Written by: Hannah Tayla
It’s an ungodly hour. The next-door neighbours’ children have become hellish again. Every time it feels like the pitch of their screams has finally reached a crescendo, the next scream supersedes it, as if each child is in competition with the other to hear who can get to the scream- finish- line first on the most dramatic note. In bed I lie, with holes in my skull and shaking hands pressed against my ears, willingly myself to fall into sweet, childless, dreams.
It’s 3:30pm. The uncle behind us sits with his back to the concrete wall and smokes his weed, each time forcing us to close our windows so that that smell doesn’t drench us of the dignity and holiness provided by sunlight washing powder and Protex body soap.
6pm. I hear the screeching rants of the old married couple in the house opposite us, each throwing their supply of verbal grenades at each other, thick with Afrikaans cursing and vulgar virtuosity.
It’s 6:30pm. The lady behind us to the right is cooking a mutton curry and the aroma of spices and onions sizzling in oil and garlic flies on the air like an invisible aerodynamic merchant ship, making saliva swirl and daring the neighbours to jump over the walls with plates, and taste and see that the curry is indeed very good.
Its 8:30am on a Saturday morning. The other next-door neighbours’ eldest son drags his old and rickety skeleton of a car out of the garage, for hours hitting and drumming on its exterior as if it were some sort of metal instrument.
It’s 1: 15pm on a Sunday afternoon. The neighbours behind us, to the left, redeem themselves of the cacophony they make during the week to the god of renovations to whom they, unknowingly, signed a financial and emotional contract to six years ago when they bought the dilapidated house. To herald the nap of the religious Sunday afternoon nappers, they play 70s and 80s music tracks, and sometimes gqom, on their speakers so loud that the entire street can hear their redemptive act.
Its 4pm. Everyday. I am singing, at the top of my lungs, a Mariah Carey song in hope that one day my undiscovered and hopelessly untalented inner musician will exhaust itself and obsess over a different and more suitable pastime.
At every hour of every day, we weave ourselves deeper into the fabric of unspoken communal intimacy by the noise we make and the smells we create.
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