Ben Okri - The Famished Road

Silence fell gradually over the noisy celebrants.

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

The crowd roared with anticipation.

‘I amgoingto divideonechicken so that everyonewillhavetheir share,’ hesaid, 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, standingproudly amongst them, his eyes big, his lips swollen, a bottle in one hand, said:

‘Thesearemembersofmy party.Thisismy worldconstituency,thebeginningof 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 THEWORLD.’

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 comingwhen 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 cryingout for drinks, the confusion and the arguments, the fury of drunken women and noise of thesoldiers amongtheprostitutes, 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 theprostitutes. A flashblindedme.Iheardtheblastofthecarhorn,piercingthenight 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 crudepair of claws hadbeendugintohissoul.Dadvainly triedtorestoreorder,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 thecement platform.Oneoftheherbalists,howlingthesecretnamesofarcanedeities, 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