Ben Okri - The Famished Road

The days were always long except when I played or wandered. The streets were long and convoluted. It took me hours to get lost and many more to find my way back again. I began to enjoy getting lost. In my wanderings I left our area altogether, with its jumbled profusion of shacks and huts and bungalows, and followed the route of the buses that took workers to the city centre. At the roadsides, women roasted corn. In palm-wine bars and eating-houses, men swallowed fist-sized dollops of eba, gesticulating furiously, arguing about politics. At a barber’s shop, I watched a man being shaved bald. Next to the barber’s shop there was a pool office. A man, wearing a blue French suit, his arms round a beautiful woman, came out; I started towards him. He didn’t recognise me. When he got into a car, with the woman, both smiling on that hot day, and when they drove off, it occurred to me that I had seen the future incarnation of my father’s better self, his successful double.

I went on walking till I got to the garage. Activity bustled everywhere. There were lorries and transport vehicles and buses reversing, conductors rhythmically chanting their destinations, commuters clambering on, drivers shouting insults at one another, bicyclists tinkling their bells. Traders cried out their wares, buyers haggled loudly, and no one seemed to be still.

Therewas no stillness anywhereand I went on walkingand saw alot of men carryingloads,carryingmonstroussacks,asifthey weredamned,orasifthey were workingoutanabysmalslavery.They staggeredundertheabsurdweightofsaltbags, cement bags, garri sacks. The weights crushed their heads, compressed their necks, and theveins of their faces wereswollen to burstingpoint. Their expressions wereso contorted that they seemed almost inhuman. I watched them buckling under the weights,watchedthembecomeknockkneed,asthey ran,withfoamingsweatpouring down their bodies. Their trousers were all soaked through and one of the men, rushing past me, farted uncontrollably, wobblingunder thehorribleload. Further on I cameto the lorries that brought the bags of garri from distant regions of the country. The carriersofloadswerelinedup attheopenbacksofthelorriesawaitingtheirturns, with rolled cloths on their heads. I watched the men being loaded, watched them stumble off through the chaos. Each man bore his load differently. Two men at the back of the trucks would lift the bags on to the heads of the load-carriers. Some of the carriers flinched before the shadow of the bags, some recoiled before the loads had evenbeenlifted,andafewinvariably seemedtorisetowardstheload,anticipatingits weight, neutralisingtheir pain, beforetheterriblemoment. But therewas oneamong them who was different. He was huge, had bulbous muscles, a toweringly ugly face, and was cross-eyed, I suspected, from the accumulation of too much weight. He was the giant of the garage. They lifted a bag on his head. He made inscrutable noises and flapped his hand.

‘More! More!’ he said.

They liftedasecondbagonhisheadandhisneckvirtually disappearedandhis mighty feet sank into the muddy street.

‘He’s mad!’ said one of the load-carriers behind him.

‘He’s drunk!’ said another.

He turned towards them, his mouth twisted, his face contorted, and shouted, in a strangled voice:

‘Your father is mad! Your mother is drunk!’

Then he turned to the two men at the back of the truck and gesticulated again. He flappedhishandsoviolently itseemedhewastryingtoattackthem.They drewback in horror.

‘MORE! MORE!’ he cried.

‘That’s enough,’ said one of the two men. ‘Do you think we are politicians?’ said the other. His gestures became more furious.

‘He’s not mad,’ said the carrier behind him. ‘He’s poor, that’s all.’

‘MORE! MORE!’ the giant squealed.

‘Look, go! That’s enough even for you.’

‘MORE! MORE!’ he said, his voice disappearing.

They lifted one more sack on his head and an extraordinary sound came from his buttocks; his head vanished altogether; the sound continued, unstoppable; and he staggered one way and then another. Those waiting to be loaded fled from behind him. He wobbled in all directions, banginginto stalls, topplingtables of fresh fish and neat piles of oranges, staggering into traders’ wares, trampling on basins of snails. Womenscreamedat him,pullingat histrousers.Hewentonstaggering,balancingthe weights, slipping and miraculously regaining his footage, grunting and swearing, uttering the words ‘MORE! MORE!’ under his breath, and when he went past me I noticed that his crossed eyes were almost normal under the crush, and his muscles trembled uncontrollably, and he groaned so deeply, and he gave off such an unearthly smell of sweat and oppression that I suddenly burst into tears.

People had gathered all around. People had stopped what they were doing, just to see if this man who wasn’t really a giant could manage all that weight. They watched the spectacle of that squat, thick-set man, and it was the only moment I saw people in stillness. And whentheman,wobblingandweaving,gottowherehewassupposedto be relieved of the bags, the unloaders weren’t there. He turned, calling for them; they came running out of a bukka, and arrived too late; for he suddenly threw down the three mountainous bags all at once; one of them spilled open; and he stood perfectly still for a moment, blinking, while people all around cheered him and sang out his nicknames; and then he fell in slow motion on to the sacks and did not stir till he had been dragged to the roadside and revived with a bucket of water and a tumbler full of palm-wine.

After a while he got up, his knees knocking, and went back to the truck and took to carrying only two bags. People still kept watching him, to see if he would do something extraordinary with the bags. But the only thing he did, after a few trips, was go into a bukka, put away a great bowl of pounded yam, swallowing handfuls that would have choked a bull. The spectators who left, resuming their busy lives, missed seeing him perform an impromptu fandango with the madame of the bukka and then run off without paying, themadamehot on his heels wavingafryingpan.

The garage was the most confusing place I’d ever seen: people shoutingeverywhere, lorries revving, truck-pullers yelling, music blaring from new record shops and drinking houses, cars screeching, women screaming at pickpockets, and men fighting over who would carry the suitcases of travellers. Across the road a woman was whipping a madman with a broom. Behind me a thief was caught and set upon by traders. There were boys all over the place, roaming around with hungry and cunning eyes. Outside a run-down shed the old bicycle-repairer sat on a chair, smoking a cigarette, surveyingthewholeconfusion. A bus had broken down and peoplewerepushingit. A woman, fat and rich-looking in expensive lace, was ordering a lot of men around. She looked very powerful and had an expression of distilled scorn on her face as she commanded the men to take her baggage from the boot of a taxi. There was so much to see, so much to listen to,withclashingsoundsandvoicespullingtheattentionthis way andthat,witheverythinghappeninginfranticsimultaneity,thatitwasimpossible to walk straight. I kept bumpinginto people, stumblinginto potholes of mud, tripping over the rubbish that was soggy on the ground. I would be watching one thing, a girl washing a baby’s bottom at the roadside, when a car horn would blast noisily behind me, startling the life out of me. Or I would be wary of the cars behind me, driving by soclosethat it seemedtheywereslowlyanddeliberatelytryingtorunmeover,when someone would shout:

‘Get out of my way, you rat!’

I would jump out of the way and a truck-puller, dragging behind him the entire contents of a modest household, or a load-carrier, straining under a monstrous weight of yams, would storm past. I became dizzy, hungry, and confused. No one paid much attention to anyone else. On one side of the street a man would suddenly bolt off with a trader’s tinbox of money. On the other side a woman would be arguing with a customerabout thepriceofbreadfruit,whileherchildwascrawlingunderastationary lorry. I was going towards the lorry to get the child out when a great cry started all around me. The woman had just realised that her child was missing. The cry was so piercing that other women instantly gathered around, holding their breasts and agitating the air with their hands. The lorry driver started his engine, the child screamed, the women rushed towards me, shoved me out of the way, and some of them went under the lorry, while others pounced on the driver and harassed him for parking his ugly vehicle in front of their stalls. The driver didn’t stand for it and insulted them back and a frightening din of abuse ensued, the women getting so involved that they forgot the child they were concerned about in the first place. I was by now quite obliterated with mud and dirt and I went on further, looking for a water-pump.