The Presence of Absence

Part One: The Presence of Absence

Candle flickers out. Khartoum 2018
The boy is sleeping on a plush handmade cotton mattress at the foot of the American box spring bed in that blue room. The toddler sleeps in a walnut wood crib which is standing off-center so as not to be directly under the antique ceiling fan that may or may not be on its last hinges. I lay awake listening to their breathing, looking at the places where the rain stains used to be, under a new layer of paint. I have lost her. The girl who used to live in this room. The gecko calls, with a guttural clicking sound I can never forget. My eyes dart to the windows and I trace the outlines waiting to see it. The neon light of the courtyard downstairs spills into the blue room, and I catch a glimpse of movement. The gecko is upside down, below the zinc roof, looking in at us. I tell the gecko that  I can’t find her and he tells me to deepen my search. He scuttles away to take in the brilliance of that downtown night sky, luminous with stars despite the city life. Electricity is so expensive here not many keep security lights on at this hour. She is not in this room tonight. I wonder if I can ask her to come back to me. I put on her clothes and look through her collections of William Blake, Samuel Beckett, Ahdaf Soueif and Jamal Mahjoub. I rummage through her artisanal silver trinkets and leave them out to show the children when the birds wake them at dawn with symphonic chatter.

Lights flicker on. Stockholm 2014
What I am not aware of is my body sitting in a pool of my own blood and traces of afterbirth, eating an open-faced cheese sandwich and sipping deliciously hot coffee. Baby is with his papa in NICU. I am told to finish the contents of the tray they brought me with a wooden flag of Sweden on it so that the midwife can take me over to visit. My mother, sitting with her Quran in the corner of the delivery room, asks if I will get to wash up. The nurse tells her there is no rush. Eat first, or we won’t let you go to the recovery room. My mother is placated by an offer of coffee and a sandwich also. Baby was so pale and so quiet, long with a  head full of hair. Baby found my breast instinctively on first contact with my chest despite his lengthy battle to arrive. After I finish washing down the last bit of bread with my coffee I feel suddenly queasy. I look down at my hands and they are covered in a dried film, from holding baby when he came to suckle. I cross my legs to push up and off the bed and become aware of the blood my body had been sitting in. The midwife who arrives smiling helps me to stand up, is shocked that I have not been helped with a warm washcloth or maternity underwear. I don’t know how long it takes to fix those oversights and finally settle into a wheelchair. In one of the neon lit pastel green corridors I panic. How can I hold baby my hands are still dirty. Don’t I have to be clean first. The midwife stops to dose my hands in disinfectant, laughing. Your bodily fluids, your baby. Nothing to be worried about, Mama. The shock of being referred to as Mama sears through my thoughts and I am blind temporarily. My memories resume only inside the NICU with Baby on my breast again. Then perhaps an hour later standing, barely stable in a hospital shower washing the burnt down house that is now my body.
This is the first marked moment of loss. I lost the girl I knew so well in the fire that was my pregnancy.

Part Two: The Presence of Absence

Lights flicker off. Khartoum 2012
The night after her 3agid, ears ringing after hours of blaring music and she is going over the reasons she told her husband of a few hours about why he can sleep in her room while she goes to sleep in the saloon with all the other overnight wedding guests lined up on traditional daybeds. The henna drawings on her arms and feet are transformative in their intricacy. She is a bride. The smoke of incense and tali7 surround her like an amniotic vial delivering her into a deeper metamorphic place. Identity rooted to nation, faith and clan. What she is not aware of is the change that lurks just beyond the reach of her imagination.

Candles flicker in the breeze. Khartoum 2010
Flowing through asanas into a shoulder stand. Strength, fluidity, stillness, breath. Coming down through a bridge and slowly into a seated position to grab the sarong on the floor by the musslaya and move over to offer the evening prayer. Four Rak3at. Tashahud. Du3a. Child’s pose. Into savasana. She moves with grace, breathes with purpose, belly filling on the inhale, exhaling deep: one, two, three, four, five, six. Ya Rabi ya 7alim, ya 3alim, ya raouf, ya 7akim. Body strong, mind present, skin supple, breath easy, glow.

What she is not aware of is transience. She has woven her sense of self into that ritual of worship. Self sewn into her skin. The body temple as identifier. The sacrifice is coming and she is not aware.

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ISSRAA ELKOGALI HÄGGSTRÖM is a night journey of the spirit. She is also a trained writer, filmmaker and mother of two. Today she works with producing culture, advancing her performance skills and the arduous task of making room for creativity. Her hip hop documentary (official selection IFFR and DIFF 2013) can be seen on BBC Arabic and vimeo. Swedish by way of Khartoum, London, Cairo and Washington DC. Her work has toured 14 countries in 10 years.