The hairdresser outside the gate
The hairdresser at Palmline, outside the main gate, and AJ's neighbor in Room 7. Everybody talks in her chair. She repeats almost none of it.
What the mirror hears, the mirror keeps.Tara
Omotara Bankole came to Lagos from Abeokuta with a comb, a pair of clippers and a plan, and everyone on June 12 Street knows her as Tara. She works the chair at the Palmline Unisex Salon, the little shop outside the estate's main gate, beside the waiting area and Sarge's window. Braids, cornrows, weaves and wigs for the women; clippers and sharp line-ups for the men. "Unisex" is the promise on the sign, and she keeps it.
A salon next to a police gate hears everything. Guests waiting to get in, officers off duty, Prizm's staff getting ready for a party night, the Warden's boys in for a line-up: they all talk in her chair. Tara repeats almost none of it. Every month, part of what she earns goes home to her mother and two younger sisters.
At night she goes home to Room 7 of Iloro House, the same face-me-I-face-you as AJ. She keeps the bathroom roster on the kitchen wall, scolds Danger and Benny in Room 8 and cuts their hair for free, and calls Dozie "Mr. Opportunity". When AJ came back from the cell, she gave him his first proper haircut and did not take a naira for it. "Pay me when the gate opens."
Tara runs the Palmline Unisex Salon outside the main gate. In party mode, sit in her chair to change your hairstyle and skin tone for free.
Tara rents the one chair at the Palmline Unisex Salon outside the estate's main gate, sends money home to Abeokuta every month, and repeats almost nothing she hears. Then the Warden's boys start talking in her chair about the young man from London who lives down her corridor.
Deported from London, beaten in a cell, broke on a veranda bench. He has a plan, a London accent and a debt to the gate police.
The most dangerous man on June 12 Street and the one it loves most: a stare that stops a fight, a laugh you can hear from the gate, and a notebook of verses.
Small, quick and never short of a word. If it is moving this week, Benny has it, and it is written in a notebook with a rubber band around it.
The smallest room, the emptiest pocket and the busiest door on June 12 Street. Nobody can explain it, least of all Benny.
No room, no rent, no surname, no home town. A Rasta preacher with locks to his back who sings to the sea and sleeps wherever a door is open.
A fifth-year medical student who leaves for LUTH at dawn and talks to AJ from her window at night, while her father keeps the door shut.
A retired Hausa soldier from Kano who traded the parade ground for a snack counter, and sees everyone who passes the gate.
AJ Cities