"I saw the woman who had given birth to Mike Tyson."
Down there on the cobbled streets of Paris 20th district, there seemed to be a voracious argument going on between a group of African ladies in some unknown dialect. The heat seemed to be turning frantic, and I wondered what events were about to unfold. Unable to contain my curiosity any longer, I reached over to the window sill and gently peeled back the curtain. As I looked down into the street, I saw the woman who had given birth to Mike Tyson. Her hair was tied up in a bright orange headscarf, and she wore traditional African garments that reached down to her enormous, bulging thighs. Behind her, she was dragging a battered trolley bag that seemed to contain all of her worldly belongings. As she plodded down the street, I looked to see who could possibly be the target of her frustration.
Contrary to what I had expected, there were NO other culprits. Angry African Lady was entirely alone, dragging along her trolley and shouting the odds at anyone who cared to pay her enough attention. The more she shouted, the more she made herself even more angry, and soon other neighbours were leaning out of their window to witness the commotion.
She pointed at windows, the road, at lamp posts, at dustbins; everything was guilty to her; they had all done her wrong. Lord knows what would have happened if she had come across a real person. Her anger was so acute, so frenzied; her gesticulating, so wild; her rampage, bitterly sincere.
Feeling quite terrified by what I’d seen, I hopped back into bed, and pondered on what a crazy world I lived in. It was several more minutes before her wails were drowned out by the ephemeral silence in the street she had vacated, and I drifted back to sleep. I remember thinking this would be my last experience of Angry African Lady and what a terrible experience it was.
The following night proved how mistaken one can be. At almost the exact hour, a little after midnight, Angry African Lady was back - this time with a vengeance. She overturned an empty dustbin. She threw a rotten tomato at someone’s window whilst wagging her finger at the startled resident whose apartment window she had just soiled. It was clear that her rage knew neither boundaries, nor sense. This whole rigmarole went on, night after night. And so it has been for months…
Now, however, a year later, Angry African Lady has became as much a feature of my evening routine, as brushing my teeth, or The Times online cryptic crossword. Some nights, she shows up a little earlier than usual, and that’s ok with me, ‘cause I can handle change. Other times she doesn’t arrive at all, and I wonder what has happened to her. Most disturbing of all, these are the nights that I can no longer get to sleep at all.
Angry African Lady has become such a fixture in my life, like my grandmother or my facebook account, that without her I wither into existential crisis. I lie awake in my bed waiting...pleading for the deranged screams of Angry African Lady because then, and only then, will it know it’s safe for me to let down my guard, switch off the light, and drift off into a deep, peaceful sleep.
