The Famished Road

by Ben Okri

  Evening fell and more people poured in from all over the place. Boxers turned up in their training shorts, with their boxing gloves on, with towels round their necks. Men with guns and rounds of ammunition also turned up. They were soldiers and policemen, some of them. They strolled proudly into the gathering and chatted with the prostitutes. They, too, had heard of Dad’s feat. They were all ex-ghetto men, who wore their wretched pasts proudly. They kept asking for Dad, but he was nowhere to be found. He wasn’t in the room, along the passage, in the toilet, or at the compound-front.

  Then as we were looking for Dad we saw a procession of beggars coming down the road. They were led by a hypnotically beautiful young girl. There were about seven or eight of them. Some of the beggars had legs that were limp and pliable as rubber. Some had twisted necks. Others had both feet behind their heads. One of them had one eye much higher up on his face than the other. Another seemed to have three eyes, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a wound like a socket with an eye missing. One was almost completely blind and could see only through pupils so scrambled up and confusing that they seemed like mashed egg yolk. It was when the girl got closer that we saw she was blind in one eye. All the beggars trailed along the ground, in filthy clothes, each with sticks and pads of cloth beneath the joints of limbs that scraped on the rough earth. Dust rose with their advance. Then to our puzzlement the beggars, looking up with the bright faces of arrivants, turned into our compound-front. The girl arranged them into a semi-circle. Then I saw that the procession of beggars were a family. The most deformed was the father. He seemed to have all their deformities. As the line went towards the youngest each member seemed to have a peculiar variation of a particular deformity. It ended with the clarity of the little girl’s blind eye. I couldn’t stop looking at the girl. She was extremely beautiful, like a flower whose flaw is its luminous perfection. She was also curiously familiar, like the distant music heard on those afternoons when all the world is resolved into a pure dream, a music without a location, the music of one’s mood and spirit, distilled by a secret affinity. I went over to the beggars and asked who they were.

  ‘We are from a distant place,’ said the girl, ‘and we heard that a famous boxer was throwing a party for people who are hungry. We have always been hungry and it took us a whole day of travelling to get here.’

  I immediately renewed my search for Dad. I found him in the room, surrounded by boxers, all of whom wanted to try their new techniques on him. Dad was in a frantic state. The room was overcrowded. People were screaming in terror at the spaces being crushed about them. The clothes-line had been pulled down and our clothes lay scattered on the floor and trampled on by mud-covered shoes. The window had been splintered open by one of the boxers who was practising a southpaw punch. The bed was in complete disarray with children jumping about on it. Our cupboard had been invaded by strangers who were helping themselves to our food. There was nowhere to move in the room. In a corner one of the boxers relentlessly punched the wall with his bare fists. Mum sat where all the clothes had fallen. She had a frightened expression on her face. I couldn’t reach either Mum or Dad. As I fought through it I became conscious that the crowd was actively preventing my entry. I was completely encompassed by witches and wizards. One of them smiled at me and revealed her dazzling white teeth. A tall witch looked down at me. She was very pretty indeed and had an almost royal bearing. Then she got out a pair of glasses and put them on. Her eyes looked monstrous. She laughed. She put her hand on my shoulder. It brushed against my face. Her hand was so cold in that heated place that I came close to fainting with shock. The witches and wizards closed in on me. I felt myself suffocating. Their smells were so sweet, so without sweat, it made me ill. The one with the swollen eye brought out a black sack. I screamed. When I stopped screaming they weren’t around me any more. I found myself surrounded instead by thugs. One of them slapped my head.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he said.

  I made a new effort to get to Dad. I called to him. At the other side of the room I could hear him telling everyone to leave, that the party would be held at the housefront. No one listened. He spoke louder and said he wouldn’t serve any drinks or food if people didn’t leave the room. Gradually they pushed their way out. They were rowdy in the passage, muttering their disappointments. Only Madame Koto, some of the prostitutes, Ade and his family, and the blind old man remained.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Dad.

  ‘You invited them,’ Mum said. ‘Why are you asking us?’

  ‘I didn’t invite the whole planet!’ Dad said.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Madame Koto asked.

  ‘Not enough drinks, plates, chicken, chairs.’

  ‘What do you have?’ said the blind old man.

  ‘Too many people.’

  I went up to Dad and told him that some beggars had come to see him. I told him they’d been travelling for a whole day and were hungry.

  ‘You mean beggars came to see me, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And they travelled for seven days?’

  ‘One day.’

  ‘And they are outside?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come and show them to me,’ Dad said, staggering.

  Then I realised he was very drunk. We left the room. Outside, it was crowded. Dad mingled with the soldiers, his fellow load-carriers, cart-pullers, and boxers. He became very exuberant and talked about political miracles. By the time we got to the housefront, I had lost him. A group of thugs descended on him and they got very animated about some issue. I went over to the beggars. The old man began to sing. The girl stared at me with her sad hungry eye. All around there was chaos. People were struggling for the folding chairs. Boxers began sparring. Witches and herbalists converged and heated arguments grew from their conflicting philosophies. They had furious rows about the superiorities of their powers and their way, the values of their accomplishments, the extent of their influence in the visible and invisible worlds. One of the herbalists brought out a red pouch, waved it about, and threw it on the ground. A cloud of green smoke rose in the air and hung over the gathering. Another herbalist brought out a bundle wrapped in silver foil, screamed incantations, and threw the bundle in the air. The green cloud dispersed. The soldiers crowded the prostitutes. Madame Koto came out of the room and ordered one of her women to call her driver, who had been seen driving up and down the place, terrifying women, drunkenly threatening people who crossed the street, blasting his horn, and shouting insults at those who moved too slowly. The thugs crowded Madame Koto and sang her praises. Dad got on to the cement platform and attempted to make a speech. He was very drunk and he weaved about, a bottle in his hand.

  ‘There is food for everybody!’ he shouted. ‘There are drinks for everybody! Madame Koto has made a generous contribution.’

  Silence fell gradually over the noisy celebrants.

  ‘Today there will be a miracle!’ he announced again.

  The crowd roared with anticipation.

  ‘I am going to divide one chicken so that everyone will have their share,’ he said, and left the platform.

  The noise started up. Shortly afterwards Mum and Ade’s mother came out and distributed small chicken pieces to the crowd. People complained. Paper cups with small quantities of beer were also passed around. The thugs grumbled that the quantity was an insult to their saliva. Arguments started up. Disagreements flared in the bad-tempered reception of the food and drink. Shop-owners around mingled in the crowd and sold bottled beer and ogogoro. The soldiers and thugs drank a great deal. Dad appeared amongst the beggars. I saw him give them a whole chicken. There was a flash. The beggars fell on the food, rushed it, dismembered the chicken, and ate like famished beasts. Then Dad, standing proudly amongst them, his eyes big, his lips swollen, a bottle in one hand, said:

  ‘These are members of my party. This is my world constituency, the beginning of my road. Watch them. One day we will remember their hunger when
we are as hungry as they are. These people are our destiny!’

  No one listened to him. He went on with his political declaration, untroubled by the fact that no one listened. He criticised the people of the ghetto for not taking care of their environment, for their lazy attitude towards the world, for their almost inhuman delight in their own poverty. He urged them to lift themselves up by their thoughts.

  ‘THINK DIFFERENTLY,’ he shouted, ‘AND YOU WILL CHANGE THE WORLD.’

  No one heard him.

  ‘REMEMBER HOW FREE YOU ARE,’ he bellowed, ‘AND YOU WILL TRANSFORM YOUR HUNGER INTO POWER!’

  One of the soldiers burst out laughing. Dad screamed at the soldiers for carrying guns, for always having weapons, and for their arrogance. Then he launched an attack on all the thugs who went around terrorising people. He abused the government, he denounced both political parties for poisoning the minds of the people. But he reserved his most furious assault for the people of the nation. He blamed them for not thinking for themselves, he lashed out at their sheep-like philosophy, their tribal mentality, their swallowing of lies, their tolerance of tyranny, their eternal silence in the face of suffering. He complained bitterly that people in the world refused to learn how to see properly and think clearly. He swore that days of fire and flood were coming when soldiers and politicians would drown in their own lies.

  ‘He has gone completely mad!’ someone said.

  ‘No more political speeches!’ someone else cried.

  ‘Give us food!’

  ‘Give us wine!’

  ‘Give us music!’

  ‘Keep the politics for yourself!’

  Dad’s arms flailed. He attempted to answer his hecklers, but the voices crying out for drinks, the confusion and the arguments, the fury of drunken women and noise of the soldiers among the prostitutes, drowned out his speech.

  ‘Music!’

  ‘Food!’

  ‘Wine!’

  Dad was confused. At that moment the blind old man, vaguely resembling a centaur, struck up on his accordion, and altered the mood of the entire party. Music, like the awful sound of wild beasts gnashing and grinding their teeth in the forests, poured from the pleats of his instrument. He played with great abandon, unleashing such discordant notes on the air that it wasn’t long before a herbalist, hand wrapped in a black pouch, slapped one of the wizards. Pandemonium broke over the party, orchestrated by the soaring cruelty of the accordion’s resonant ugliness. A woman screamed. A soldier accidentally fired a shot in the air. The wizard who had been slapped whirled round and round on one spot, arms outstretched, eyes wide open. A witch slapped the herbalist, whose face turned blue and then red where he had been slapped. He began to wail. The beating of mighty wings sounded over our heads. Shadows descended on us. Darkness came on silent wings, filling out the empty spaces. I saw one of the witches struggling with her garment. Her eyes turned blue. Her fingers became claws. Her face became wonderfully pretty. A chair was hurled, which landed on the thugs. The beggars attacked the soldiers. The tramps pounced on the prostitutes. A flash blinded me. I heard the blast of the car horn, piercing the night like a forlorn and angry cry. Out of the incandescent flash, human forms materialised in the darkness. Someone caught me as I fell. And when my eyes cleared I saw people fighting, chairs hurling themselves in perfect parabolas through the air, members of the political parties pouncing on one another. Bodies tumbled in bizarre entanglements, fists connected with faces, a woman scratched a man’s eyes, one of the witches had fastened on to the back of a soldier and the soldier howled as if a crude pair of claws had been dug into his soul. Dad vainly tried to restore order, while the boxers and thugs blinded one another with punches.

  Bottles broke on heads in the darkness. Yellow birds, like the leaves of fertile trees, scattered amongst us. Another flash startled me. And it was only when Madame Koto’s car shone its garish headlights on us that I noticed the new silent presence of the photographer. And before I could shout him a greeting I became aware that something had gone wrong with the nerves of the world. We heard the whirring engine, heard the possessed cry of the driver, and saw the two arc lights of the car intently bounding towards us, pressing on, growing brighter, flooding us with confusion. Several screams rose at once. There was a moment during which I saw the illuminated face of Madame Koto’s driver. He looked thoroughly drunk, his eyes were barely open, his neck was all tight with tendons, and sweat like melting wax poured down his brow. Then the car swerved. Panic showed on the driver’s face as he seemed to wake up suddenly, and in his awakening he lost control. People fled, disorientated by the yellow birds. In the arc of lights I saw the forms of people leaping into the air, leaping, some of them, into invisibility; leaping, others, into new forms. Finally, the car cut through the crowd, and knocked Ade and one of the beggars sideways. Then the car smashed into the cement platform, into the wall of the compound, and its lights went dead. The engine roared, the wheels turned, churning up the soil. After the tide of shattering glass there was a long moment of silence.

  Then the real confusion began. Wailing rose in the dark. Another shot was fired into the air. Dad, who didn’t seem to have registered what was happening, launched into another speech, pouring scorn on all politicians who deliberately keep their people illiterate. I heard someone fall on the blind old man’s accordion. People fought in the darkness everywhere. Ade began crying. Abuse fell in torrents, voices cursed Madame Koto and her doomed ambition, and in the car we heard the trapped driver screaming. The compound women fetched lanterns. The men managed to wrench open the mangled car door and bring out the twisted form of the driver. He had blood all over him. His chest had a weird gash as if he’d been shot there. Broken glass, like the wild spikes of certain plants, had lodged itself in his face. Shards of glass were everywhere, in his wounds, mingled with his blood and scattered on the seats. There was a long splinter in one of his eyes. Wailing and kicking, he was like a man who had woken into a nightmare. Green pus and all the fluids of sight and blood, poured down the sides of his face like a burst egg. They carried him and stretched him out on the cement platform. One of the herbalists, howling the secret names of arcane deities, plucked out the glass from his eye and the other herbalists prepared potions to staunch the bleeding and the flow of eye fluids. Not far from them Ade, who had been struck in the hip and had landed on his arm and wrenched it, beat and wailed on the ground. His father held him down and his mother spoke words into his ears, which made him wail louder. A witch pulled at his legs and a herbalist was twisting his bad arm. His father shouted that his son should be left alone. Behind them, the thugs of both parties fought on the mud, fought in the swamp, fought like giants in old legends. Wood broke on skulls. Chairs flew through the air. The family of beggars, led by the beautiful one-eyed girl, had begun their departure. They filed out, the girl in front. She kept looking back. She had no expression or judgement on her face. And behind her – hobbling and crawling on the earth, each with their unique deformities, twisted legs behind their necks, soft legs uselessly trailing on the ground, heads big and strange with the agony of survival – were the rest of the family of beggars. I wanted to follow them on their journeys, to be with the beautiful girl who had refined all their deformities into a single functioning eye, whose face would pursue me in dreams and loves and music.

  But Mum screaming in the crowd, Dad who was caught in a barrage of accusations, Madame Koto who was surrounded by enemy thugs, and Ade who wept bitterly on the ground, held me back and kept me rooted. I watched the beggars leave, and one aspect of my destiny left with them. And as they went I heard the wind rush, laden with all our sorrows, over the branches of the trees. The wind circled our heads. I saw the forms of angels in the dark sky. The yellow birds in our midst, startled by the new horrors of the smashed car, and by the aroma of blood, beat their wings and took off into that night of lamentation. And then, without any heavenly event, the rain began to fall. The rain fell on the devastated car, on Madame Koto who wept op
enly, on the thugs of both parties as they clashed and wounded themselves over obscure loyalties. The rain poured on the driver, who had now passed out, on the herbalists, who didn’t seem to know what to do, and on my friend, who had now become serene within his own pain. It was not the tragedy of the night that dispersed everyone. It was the rain. The thugs fought themselves right through different stratas of time. The soldiers left as a group, drunk on beer and the smell of cordite. The tramps, who had come because of the rumours of a feast, the people who had turned up to hail their new hero, the wretched and the curious, were all washed away by the gentle flood. Ade’s father left with his wives, carrying my friend away on his back. The chair-hire man stormed up and down the street, cursing Dad for the destruction of his chairs. The witches and wizards simply disappeared. I didn’t see them go. And the herbalists carried Madame Koto’s driver away for proper treatment. As the rain became heavier, the only people left at the housefront were Dad, who was distracted and drunk; Madame Koto, whose wig gyrated in a swirling puddle and who sat on the ground covered in mud; and Mum, who stood beside the car, blood and rain-water flowing round her feet. The blind old man was led home. His mangled accordion dangled at his side, as if it were an instrument that had been destroyed by its own bad music. Immobile and obscene, the car stayed smashed against the cement wall. Nothing could be done about it for the night.

  The chair-hire man pounced on Dad. And Dad had to knock him down twice. He rushed off and came back with a machete and he had to be held. Dad swore that he would pay for the chairs or repair them himself. Disconsolate and drunk with rage, the chair-hire man had to be led home by four men. Madame Koto’s prostitutes came and took her away, holding her by both arms, as if she might do something dangerous. In the distance she could be heard wailing, not about the driver, but about her car.