The Famished Road | Readings

‘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 constantly a bother to her when he comes to report the terrible things he sees in her bar, she still wants to keep him there.

On one occasion, Azaro discovers that the grotesque creatures who have filled up her bar are actually spirits who have stolen different human body parts to partake in human pleasures, he believes that these spirits are attracted by the fetish Madame Koto has hung in her bar, these spirits kidnap him on one occasion which he luckily escapes and on the next he cuts out the fetish and runs into the forest with it being chased by the invisible spirits and Madame Koto. When he returns, she asks him to come and sit again in her bar.