My name is Nabila, I am alive, and I live in a cemetery at the foot of the Mokattam Hills in the east of Cairo. When I was twelve, my mother tried to force me to become an old man's fourth wife, in exchange for some livestock. I remember asking Mother which livestock. She told me to be quiet. I asked if the livestock would take up my room. She told me to be quiet. I asked if I could still go to school. She slapped me.
     I hid in my closet for four hours. My closet had thirteen hangers, fixed by eight screws, three of which were trying to escape the wall in silence. I wondered if the livestock was Egypt's Cow Goddess Hathor. The moldings were crying black moss. They cried everywhere in the house. Their tears smelled like damp, wet socks, and leaves ready to be eaten by worms. Sometimes I would get close and inhale the black moss, because I knew it would make me sneeze. I liked the sensation right after the sneeze.
     Sneezing is three finger flicks. The snap of a finger can reach accelerations upwards of 1.6 × 10^6 deg/s². I heard someone at school say finger flicking helps grip strength. I asked Mother if I could do track at school because I liked running. She told me girls don't run. I said it could help me avoid the men on the road from last time. She told me I shouldn't have walked home alone. I said I would even wear curtains on my face, even if the fabric makes me itchy. She slapped me. She said men don't like women who are smart-mouth. Smart-mouths are annoying. Smart-mouths get acid on their faces. Smart-mouths get no dowry.
     I hid in my closet for five hours. My closet had thirteen hangers, fixed by eight screws, four of which were trying to escape the wall in silence. Mother broke the silence by opening the closet door. She told me I was the black sheep. She told me that sheep were more respected than me because they served the community with their meat. She told me that my meat was rotten.
     She bombarded me with a volcanic eruption of uneven intensity, pitch, and tone. She was louder than someone chewing, louder than vacuum cleaners, louder than heavy construction noises. I was humming an even sound to reestablish the balance. My closet had thirteen hangers, fixed by eight screws, five of which were trying to escape the wall in silence.
     She raised her hand to slap me, but the room started shaking. Mother grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the house with her. The house collapsed in a sneeze. I didn't have time to count the hangers and screws and that really upset me. I cried. Mother said she knows a place where they can't touch us. I said who. She said the government. I said why. She said because they bulldoze mosques, schools, and people's homes. Their end will be black. I said like black moss. She said like black moss.
     Now I live in a small burial room next to kings, saints, writers, caliphs, and artists. Mother says they were laid to rest. I am laying bricks in the form of the Giza Pyramids. Mother says the dead are quiet because they are fully decomposed. But quiet stops at night. The noise slowly recomposes. Loud men are trying to enter our mausoleum. Mother tries to hide me. The Goddess Hathor didn't guide their souls into the next realm. Scarab beetles are invading the Giza Pyramids. Mother is crying like the moldings were crying black moss. I have no grip strength. Mother always tries to delay demolitions, but in the end, they always come back when nobody is watching and destroy anyway. Sometimes I feel Mother and I are both dead, but we are still not buried.

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The story is narrated by Nabila, a girl living with autism in Cairo, whose voice navigates the intersections of obsessive pattern-making, sensory intensity, and social constraint. Set against the realities of child marriage, state violence, and displacement in Egypt, the narrative explores how a neurodivergent consciousness refracts trauma into ritualized perception. Counting, repetition, and mythological overlays become not only coping mechanisms but also a language of resistance within cultural, familial, and political confinement. What emerges is a meditation on survival at the edge of silence and sound, rubble and resurrection. The piece seeks to give shape to an interiority often erased in both global literature and Middle Eastern narratives, where female and neurodivergent perspectives are seldom centered. Through Nabila's voice, the story insists on the validity of sensory logic, on the poetry embedded in what is often pathologized, and on the possibility of creating meaning amid systemic erasure.