Kay Ugwuzor

‘If  you  misbehave the same thing will happen  to  you.’ ‘What?’ ‘The  forest  will  swallow  you.’ ‘Then  I  will  become  a  tree,’  I  said. ‘Then  they  will  cut  you  down  because  of  a  road.’    ‘Then  I  will  turn  into  the  road.’   ‘Cars  will  ride  on  you,  cows  will  shit  on  you,  people  will  perform  sacrifices  on  your  face.’   ‘And  I  will  cry  at  night.  And  then  people  will  remember  the  forest.’ Azaro and Madame Koto  Excerpt from  The Famished Road By Ben Okri. Pg 164 Azaro is surrounded by myths and mysterious things that no one sees but him,  perhaps because he is a myth himself. He is an Abiku that refuses to return to the spirit world and in some way becomes the cause of the ill luck that remains with his family.  Madame Koto, having some connection to the spirit world, however, sees him as good luck. She negotiates with his parents to have him sit in her bar believing that he would attract customers. Even though he is constantl

Odd. Yes. That’s the word to describe the feeling when he’s on top of you, inside of you, thrusting rapidly like a mad man before he comes. You cannot feel anything but the hair on his chest. His husky breathing pollutes the air around you. His large belly seems to fill the space of the bed, he is surprisingly light.      As soon as he is done, he rolls off you and crashes into the bed, breathing a sigh of relief. He chuckles and prods himself on an elbow and looking into your eyes with a wide grin on his ugly mouth. He asks how you feel and if he was good. You want to say you hated every second of it but you simply ask why he had to be on top and he says a real man must always be on top.   You get off the bed and walk to the bathroom, with a tackiness between your legs. You lay in the tub staring at the tiled wall; the hot water doesn’t seem to wash away your filthiness. The soap smells nice however and you wrap it in your underwear to take it out of the hotel. He b

T he Famished Road is fed by the dreams of literature. I devoured the world, through art, politics, literature, films and music, in order to find the elixir of its tone. Then it became a perpetual story into which flowed the great seas of African dreams, myths and fables of the world, known and unknown. I made up stories in the matrix of the ancestral mode. Many people read these stories and assume they belong to the oral tradition, but I had always believed that it is an artist’s function to enrich the oral tradition with stories of our own, inventions of our own, inspired by the tales we heard in the moonlight, sitting in a circle. But even in that the tone is the thing. But it was as a child that I began the book, with innocence and simplicity of heart. With the rich history of literature turning in my mind, I would disappear into the writing of the novel as into a dream. It was as if I sensed there was a book there, in the archetypal margins of the numinous world that existed

They say there is only one way for politics. That it looks with hard eyes at the hard world And shapes it with a ruler’s edge, Measuring what is possible against Acclaim, support, and votes. They say there is only one way to dream For the people, to give them not what they need But food for their fears. We measure the deeds of politicians By their time in power. But in ancient times they had another way. They measured greatness by the gold Of contentment, by the enduring arts, The laughter at the hearths, The length of silence when the bards Told of what was done by those who Had the courage to make their lands Happy, away from war, spreading justice And fostering health, The most precious of the arts Of governance. But we live in times that have lost This tough art of dreaming The best for its people, Or so we are told by cynics And doomsayers who see the end Of time in blood-red moons. Always when least expected an un