The Famished Road

by Ben Okri

  Dad was redreaming the world as he slept. He saw the scheme of things and didn’t like it. He saw the world in which black people always suffered and he didn’t like it. He saw a world in which human beings suffered so needlessly from Antipodes to Equator, and he didn’t like it either. He saw our people drowning in poverty, in famine, drought, in divisiveness and the blood of war. He saw our people always preyed upon by other powers, manipulated by the Western world, our history and achievements rigged out of existence. He saw the rich of our country, he saw the array of our politicians, how corruptible they were, how blind to our future, how greedy they became, how deaf to the cries of the people, how stony their hearts were, how short-sighted their dreams of power. He saw the divisions in our society, the lack of unity, he saw the widening pit between those who have and those who don’t, he saw it all very clearly. He saw the women of the country, of the markets and villages, always dogged by incubi and butterflies; he saw all the women, inheritors of the miracle of forbearance. He saw the hungry eating toads. He saw the wars in advance. He saw the economic boom in advance, saw its orgiastic squander, the suffering to follow, the exile to strange lands, the depleting of the people’s will for transformation. He saw the emergence of tyrants who always seem to be born from the extremities of crisis. He saw their long rule and the chaos when they are overthrown. He argued in three great courts of the spirit world, calling for justice on the planet. He argued with fantastic passion and his case was sound but he was alone. He didn’t see the mighty multitudes all over the world in their lonely solidarities, pleading cases in the supreme courts of spirits, pleading for justice and balance and beauty in the world, for an end to famishment and vile wars, destruction and greed. Dad was alone because he didn’t see the others, the multitudes of dream-pleaders, invading all the courts of the universe, while struggling in the real hard world created by the limitations in the minds of human beings. I followed Dad sometimes in his cyclical dreams. I followed him in his escape into the great realms and spaces, the landscapes of genius, the worlds before birth, the worlds of pure dreams and signs. I followed him sometimes in his brief reunion with his own primeval spirit and totem, in his fleeting contact with glimmerings of his true destiny. I saw angels erasing some of the memories of his journeys. He travelled far and his spirit ached and as he sweated in our room, dampening the bed, it poured with rain outside and the floods rearranged the houses of the road. The rains were sporadic. Frogs and bugs and diseases roamed in our lives and children died in the mornings when the politicians on their trucks announced the dawn of our new independent destiny. Dad saw the advancing forms of chaos and fought them alone in his sleep, his body swelling with rage, and the forms overcame him and washed over his life and when he tossed and turned Mum would light a mosquito coil, a stick of incense, and a candle, and pour some ogogoro for us and would pray at the door lintels. Mum prayed in three languages. She prayed to our ancestors, she prayed to God, and she prayed to the angel of all women. Mum prayed for simple things that made me weep while the darkness flowered in our room. She prayed for food. She prayed for Dad to get well. She prayed for a good place to live. She prayed for more life and for suffering to bear lovely fruits. And she prayed for me. For three days Mum prayed on borrowed wine. The spaces in our lives grew smaller. Mum grew leaner. Her voice began to disappear. Her eyes hid from the world, retreating into the depths of her head’s dreaming. Her bones became more visible. Her blouses began to slip from her shoulders. Waves of demented mist passed over her face. I would catch her staring at Dad’s empty three-legged chair. Her eyes seemed to be looking over the photographs of her life. Always the strained smile of the hunger beneath the brave pride. Always the rats and cockroaches eating away at our dreams. Always the world seems to find a method to prevent her working her way out from the corners. Always the landlords increasing our rents, the thugs telling us who to vote for, the rain leaking into our sleep. Sometimes her prayers would find Dad as he roamed the spheres that restored the balances of the earth. But Dad’s spirit was restless for justice and more life and genuine revolution and he kept ranging farther out into other worlds where the promises of power were made before birth. And Dad travelled the spheres, seeking the restoration of our race, and the restoration of all oppressed peoples. It was as I followed Dad that I learnt that other spheres of higher energies have their justice beyond our understanding. And our sphere too. The forces of balance are turning every day. The rain lashes the bloated and the weak, the powerful and the silenced. The wind exposes the hungry, the overfed, the ill, the dying, and those who feed on the unseen suffering of others. But the restorations are slow because our perception of time is long. Time and truth always come round; those who seem to hold sway and try to prevent the turning of justice only bring it quicker; and Dad wanted the turning now. He wanted justice now. He wanted truth now. He wanted world balance now. He raised the storms of demands in his dreams. He raised impenetrable questions. He kept asking: WHY? After eons he asked: WHAT MUST WE DO? And then he asked: HOW DO WE BRING IT ABOUT? Pressing on, he wanted to know: WHEN? Relentlessly, twisting and turning, he demanded: WHAT IS THE BEST WAY? And with a bit more serenity, not drawing back from the inevitable self-confrontation, he asked: WHAT IS THE FIRST STEP? His body grew. Flowers fell on our rooftop. My grandfather appeared to me briefly, waving me on. A child was born and didn’t get to its body. Was I being reborn in my father? In his journeys Dad found that all nations are children; it shocked him that ours too was an abiku nation, a spirit-child nation, one that keeps being reborn and after each birth come blood and betrayals, and the child of our will refuses to stay till we have made propitious sacrifice and displayed our serious intent to bear the weight of a unique destiny.

  Each life flows to all the spheres; and as Dad slept he lived out a whole lifetime in another continent, while we listened to the rumours of Madame Koto’s meetings with powerful women in her bar, meetings in which they planned the numerous arrangements for the rally and the responsibilities of organising votes for their party. It didn’t surprise us that she had recovered so quickly from the death of the prostitute. It didn’t surprise us either that she had been allocated vast sums of money to organise the women from our part of the city. Her bad foot grew larger as if the road had impregnated it; her stomach bloated with its abiku trinity. She was initiated into another secret society that was famous for its manufacturing of reality. She talked about turning her bar into a hotel. She bought great plots of land. Her driver went up and down our road in her car, knocking over goats and killing chickens, multiplying her enemies.

  Madame Koto grew more powerful with the rainy season. She developed a walk of imposing and languid dignity. Her fatness became her. She wore clothes that made the beggars ill. She talked of leaving the wretched area; she was scornful of everyone. We listened to her berating passers-by. She grew more powerful and she grew more beautiful as well. The rainy season swelled her frame. She incarnated all her legends into her new spirit, joined with her myths. She became all the things we whispered she was and she became more. At night, when she slept, she stole the people’s energies. (She was not the only one: they were legion.) The night became her ally. While Dad ranged the spheres crying for justice, Madame Koto sucked in the powers of our area. Her dreams gave the children nightmares. Her colossal form took wings at night and flew over the city, drawing power from our sleeping bodies. She expanded over the air of our existence. Her dreams were livid rashes of parties and orgies, of squander and sprees, of corruption and disintegration, of innocent women and weak men. Her snoring altered the geography of our destinies. Slowly, while the people of the area grew weaker, more accepting, more afraid, she grew stronger. That was when I understood that conflicting forces were fighting for the future of our country in the air, at night, in our dreams, riding invisible white horses and whipping us, sapping our will while we slept.

  The political parties waged their battles in the spirit spaces, beyond the realm of our earthly worries. Th
ey fought and hurled counter-mythologies at one another. Herbalists, sorcerers, wizards and witches took sides and as the trucks fought for votes in the streets they fought for supremacy in the world of spirits. They called on djinns and chimeras, succubi, incubi and apparitions; they enlisted the ghosts of old warriors and politicians and strategists; they hired expatriate spirits. The Party of the Rich drew support from the spirits of the Western world. At night, over our dreams, pacts were made, contracts drawn up in that realm of night-space, and our futures were mortgaged, our destinies delayed. In that realm the sorcerers of party politics unleashed thunder, rain flooded those below; counter-thunder, lightning and hail were returned. On and on it went, in every village, every city of the country, and all over the continent and the whole world too. Our dreams grew smaller as they waged their wars of political supremacy. Sorcerers, taking the form of spirits and omens, whispered to us of dread. We grew more afraid. Suspicion made it easier for us to be silent. Silence made it easier for us to be more powerless. The forms of dominance grew more colossal in the nightspaces. And those of us who were poor, who had no great powers on our side, and who didn’t see the power of our own hunger, a power that would frighten even the gods, found that our dreams became locked out of the freedom of the air. Our yearnings became blocked out of the realms of manifestation. The battles for our destiny raged and we could no longer fly to the moon or accompany the aeroplanes on their journeys through rarefied spaces or imagine how our lives could be different and better. So we had bad dreams about one another while Madame Koto, dressed in red, her hair covered with a white kerchief, three green umbrellas in her hand, extended her powers over the ghetto and sent her secret emissaries into our bodies. Our fantasies fed her. Many of us dreamt of her as a future spirit-bride to heads of state and presidents. She became known as the Queen of the Ghetto Night. Anyone who wanted help went to her. She received only a few callers. Because she expanded so much at night, she suffered untold agonies in her body during the day. She showed no signs of pain. But the sweat on her forehead widened her wrinkles. Her prostitutes deserted her; they couldn’t forgive her for so quickly forgetting the girl’s death. When they left, the emptiness of her bar and the magnetism of her new powers drew a greater flock.

  One night she appeared to me in my sleep and begged me to give her some of my youth.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  And she replied:

  ‘I am two hundred years old and unless I get your young blood I will die soon.’

  Her enormous spirit lowered over me. Her spirit was about to swallow me up completely, when a great lion roared from above, quaking the house, and driving her spirit away. Then I realised that new forces were being born to match the demands of the age. Leopards and lions of the spirit world, dragons of justice, winged tigers of truth, fierce animals of the divine, forces that swirl in the midst of inexorable hurricanes, they too restore balances and feed on the chimeras and vile intentions of the open air; and with every monstrous breath exhaled, for every blast of wind from evil wings, and for every power on the sides of those that feed on the earth’s blood, a fabulous angel is born; and I saw an angel flying over our roof on the third day of Dad’s sleep. It went past and the wind quietened and strange trees cracked in the forest and in the morning the rain stopped, the floods of water sank mysteriously into the secrets of the absorbent earth. Mum went up and down the streets hawking and sold off all her provisions and she kept finding pound notes floating on the dazzling waters and it seemed that the air had been cleared. But that morning I saw the first intimations; they were not intimations of a new season of calm, but of a cycle coming to an end. And how was I to know that it would be the beggars who would represent the first sign, with their expectancy, their air of people awaiting the word of a Messiah’s birth, when in fact all they were waiting for was an omen to inform them that the time for their departure had arrived.

  For in the evenings, as Mum prepared food, the fevers of the rally and its whispers of a long curfew were gathering. Then one evening, under the spell of incense and prayers and mosquito-coil smoke, under the holes of our roof, with the multiplied bugs on the floor, and with the room invaded by the green moths that understood the transformative properties of fire, offering themselves as willing sacrificial victims, Dad woke suddenly, he awoke powerfully, he rose from the bed as from death. His wounds had healed, his spirit had sharpened, his despair was deeper, he was a bigger man with a bigger madness. He got up and sat on his chair. And while the candles fluttered and burned brighter for the air that his sleep no longer deprived them of, Dad with his new deep sad voice began to speak to us. He spoke as if he hadn’t been away. He spoke as if he hadn’t made great journeys in spirit. And he spoke with the great enthusiastic innocence of a recuperating man.

  ‘My wife and my son, listen to me. In my sleep I saw many wonderful things. Our ancestors taught me many philosophies. My father, Priest of Roads, appeared to me and said I should keep my door open. My heart must be open. My life must be open. Our road must be open. A road that is open is never hungry. Strange times are coming.’

  ‘What about thieves?’ I asked.

  ‘Shut up, Azaro. We are protected, you hear. We are fortified against invaders and wicked people. Nothing evil will enter our lives.’

  He paused, creaked his bones, and continued.

  ‘A single thought of ours could change the universe. We human beings are small things. Life is a great thing. As I am talking now they are holding elections in heaven and under the sea. We have entered a new age. We must be prepared. There are strange bombs in the world. Great powers in space are fighting to control our destiny. Machines and poisons and selfish dreams will eat us up. I entered a space ship and found myself on another planet. People who look like human beings are not human beings. Strange people are amongst us. We must be careful. Our lives are changing. Our gods are silent. Our ancestors are silent. A great something is going to come from the sky and change the face of the earth. We must take an interest in politics. We must become spies on behalf of justice. Human beings are dreaming of wiping out their fellow human beings from this earth. Rats and frogs understand their destiny. Why not man, eh? My wife, my son, where are we going? There is no rest for the soul. God is hungry for us to grow. When you look around and you see empty spaces, beware. In those spaces are cities, invisible civilisations, future histories, everything is HERE. We must look at the world with new eyes. We must look at ourselves differently. We are freer than we think. We haven’t begun to live yet. The man whose light has come on in his head, in his dormant sun, can never be kept down or defeated. We can redream this world and make the dream real. Human beings are gods hidden from themselves. My son, our hunger can change the world, make it better, sweeter. People who use only their eyes do not SEE. People who use only their ears do not HEAR. It is more difficult to love than to die. It is not death that human beings are most afraid of, it is love. The heart is bigger than a mountain. One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us. The trees of the forest, the animals of the bushes, tortoises, birds, and flowers know our future. The world that we see and the world that is there are two different things. Wars are not fought on battlegrounds but in a space smaller than the head of a needle. We need a new language to talk to one another. Inside a cat there are many histories, many books. When you look into the eyes of dogs strange fishes swim in your mind. All roads lead to death, but some roads lead to things which can never be finished. Wonderful things. There are human beings who are small but if you can SEE you will notice that their spirits are ten thousand feet wide. In my dream I met a child sitting on a cloud and his spirit covered half the earth. Angels and demons are amongst us; they take many forms. They can enter us and dwell there for one second or half a life
time. Sometimes both of them dwell in us together. Before everything was born there was first the spirit. It is the spirit which invites things in, good things, or bad. Invite only good things, my son. Listen to the spirit of things. To your own spirit. Follow it. Master it. So long as we are alive, so long as we feel, so long as we love, everything in us is an energy we can use. There is a stillness which makes you travel faster. There is a silence which makes you fly. If your heart is a friend of Time nothing can destroy you. Death has taught me the religion of living – I am converted – I am blinded – I am beginning to see – I am drunk on sleep – My words are the words of a stranger – Wear a smile on your faces – Pour me some wine and buy me some cigarettes, my son, for your father has returned to his true home.’

  There was a long silence as we swam around in the strange currents of Dad’s words. After a long while Mum gave me some money and I rushed out to buy him the ogogoro and cigarettes. The beggars followed me half-way back on my return journey. There were spaces full of green moths in the air. The lights over our lives had changed. A deeper tint of indigo had coloured the clouds. I passed through a floating island of sepia midges. When I got to our room a lizard with a lavender tail scurried in after me. I was about to chase it out when Dad said: