It took our second encounter for me to guess, and the third to be sure, but his hair was alive. It breathed its own breath, as sentient beings do, and revealed its fearlessness in the wild swings it took, the delicately combed dreadlocks, the coiffed and oily Afro, the knotted braids that cascaded past his neck like a waterfall, stopping just short of the tip of his spine, from which wings would sprout if man could fly.