El Nassr street carried throngs of families. They knew one another’s names like they knew their own. Egypt’s streets had no secrets between them, only loud voices. Particularly, Om Sagda’s voice. The mother of two was a current event on the long street. Sometimes she was the main event. Sometimes she was everything.
Sunrise wouldn’t be announced by the light, but by Om Sagda’s voice from the fifth floor of an old building. Despite the building having a good foundation, her voice was strong enough to shake it. She was the Poseidon and her voice was the unstoppable waves.
Worry ran in her blood. She was intoxicated by it. All mothers had worry, but Om Sagda had another level of it; the highest level. She could be the source of a river with her loud voice. She could lead the waves through lands. She could spring to life plants and decaying flowers if her voice was placed under the ground.
She lived across from my building, so her yelling was a common guest in my house. I wouldn’t pour it some tea for it was always uninvited. I wouldn’t set any alarms because Om Sagda with her voice had this job that was never advertised.
Every day at 6 AM, she would wake me up like I were one of her two kids. The entire nation could be her kids if she yelled for a century, but now, now her voice was enough to live in our street. I could sometimes visualize it like a madman walking the street looking for answers. Her voice had one answer to it, and that was her children calling her back.
“Yes, mother.”
“Yes, mother, the school bus is near.”
“Yes, mother, I will stop playing and come up soon.”
Sometimes I said the yes, mother.
I felt embarrassed for her kids. Those two under-fifteens made me sympathize with their struggle. I remembered my mom’s calm voice as she woke me up for school. I remembered how she gently shook me to catch me from the world of dreams before a gas leak would consume my lungs. She was never worried, my mom. She was never Om Sagda. But she passed away, and now it was Om Sagda’s job to pull me away from the world of dreams.
I sympathized more with her son, Ahmed, than her daughter, Sagda, for he got most of the screaming. Maybe the people on our street wanted to give Sagda some role so she wouldn’t feel abandoned, so they added her name after Om, which was how we called mothers. Om, plus the name of one of their children. Usually the men, came together to form the title for mothers. I wondered if Om Sagda’s anxious voice was fueled by how her name was reduced to Om Sagda. I wondered if her real name would ever be announced during her yelling sessions.
No one called her Om Ahmed. Maybe because our street was filled with Om Ahmeds. Or maybe because Ahmed was the reason behind her yelling most of the time.
Ahmed was the one I wanted to hug. The kid wasn’t ten yet. He still had a life ahead of him, but it was a life filled with Om Sagda’s screaming.
When I thought of my late mother, I always remembered her calm voice. She never embraced me with screams, but rather with her arms. Om Sagda’s kids, for they sometimes felt like an entity, always drowned under her yelling.
Ahmed’s soccer skills weren’t that bad so he had his place reserved on the daily roster of the matches on our street, much to Om Sagda’s and my dismay because that meant she would yell at him to come up.
The calmness following the kids’ departure to school was the time I could finally breathe. My ears weren’t perked up waiting for Om Sagda. My muscles weren’t tense with worry that I would one day be the third kid; that I would pass Ahmed and become the most yelled-at.
In my third year on El Nassr, in my one-bedroom apartment, I started having Om Sagda in my dreams. It was worse than seeing the devil or meeting God. Her presence was suffocating; my bones felt like rocks.
I told my therapist. She made me feel like she was replacing the shadow of my mother. I never asked for this, just like Sagda and Ahmed never dreamed of meeting their mother through screams.
I scheduled my daily coffee to 6:30 AM, just as the kids’ bus passed down our street and away from Om Sagda. The lines connecting her kids to her would stretch wide and far till they reached the school. Such a bond could never be broken. I liked to believe that Sagda and Ahmed would replace the teacher’s frustrated loud voice with their mother’s screams. I would do the same when my boss yelled at us for missing a small thing.
When I sat down to drink my coffee, I would try to let go of the grasp Om Sgada had on me. I would try to stop the surrounding sounds from being covered by her voice. The calm music I turned on still had Om Sagda’s yelling hiding in between. If I focused then I would see her.
I did see her every day after drinking my coffee. I would stand in my small balcony and look across the street toward her own balcony. The first time I wanted to look at her balcony, I didn’t need any guidance. My ears made me guess what floor she was on.
There she was every day at 7 AM hanging up laundry. Did she leave a space on the ropes for her dead husband just like I left a space open in my heart for my mom? Another question without an answer even if I yelled it.
The figure of Om Sagda was one that I memorized. She always did her hijab in the same way even if the fabrics differed. Her hijabs felt loud with their several layers. The intoxicating worry drew lines on her face just like the one connecting her to her kids.
I could see it. I could see the worry in her when our eyes would meet during brief encounters.
The worry was like shadows that clouded her pupils. It had the same layers as her hijab. One nightmare was filled with her screams overwhelming me as I tried to swim through the shadows of worry in her eyes. Water would enter my mouth, and it always tasted bitter like death or like another scream was just around the corner. I swam as hard as I could every single time that nightmare sneaked into the world of my dreams. The sound of the continuous splashing never drowned out Om Sagda’s screams.
“Ahmedddddddddd,” she would yell with an endless d carrying the weight of her voice.
Sometimes my mind would replace Ahmed with my name.
As soon as I heard “Mohamedddddd” I would wake up and listen to Om Sagda. It was only then that I would realize that my mom was truly gone, for no arms were there to embrace me and steal me from the darkness.
I didn’t hate Om Sagda. Hate felt unsuitable. I did pity her. I would try to imagine my eyes filled with shadows of worry as well, and I would suffocate. My breathing would race to abandon my body, but my soul never reached the finish line. Om Sagda’s soul was probably hiding between her daily yells waiting for just the right wave of screaming to hold onto and depart this anxious being.
As the kids grew older, I thought that Om Sagda would stop being my uninvited guest, but her screams got louder. The shadows were now everywhere, even in my life while I was awake.
But I waited for the screams. I waited for them like Om Sagda was screaming for my pain and my loss. I could have put my headphones on before going to sleep. I could have changed homes. I could have filled out a noise complaint. The shadows weren’t permanent, but I feared being the one who announced their departure.
I let her screams carry me through the days as my body got used to them. The phrase “yes, mother” would leave my mouth before her kids had the chance to say it first.
I started saying it when I did anything around the house.
Yes, mother, I ate.
Yes, mother, I cleaned the house.
Yes, mother, I will buy groceries.
Yes, mother, I’m still alive.
The shadow of my own mother was fading to give way to that of Om Sagda. I looked at her face every day until the face of my mom was only found in pictures. My mind was empty and that was enough for Om Sagda to take charge.
I became addicted to her screams. I became addicted to her presence.
Then, then the yelling stopped.
I woke up at 10 that morning and ended up being too late to go to work. My feet led me to the balcony and I stared as hard as I could at Om Sagda’s balcony as if this could conjure her. I waited there for one hour. One hour of silence or of my anticipation of Om Sagda’s voice.
The following days went in silence, and I had to buy a new alarm, for the previous employee was on leave. It took me weeks to be able to wake up to the melody of the alarm. I wished I recorded Om Sagda’s voice. I wished I was the source of her anger, that it would embrace me and let me drown in it.
“Maybe they went to a new house,” I would tell myself as an explanation for the disappearance of the only thing that I had left. I repeated that explanation like it was the only truth I might accept.
I never accepted it.
It had been three months since the last time I heard Om Sagda’s screams. I marked those empty days on the calendar hoping for the day where the red X mark didn’t exist, announcing Om Sagda’s return.
I was truly alone then. I had no one to talk to, and my walls didn’t yell at me when I thought of speaking aloud. Silence was more suffocating than worry.
The next day, I headed to the nearby spice store with one thing on my mind: find out what happened to Om Sagda.
The woman there, I forgot what name came after her Om, waited patiently for me to say what I wanted. She was the source of gossip on our street. I would see her shop from my balcony as she whispered and snickered with other women in the street like the days of being bullies never left them as they aged.
I ordered black pepper despite not needing it, and as I was supposed to head back, I gathered the courage to ask “Where is Om Sagda? I haven’t heard, I mean I haven’t seen her for a couple of months now. Did they move out?”
With every new word leaving my mouth, the seller looked at me like I was crazy.
“Didn’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“Om Sagda died a couple of months ago. Her two kids are on their own now. Poor babies. No one left of their family. No one at all. Did you know that Om Ali in the floor below you sends them food daily? A kind woman, isn’t she? What’s your name? I don’t see you a lot.”
I muttered my thanks and left without answering, but the way back to my house felt like I was walking on a tight rope. A tight rope that went on and on and on and on. The door to my building was dancing in front of my eyes as my ears were filled with reminders of Om Sagda’s screams.
“Mohamedddd.” I would have done anything to hear her yell my name once. I would have done anything if it meant that her voice would embrace me.
The apartment felt empty more than usual. It felt like a grave that was waiting for me to drop dead. And if I died, would someone yell for me?
The shadows danced as I wished I could see the shadows in Om Sagda’s eyes one last time.
I spent that day sitting in my plastic chair on the balcony with my eyes fixed on Om Sagda’s balcony. The only difference this time was that I knew she was dead.
I kept glancing at my watch waiting for 6 AM. Maybe when I see her balcony door close then I would realize that she was truly gone.
5:55. Nothing.
5:56. Nothing.
5:57. Nothing.
5:58. Nothing.
5:59; I stopped counting when I saw the balcony door open slowly.
My breath stopped as I waited for the door to unveil who stood behind it.
Sagda stepped out.
It was only then that I saw Ahmed in the street waiting for his school bus. If Om Sagda was there, she would have screamed his name because she wouldn’t have seen him standing under a tree.
I looked up at Sagda to observe her silence. I needed that final look. I needed to believe that the shadows of worry Om Sagda carried and filled me with were finally gone. Just then, Sagda opened her mouth and screamed.
“Ahmeddddddddd.” E
