Someone somewhere intends to deliver something large, heavy, hollow, bulky and metallic in the early hours of tomorrow morning. The agents of this delivery are not concerned with your comfort. That you may be awoken from your slumber is of no importance to the driver and helpers whose mission is urgent and remuneration is expected to be cash-in-hand, no names, no pack drill, no questions asked. Besides, why should you be horizontal and unconscious in air-conditioned comfort while honest people are out there earning a fair night's wage? Indeed, the engine of a vehicle of considerable engine capacity whined up and down four octaves while an enormous metal object was unloaded. Shouts of warning and direction were punctuated the plaintive tones of the engine. A clang and a bang were followed by another clang and a bang. The engine ticked over, as if relieved that the nocturnal labour was ended. Maybe the driver and assistants were looking forward to a nice little burn-up on the Ismailiyya road as far as Salam City. A few minutes elapsed as I tried to picture in my mind the events a few yards down our street. Suddenly, the idling of the engine was interrupted by something that sounded like the blade of a bulldozer forcing something unyielding across an empty plot of land. The mysterious implement fell silent and was, one assumed, motionless. I looked at my alarm clock, whose face with the legend ‘Love' emblazoned in lime-green letters, proclaimed that it was four of the clock. I was due to be up and functioning on android mode in less than one hour, so I spent the next 45 minutes pondering the phenomena outside, wondering what on earth could have been happening in a suburban street. Perhaps aliens were landing in shipping containers and would be waiting to emerge to take Personkind by surprise, thus rendering all remakes of ‘War of the Worlds' – including the one starring Tom Cruise – irrelevant. You know those thrillers in which the main character swears that he and the community will be victims of a seemingly wacky conspiracy theory, or that he has been abducted by aliens who gave him a sneak preview of their invasion plans of planet Earth and the destruction of human civilisation as we never bothered to know it. Never mind the minor character who gets around on roller skates, wears a pinwheel hat, shoves cucumbers through letterboxes and shouts, ‘The Martians are coming!' (He was a red herring.) No-one believes him until a little green man skulks into the broom cupboard. A similarly diminutive green being appears on a chat show complaining that Hollywood has given aliens a bad press. Our hero never yells to his neighbours, ‘I told you so!' Rather, he forgives them for their gruff incredulity and patronising as he desperately tried to persuade them that something was seriously wrong and that he was the only one in possession of such knowledge. I felt like that hero. Everyone I asked this morning about the clanging and the banging of the early hours shrugged their shoulders, claiming they heard nothing. Nor were there any large metallic objects lying around looking lonely. Perhaps the aliens had crawled out, eaten their container that was made a pseudo-metal consisting of a recipe of herbs and spices known only to a retired military person on Planet Zog, where minds immeasurably superior to our own have been scrutinising man's affairs in Heliopolis...but I digress. As for the abovementioned empty plot, fourteen months ago a seven-story apartment block stood empty, ready for demolition. However, the wrecking balls did not come. Half a dozen gangers with cold chisels, hammers and crowbars did. And it was thud-thud-thud for what seemed like 48 hours a day for three weeks. They were meticulous. The steel rods, albeit bent and twisted, were separated from the broken concrete. Balcony fittings were stacked against a wall adjoining the property next door. Worse, however, was to come. A bulldozer was brought in to raze the remaining ground and first floors. The operator and his colleagues were working to a deadline and possibly a generous bonus if they finished before the end of Ramadan festival, ergo, grind, grind, grind, whine, whine, whine, thunk, thunk, thunk, clang, clang, clang without so much as a notice saying something on the lines of ‘Ibn Sawt Kabeer Demolition, we apologise for the inconvenience (har-har!)' The above are mere observations. Noise is an inevitable consequence of living in Africa's largest and greatest city. And human beings are amazingly adaptable as they can tolerate noise levels that would initially, for some, bring tears to the eyes. Silence is rare, even when there are no deliveries of large metal objects that might be extra-terrestrial Trojan horses. There is always a motorised vehicle tearing along our street outside. As for the motorcyclist whose machine seems without a silencer (Ha! There's a joke! Internal combustion engine with silencer!), it is so loud it sets off car alarms. And who on earth ever comes down to see to their whip-whip-wee-aw-wee-aw-ooooooooh-erk-erk-erk!of their blessed alarm system? Who in heaven's name would want to nick a vehicle with such a naff alarm? In the meantime, could you cope with silence? I mean, real silence that is so loud you wonder where the rest of the human race has gone. Perhaps all those aliens that had been hiding in mysteriously delivered containers have taken over the Earth after all, and they missed you. Indeed, noise is reassuring, especially after a bad dream. The racket of late night streets reminds you that life outside the subconscious is sometimes more bearable and less fraught with speculation about the future.
