Hair

Iliya was so excited. Today was the day he would receive his first robe woven from a woman’s hair.

Because it was his first, it was woven from coarse, old woman's hair, a dull matte grey. Ironically, as he grew in seniority, he would be eligible to wear robes made of finer, younger hair, all strictly sorted according to texture and feel. It was common to see old men, wizened and bent, striding around in glimmering robes and cloaks of the finest girls’ hair, and in between, there was a spectrum of cloaks in all imaginable human hairs. Iliya hoped and prayed that one day he would be eligible for a robe in that beautiful chestnut-red colour that had been the subject of a famous old English detective story he hadread last year, part of his World Literature studies.

For now, he had to be content with this rough grey weave. He fingered the robe before him and tried to look grateful.

The old woman whose head the hair mostly came from was not fooled. She cackled at him from beside the curtain where she sat, and Iliya shivered. He hated this part of the ceremony, where the man receiving the robe was brought to greet and 'thank' the woman who had 'provided' the hair. He knew they had no real choice in the matter, and he didn't quite understand why they had to pretend. His tutor had explained it to him, but it sounded like sykologikal mumbo-jumbo.

Further ahead, Daniel, several years his senior, was greeting and bowing before another lady with recently-cut hair, receiving his robe. Iliya glanced enviously at the gorgeous inky-black cloak Daniel was holding with great reverence- not his coveted browny-gold, but it was undeniably more glamorous. Iliya knew he had to work hard to ever be able to earn a cloak of such beauty. Daniel drew it around him, and the inky-black set off his delicate cream skin and brought out sparkling violet highlights in his dark eyes and hair.

Iliya’s contemplation of Daniel in his glorious cloak was broken by a sudden cry, followed by a stampede of security and a cluster of screams. A whoosh seemed to distort Daniel, who bent backward at a distorted angle. Clutching his ugly grey robe, Iliya ran forward to see what was going on, when he was hit in the face by a violent heat. The screaming grew louder and he saw Daniel engulfed in flames- his black robe on fire. But his were not the only screams.

Iliya looked inside the pavilion where only seconds before Daniel had been bowing at the woman with inky-black hair who had made him his robe. Her short hair was completely on fire, covering her face, and leaping around her body. He smelled the gasoline, and saw the small tin on the floor, which had contained the gasoline used to douse her hair and the robe before she had set it all on fire.