I like barbers. Theirs is an honest and honorable trade. My barber, like most of her brethren around the world, knows just about everybody in town. I like to hang out in her shop just to see who might walk in the door. The talk tends to center on guns and hunting, and I have long hoped to get her to reveal, in an unguarded moment, one of her secret fishing or elk hunting spots. This will probably not happen any time soon.

In Aleppo, Syria, I used to frequent a barber shop in the Armenian quarter. The barber — Garbis — was quite loquacious. He would tell me long shaggy dog tales in Arabic, while the old men who congregated at his shop would add commentary (which I didn’t understand) in Armenian. We never discussed how he intended to cut my hair. I simply sat down in the chair and he snipped away with tiny, meticulous movements.

During one of my haircuts he was in the middle of a long political allegory (it’s not safe to talk politics in Syria except by means of allegory or circumlocution) when a man resembling Groucho Marx burst in the door. He spoke to the barber excitedly in Armenian, then ran out. Garbis seemed annoyed to have his story interrupted, but translated the exchange into Arabic. “That is my cousin,” he said. “He says he has invented a perfect mousetrap. He would like to show it to you.”

A few minutes later Groucho returned with an elaborate wooden contraption, complete with pulley-operated gates.

“For ten mouse,” he said, in English. “You sell in America?”

When I lived in Sarajevo, the highlight of my life was my weekly shave. My barber was an elderly gentleman in Bascarsija, the old Ottoman part of the city. For long stretches of time the city was without running water, and residents had to brave snipers to fetch it. With water at a premium, my barber, Sujo, would make a single teacup full last for a shave. Like all barber shops around the world, Sujo’s place was a social nexus. But unlike most barbers, he didn’t talk much.

One afternoon I made my way to his shop, needing a shave in the worst way. The streets were ominously deserted, which meant there must have been shelling in the neighborhood. On this day there were no old men smoking and gossiping in Sujo’s shop. He sat alone, reading a six-month old Croatian newspaper. When I walked in he stropped his razor, carefully lathered my face, and set to work.

I didn’t know Sujo spoke any English, but half way through the shave he stopped, put down the razor, put his hand to his ear, and said, in a perfect imitation of a Hollywood western: “It’s quiet. Too quiet.”

Then he burst out in a string of guffaws, laughing so hard he spilled the precious teacup of water, laughing so hard the tears rolled down his unshaven cheeks.

Clay Scott is a veteran, well-traveled reporter who lives in

Helena.