The Famished Road

by Ben Okri

  We all stared at him in silence.

  ‘Pour me something strong to drink!’ he demanded.

  Mum poured him some ogogoro. Dad finished it in a gulp. The herbalist made Dad drink some more of her herbal draught. Then she got him to bathe in specially treated water. When Dad got back she had prepared another potion for him. He drank it in one and surprised us all by the tenderness of his ravings. He sat on his chair and began to talk about how sweet the black rocks of the moon tasted, and how he drank of the golden elixir of the sun, and of the innumerable geniuses of the future that black people would produce, and of how he saw Mum dancing naked in the forest, her hair suspended by the brilliant cobwebs that the gods had spun, and how he saw me walking backwards into a yellow river, and of a beautiful young woman he saw who called him deep into the place where dead bodies grew red flowers from their mouths. And then just as suddenly as he began, he fell silent. His mouth stayed open. His eyes were shut.

  ‘This man has got a strong head,’ the herbalist said. ‘My medicine usually puts people to sleep before I count to three. Help me carry him to the bed.’

  We carried him. Dad snored. After a while the three women got up. Mum talked to them about money. A small argument ensued. Mum loosened the end of her wrapper, counted out some money, and paid the herbalist and the third woman. Madame Koto said to Mum:

  ‘We must continue that conversation of ours.’

  ‘My husband says no,’ Mum said.

  ‘Ask him again.’

  The three women left. It was the first time in three nights that we got any sleep.

  13

  WHEN DAD WOKE up the next morning he bustled with energy as if nothing had happened to him. His face was still swollen, his eyes almost invisible, his mouth puffed out, but he swore that he felt twenty years younger. He talked of grand schemes. He talked of buying enough corrugated zinc to roof the whole ghetto. He talked of buying enough cement to build houses for all the large families who lived in one room. He spoke of tarring all the roads and clearing away all the rubbish that had accumulated in the consciousness of our people. He dreamt of opening massive stores that would sell food cheaply to all the poor people. He got us worried when he began to dream of becoming a professional musician. And we started to think that Green Leopard had dislodged something in his brain when he talked of becoming a politician and bringing freedom and prosperity to the world and free education to the poor. And it was when he began to talk loudly about becoming the Head of State, seizing power from the white people that ruled us, and of all the good things he would do for the suffering people of the world, that we stopped paying too much attention to him.

  Then one morning he went from room to room, knocking on doors, waking people up, and asking them if they would vote for him. Most of them slammed their doors in his face. It was unfortunate that, to humour him, one or two people said that they would. It gave him greater encouragement. He went from compound to compound. He spoke to stall-owners and provision-sellers. He queried the groundnut hawkers and the urban shepherds and the amulet traders. He had long arguments with palm-wine tappers. He was seen in bars, at night, talking to drunkards, outlining his policies for government. A new idealism had eaten into his brain with the freshness of his recuperation. He made enquiries about the cost of zinc. He wondered aloud about how long and how wide the ghetto was. He made extensive, illiterate calculations about how much it would cost to build a house, to build schools, about the population of the poor, and how much money he would need to win an election.

  He astonished us with the crankiness of his thinking. He conjured an image of a country in which he was invisible ruler and in which everyone would have the highest education, in which everyone must learn music and mathematics and at least five world languages, and in which every citizen must be completely aware of what is going on in the world, be versed in tribal, national, continental, and international events, history, poetry, and science; in which wizards, witches, herbalists and priests of secret religions would be professors at universities; in which bus drivers, cart-pullers, and market women would be lecturers, while still retaining their normal jobs; in which children would be teachers and adults pupils; in which delegations from all the poor people would have regular meetings with the Head of State; and in which there would be elections when there were more than five spontaneous riots in any given year.

  Dad began to spend a lot of the money he had won in buying books. He couldn’t read but he bought them. I had to read them to him. He bought books on philosophy, politics, anatomy, science, astrology, Chinese medicine. He bought the Greek and Roman classics. He became fascinated by the Bible. Books on the cabbala intrigued him. He fell in love with the stories of the Arabian Nights. He listened with eyes shut to the strange words of classical Spanish love poetry and retellings of the lives of Shaka the Zulu and Sundiata the Great. He insisted that I read something to him all the time. He forced me to have a double education. In the evenings he would sit on his chair, feet on the table, cigarette in his mouth, eyes misty, paper and pencil beside him, and he would make me read out loud. Occasionally he would interrupt me for an explanation. Most of what I read made no sense to me. So he bought a large dictionary which must have cost him at least ten mighty punches from the fists of the Green Leopard. Dad’s bloated eye twitched when he opened it out on our table, releasing into the air of our room the aroma of words and freshwood. Like a battered but optimistic salesman, he said:

  ‘This book explains books.’

  His passion began to drive us slightly mad. The room became cluttered with books of all sizes, ugly books with pictureless covers and tiny letters as if intended only for the ants to read, large books that broke your back to carry them, books with such sloped lettering that they strained the neck, books which smelt like cobwebs and barks of medicinal trees and old sawdust after rain. Mum complained and sometimes made piles of the books and balanced her basins and cooking pots on them. Dad got furious at her disrespect and they argued bitterly. Then Dad began to contemplate the notion of compulsory military service for women. Then, looking at me, he included children. He saw himself both as invisible Head of State and as fitness master. In the mornings he took to drilling us. Whenever we annoyed him in any way he would wake us up very early and take us through exercise routines. Mum obliged at first, even when she was cooking. That was the first time I saw Mum burn an entire pot of soup. We went hungry that day. Mum became exempt from all drilling. Maybe that was when the future notion of joining the army first entered Dad’s head.

  He didn’t go to work for days. He went around, driven by the new lights that Green Leopard had knocked into his head. He spoke to the prostitutes at length. He persisted even when they abused him, even when people began to speculate loudly about his strange alliances. Then he talked of getting a delegation of Madame Koto’s prostitutes to go and protest to the Colonial Administration. For three days Mum refused to cook. And Dad, forced to eat beans cooked by hawkers, and brought down by a bout of stomach trouble, gave up the notion of the Council of Prostitutes. But he created a special place for them in his imagined country.

  It didn’t take Dad long to realise that he didn’t know what he was talking about. When he tried to organise the men of the area to start clearing up the rubbish along the streets, he was surprised at the ferocity of their insults.

  ‘Do you think we have nothing better to do?’ they said.

  Dad, never to be daunted, took to clearing the rubbish himself.

  ‘We have to clear garbage from our street before we clear it from our minds,’ he said, echoing something he had heard in one of the books.

  But when he had cleared a bit of rubbish, and dumped it in the swamp, people would litter the section he had cleaned up. In one week his efforts seemed to have resulted in there being more rubbish around. The street got worse. People began to think it more natural to dump their garbage on the street. Dad quarrelled with them. Those that might have voted for him, few as they were, publi
cly withdrew their support. After a while they began to see the possibilities of the swamp. Dad had shown them the way. When the street became too cluttered, they emptied their garbage into the swamp. When the rains fell, the swamp grew and covered half the street.

  But it was when people took to bringing their problems to him, when they asked him for money, for advice on everything from how to get their children admitted to hospital to how to get books for their youngsters, that Dad realised he couldn’t be a visible or an invisible Head of State just by himself.

  ‘A politician needs friends!’ he announced one morning.

  And he began to contemplate a new alliance with Madame Koto. He thought seriously of the importance of information and knowledge. First he dreamt of making me a spy. He wanted me to begin to revisit Madame Koto, to listen to the conversations in the bar, and to find out how to become a politician. We were amazed by Dad’s volte-face. Mum, at first, rebuked him, called him a hypocrite and a coward. But, when she had got rid of some of her vengeance, she openly supported the plan. She clearly had in mind the possibilities of making money cooking for the great rally.

  Dad’s next idea was that shortly after I had re-entered Madame Koto’s bar, he would begin his reappearance. His intention was to speak to her customers, to her party supporters and colleagues, learn something about how politics worked, and maybe even win some of them over to his philosophy.

  ‘You used to hate politics,’ Mum said. ‘What has happened, eh?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘So it took Green Leopard to start you thinking, eh?’

  ‘Where there’s politics, there’s money,’ Dad said.

  Mum was silent.

  ‘We can’t remain poor for ever.’

  ‘Yes, we can,’ I said.

  Dad gave me a vicious stare.

  ‘In this world,’ he said after a while, ‘this is what happens to you every day if you have nothing.’ He pointed to his swollen face, his puffed-out eyes, his bruised lips.

  He paused.

  ‘But while we are doing these things, spying on Madame Koto, finding out everything, I will continue as I was.’

  We didn’t understand him. The subtlety of his campaign eluded us. He didn’t explain. And then, slowly, we realised that Dad’s manner had changed. When he pointed at something he did so with authority, as if distinguishing objects in space for the first time. His eyes were still obscured, so we couldn’t see what new lights dazzled in them. But he was no longer like a demented boxer, spoiling for a challenge to prove himself. He was slowly taking on the manner of a soldier, a commander. Me and Mum and anyone that listened to him were his team. It was a small army; and because we were a captive audience, Dad had his secret stage from which to spring. He filled our lives with a strange excitement. At the time we didn’t know it.

  ‘You,’ he said, pointing at me, so that I felt myself distinguished from everything else in the universe, ‘you can do what you like, but you also do what I tell you. From today listen carefully to what I say, watch carefully what I do. This life is a joke that is not really a joke. Even mosquitoes know they have to survive.’

  14

  GRADUALLY WE SAW the subtlety of his campaign. We thought he had changed. He had. But to our chagrin instead of saving the money he had made from the fight, as Mum had suggested, he immediately let it be known that he was throwing a party. He invited the compound people, Madame Koto, the blind old man, Ade’s father, and the herbalist who had treated him. The word went round that the man who had conquered Green Leopard was having a party to celebrate his victory. Dad invited only a few people, but the whole world came.

  It was meant to be an intimate party. Dad ordered some drinks and got Mum to fry three chickens. While Mum fried the chicken, coughing from all the smoke, Dad kept appearing and walking off with his favourite pieces. A fourth chicken had to be ordered, which I fried, because Mum said she’d had enough of the smoke. Dad confined himself to a steady consumption of beer.

  ‘You used to drink ogogoro,’ Mum said.

  ‘Life gets better,’ replied Dad, opening another bottle.

  When I had finished with the frying and the burning of the chicken, I was sent to go and hire some chairs. When I came back with the chair-hire man, as we called him, Dad was outside, at the housefront, sweating. He had been training again. We piled the folding chairs in front of our room and Mum, grumbling, paid the chair-hire man, who asked if he too could attend the party.

  ‘It’s a small event,’ Mum said.

  ‘Good, so I can come with my wife.’

  Mum had no choice but to give her consent. At the housefront Dad had begun to stride up and down the street, bare-chested, his battered gloves on, calling himself the champion of the world, and inviting all challengers. He was quite drunk and he boasted with a fury I never knew he had. He said he could beat five Green Leopards. He said he could kill three lions with his bare hands. He announced that he could knock out ten trees and destroy a building with a single punch.

  ‘Isn’t that the man who humbled the Green Leopard?’ asked Mr Chair-Hire.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Excellent. I will come and enjoy his party. I will bring all my friends.’

  And he hurried off to attend to his business. Dad went on raving. He boasted with such ferocity, lashing out with such energy, and sweating so profusely, that his drunkenness soon left him and he had to keep going into the room to replenish his intoxication with bottles of beer. When he returned and resumed his furious boasting Madame Koto’s car drove past. The driver slowed down to listen to him.

  ‘As I was saying, I can destroy a house with only one punch! I can lift a car with one finger. If the car is coming at me I can put out one hand and the car will stop. I can build a road in one day!’

  The driver laughed.

  ‘I can punch a man so hard’, Dad shouted, ‘that all he will be able to do is laugh for the rest of his life.’

  The driver took the hint and moved on. When Dad had spent himself with training and shouting, and no one took up his challenge for a battle, he went in, had a bath, and prepared for the party.

  The evening came slowly. On the road I watched as the forest darkened. Flocks of white birds settled on the topmost branches of the trees. Madame Koto and her driver went past several times, carrying cartons of beer, boxes of paper plates and napkins. I watched also as the women of her bar helped with piling up hired chairs. Preparations for the great rally were underway. There was now a general fever of anticipation about the event. Those who swore they wouldn’t attend it had changed their minds. Its promise of spectacle, the numbers of popular musicians appearing, the hints that money would be distributed to the crowd, the talk even of witnessing free films, made the staunchest opponents waver.

  Ade’s father, his two wives, and Ade himself, were the first to turn up for Dad’s modest celebrations. We opened a few folding chairs for them and poured them drinks. Dad talked to Ade’s father about politics. Mum talked to the wives about opening shops and trading in the market. I talked with Ade about Dad wanting to be Head of State.

  Then the blind old man turned up with his accordion and his helper. After them came Madame Koto, her stomach massive, her face sad. And after her were the herbalist and her silent, distrustful acolytes. Behind them came the compound people, with their children. We ran out of chairs. The room was already crowded. People carried on turning up. We didn’t recognise many of them. Traders, lorry-drivers, clerks, stall-owners, hawkers, bicycle-repairers, the carpenter and his colleagues. The party spilled out of the room and into the passage. By this time the room was excruciatingly stuffy and hot. Flies buzzed over the drinks and settled on our sweating brows. Someone tried to open the window, applied too much force, and practically destroyed it. The carpenter promised to fix it for free. The blind old man supplied music from his vile accordion.

  Meanwhile, outside, the problem of those who turned up, uninvited, to the party grew worse. They clamoured and rai
sed a terrible din along the passage. When I felt I was going to suffocate inside, from the sweat and the old man’s music, I struggled to get out. I was shocked at the size of the crowd. Dad’s modest party had been overrun by tramps whose hair was the breeding ground of lice and sprouting rubbish, and who stank; by the wretched and the hungry and the homeless, all of whom had such defiant and intense eyes that I felt they would pounce on anyone who dared ask them to leave; by the deformed, whose legs looked like the letter K, whose mouths always seemed to be dribbling, whose rickety feet were turned somewhat backwards; by weary ghetto-dwellers, people I had seen sitting outside mechanics’ workshops dreaming about sea-journeys, people I had seen in the streets or at the markets, faces worn, eyes yellowish. There were handsome young men who brought their girlfriends, women of unknown histories, old men and women who looked like all the old people I had ever seen. There were people in black habits, with wizened faces, eyes bright like royal jaguars, chests and arms covered with spells and amulets. There were also people long rumoured to be witches and wizards. I could recognise them instantly by their anti-smells and by the way they didn’t want anyone to touch them. They always stayed on their own. I stared at one of the wizards intently. He stared back at me. Then he began coming towards me. When I turned to run, I heard a dog barking. When I looked again the wizard had gone and a dog stood in his place. It was a white dog with green eyes.

  ‘Kill that dog!’ I shouted.

  The dog had an almost human expression of bewilderment on its face. Someone threw a stone at it. I aimed a kick at its mouth. The dog fled, howling. Moments later I saw the wizard coming down the street. One of his eyes was swollen. He avoided me for the rest of the evening.

  Apart from the witches and the wizards, who brought an almost sweet smell of evil to the crowd, there were thugs from both of the main parties as well as some from the lesser organisations. They had come to see what Dad looked like and to pay their respects to the man who had tamed the legendary Green Leopard. The thugs struggled to get to our room, but the crowd was too dense along the passage. So they lolled around the compound-front, flexing their muscles, expanding their chests, and chatting up the women.