broadcast on the national

news, to outrage, and to an instant forgetting.

- Teju Cole

Over the last decade, I have watched the tides change. It’s not the bulges of water from the pull of the sun and the moon. It’s the multiple bludgeons landed on people and places, forcing a shift from abundance to lack, from vibrant hope to a brittle semblance of hope, from quantifiable loss to a gloom even numbers may not fully capture. I’ve watched this shift through numbers in news headlines too:

“10 die at Afriland Towers fire”

“Average food inflation in 2024 was 38.67%, a record high in Nigeria”

“At least 1 million children in Nigeria are at risk of acute malnutrition”

“About 1 in 7 Nigerians face severe food insecurity”

“Bandits massacred 27 people in the Unguwar Mantau Mosque in Katsina”

“Kidnappings surge in South-East with 257 victims in one year”

“Insured but uncovered: Nigerians struggle as health insurance fails to deliver”

“One death every seven minutes: The world’s worst country to give birth”

This shift goes beyond numbers. I’ve seen it closely in the framing of progress. It’s the weight of displacement in the sustenance of friendship. It is the gradual degradation of the quality of life, where the privileged victims have to make tough decisions such as starting life again thousands of miles from home, striking seafood and turkey from their shopping list because purchasing power is suffering a bloodbath, or the economic sense in selling the family’s V8 engine vehicle for a V4 engine because fuel can no longer be entered as a miscellaneous expenses.

The other victims of this shift grapple with more painful realities. When it’s not fatal, it’s the inability to prevent what is fatal because they can’t feed, and the absence of food is the slow but visible decimation of the body. It’s the inability to keep the body together because only the rich can afford medical drugs. It’s also an unstoppable emaciation; they are forced to move into smaller apartments due to rising rents. They sell their pricey possessions to meet other needs as they struggle to replace supplies they’ve exhausted.

This emaciation isn’t the emaciation of things alone. It’s always a monologue about the flesh and the weight they’ve lost whenever they look into the mirror or whenever they pick up a dress or clothes to be worn. Yet this physical emaciation isn’t the major worry. The greater hurt comes from the WhatsApp reminder about their kids’ unpaid fees from the previous school term and the fading prospect of the future once envisioned.

As I quietly walked away from his brother’s shop that day, I couldn’t confront the helplessness we shared. Yes, I can’t trust him with my hairline anymore. For a decade, his hands strengthened this trust. Each month – save for the times I had to get a trim on my travels – I would sit in his chair to watch him restore radiance to my face. I would listen to him and the others who found community in his shop talk about subjects that intrigue. I watched how their optimism slowly moved to resignation, how they chased hope in Ponzi and other fruitless pursuits desperation brought to their doorstep. I watched how this led them to valleys that offered nothing.

I am not leaving because he has lost his artistry. I’m leaving because things are changing, and the change is deepening the helplessness we share. I’m leaving because the mirrors and voices in his shop now animate the sad numbers from the media. I’m not leaving because he now gambles away a part of his profit in his quest for a break. I am leaving because these distractions have moved his craft to the periphery. I’m leaving for what lethargy from crisis fatigue has done to us. He, alongside others, has decentered our pain and collective tragedies, condemning them to an instant forgetting.