by Ben Okri
I had run into a world of mirrors and dreams. The earth was a brown mirror in which I wasn’t reflected. I cast no shadow amongst the shadows of that world. Within me there was great heaving. All around me there was great serenity.
There were no butterflies in the air. There was no rage and no rioting. There were no artificial lights. There was no darkness either. And everything in that world had a sun at its centre. The trees. The images of an unimaginable god. The great river with its many tributaries. The young girls of quiet beauty. The babies that could fly. The animals with intelligent eyes. They all had suns. Everything blinded me. I saw not with my eyes, but with my whole body. I seemed to be covered in eyes, to be as full of eyes as I had been covered in butterflies.
It was also a world in which everything was in blossom. A blossoming world. The trees, the plants, the people, and even the lights were all in white and golden bloom. I was moved by the gentle beauty of the place.
All around there were voices in the air. Voices without bodies. It was as if I were hearing all the voices, all the speeches of several worlds. The stream of voices followed me wherever I went.
TWO
I enter the realm where thoughts are voices
HAD I ENTERED the realm where the dreams of human beings are real, where their thoughts are voices? Was I listening to the whispered thoughts of the world, to the interior monologue of the earth, to the soliloquies of the road? Had I entered into the road, into its ambiguous underworld, the underworld of our dreams? I didn’t know where I was and didn’t know how to get out. I didn’t know if I was in my body or if I had strayed into a universe where all things as yet unborn live their natural pace, a realm where the dead pass through. Neither was I sure if I was simply wandering in the vast living corridors that lead beyond the famished road to new beginnings.
Was I amongst the living or the unborn? Was I amongst those who live a secret life of serenity on this sphere while they sleep or suffer and strive in the world of human beings?
How many lives do we live simultaneously?
In that realm I saw Helen. The beggar girl. She was dressed like a queen, surrounded by shadows. I saw her walking along the river. Then disappearing into the great clear mirror of the air. I also saw Mum. She was with six women I recognized as her sisters, though I knew she had none. She looked right past me. Not registering my presence or my gestures. When I tried to touch her I touched the air instead. Then I saw Dad. He was riding on a great black horse. I tried to follow him. But I found myself intermittently breaking into the world of human beings and then coming back into this peculiar realm. My being came alight and turned off. Like a human beacon.
I found myself wandering through images of workers mangled in machines. People electrocuted by the new mode of electricity. Houses collapsing on poor tenants because of cheap building materials.
The terrain changed. I wandered in the nocturnal harmattan glow of peaceful villages. Pumpkins and five-fingered cassava plants flourished in the backyards. Old men rode ancient bicycles along the meandering forest paths. I came to the forest of shadows. I met a man who was hallucinating about his favourite palm-wine. Still searching for a dead tapster. Further on I encountered the stuttering spirit of a grim man. His machete was still bloody with the murder of an outcast. I fled from his humourless presence into a flare of forest lights. I caught glimpses of famous tribal gods.
On that night I also met the blind old man. He was wandering around in the darkness with his arms outstretched.
‘I’m going back to my village!’ he cried.
He was covered in glowing yellow pustules. They were so alarming that I fled again.
In that wonderful realm I met a one-eyed man who wanted me to read Homer to him in Greek. Women who wanted me to write love letters for them on the leaves of baobab trees. Letters to their departed lovers whom they hadn’t appreciated while alive. They wanted me to take their messages through the forest. I met people who wanted me to do nothing except listen to their stories of ancient times when the gods lived amongst human beings. When heroes ventured out beyond the village gates, beyond the seven forests, battling monsters in faraway lands. Heroes who turned into sunbirds when they died. Or stories of women who sowed havoc in eight villages because of their supernatural beauty which they had been given by twilight gods because they would never bear children for men. The stories aged me. I met white men marooned in the underworld of dreams. They wanted to know if the atom had been split. Or if the solution to world peace had been found. Or if the eternal secret of life had been discovered in the busy laboratories. Or whether the true author of Shakespeare’s works had finally been uncovered. They also wanted me to carry messages across the seas. To their loved ones. They gave me the addresses and the names of their wives, children and mistresses. The messages were mysteriously erased from my memory the moment I left them. The addresses vanished from my pocket.
Further on I heard voices plotting to assassinate Madame Koto. I listened to their frantic dialogue.
‘Fear?’
‘No fear.’
‘Kill her.’
‘Why?’
‘She now believes in love. This is a weakness.’
‘So?’
‘She betrayed us.’
‘I know.’
‘She confessed too much.’
‘Revealed our secrets.’
‘She wants all the power.’
‘To become a goddess.’
‘To rule us.’
‘Make us servants for ever.’
‘Turn us into animals.’
‘Chickens.’
‘Goats.’
‘Rats.’
‘Sheep.’
‘Cows.’
‘For sacrifice.’
‘To take our power.’
‘And plant our heart in her rock.’
‘To increase her life with our blood.’
‘To turn us into beasts.’
‘Not even into peacocks.’
‘Or sunbirds.’
‘But maybe into bats.’
‘Kill her.’
‘Yes, let’s kill her.’
‘Before she becomes a god.’
‘Let’s go.’
‘Let’s go to the old man first.’
‘Fear?’
‘No fear at all.’
The voices moved away. The wind took their places. I wandered puzzled into other voices circling the air.
‘The white people turned our children into slaves.’
‘In broad daylight.’
‘And made our people work to make their coffee sweeter.’
‘So they could build roads that are never hungry.’
‘We didn’t even threaten them with death.’
‘And they haven’t been taken to any court on earth or in heaven.’
‘To answer their crimes to God.’
‘So now we suffer.’
‘In broad daylight.’
‘With our roads that are hungry.’
‘And our history weeping.’
‘And our future full of question marks.’
‘And our people seen as inferior.’
‘And our case unheard in any court.’
‘On earth or in heaven.’
‘And the great injustice forgotten.’
‘On earth and in heaven.’
‘Meanwhile we carry on struggling.’
‘With our hands tied.’
‘And our history in chains.’
‘With tears in our souls.’
‘And laughter on our faces.’
‘And love in our hearts.’
‘On earth and in heaven.’
The words lingered. Flavouring the air. After a while I heard the voices ascending. Spiralling away. Like birds returning to their homes in the sky. There was an orange glow of silence. The breeze was gentle on my face. I sat by the roadside, like an orphan. I felt at home. Here the thoughts and dreams of humanity are real. Real as the shadow of a tree in
an oasis. Then I heard a sweet voice speaking. The familiar sweetness of the voice pierced my heart. It was Mum’s voice. She was talking to the six sisters she didn’t have.
‘My dear sisters, last night I saw a host of yellow angels. They were weeping high up above the world. When I asked them why they were weeping, they said: “We are sad because you human beings don’t know how magnificent you are. How wonderful. How beautiful. How blessed. You came from Love. And it is to Love that you will return. You make a complete mess of your ideals. You turn your good dreams into living nightmares. You turn the garden into a graveyard. Terrible things you do to one another. You can make heaven real in your lives, instead you prefer to live in your own hell, your ignorance. You do not use your light, but delight in your darkness. That is why we are in agony. Love is your mother, Humanity. Light is your father. Life is your gift eternal. And all three are one. You have forgotten the original river, the seven mountains, and your royal destiny. And so we weep. You are made from an immortal dream. Rise up, and reach for your precious inheritance.” That is what the angels told me.’
I listened as Mum’s six sisters talked in lovely harmonies about the agony of the angels.
The breeze changed. A harsher wind took over. There was silence. I waited for Mum’s voice to speak again. I waited to hear her invisible sisters speak. But they didn’t. The harshness of the wind impelled me to move on. I got up from the roadside. Like a pilgrim with a happy destination in his heart, I set off along the road that only voices travel.
I came to a building made of mirrors, crowned with a golden cupola. I wandered into a clearing and listened to other voices talking calmly into the night. I had no idea where the voices came from. I didn’t know if they were thoughts, or whispered words blown over oceanic spaces by the gods that make audible all the secret intentions of men and women.
‘They are not like us,’ said one.
‘William Blake may have said the black boy’s soul is white, but, to be honest, they are not really like us,’ said another.
‘They eat dirt.’
‘Snakes.’
‘They smell.’
‘So do we, but they smell different.’
‘I don’t like the difference.’
‘They have no history.’
‘No past.’
‘So they have no future.’
‘Do they dream?’
‘They bleed. I don’t like their blood.’
‘They must be kept in their place.’
‘Can’t let them have anything over us.’
‘They are the younger brother of the human race.’
‘Are they of the race?’
‘Maybe not. Maybe somewhere in between.’
‘Between dust and brain.’
‘Infiltrate them.’
‘Spy on them.’
‘Find the strong ones among them and make them like us.’
‘Not the strong. Destroy the strong among them. Find the weak. Make them like us.’
‘Not like us.’
‘Divide them.’
‘Use them against themselves.’
‘Make them our eternal servants.’
‘Our distant workers.’
‘They have no talent for order.’
‘No sense of responsibility.’
‘For their own good keep them down.’
‘And out.’
‘But how do we manage to remain human after this?’
‘That’s our children’s problem.’
‘For how long do we do this?’
‘Do what?’
‘Keep them down?’
‘As long as necessary.’
‘Do you think there is a God watching us, monitoring our intentions?’
‘There is no God.’
‘We are now the gods.’
‘And anyway if there is a God, he most certainly will approve.’
‘But will we pay a horrible price for this? I mean can our children ever face the truth of what we have done, and what we will continue to do? Can our race live with the guilt?’
‘Guilt is for the weak.’
‘But can we live with the truth?’
‘As Pilate said, “What is truth?”’
‘Besides, it is for their own good. In a thousand years’ time they will thank us for bringing them the future.’
‘Our future.’
‘But what about sleep? How do we sleep in peace through the centuries?’
‘Wandering amongst the spirits of the mothers of slaves.’
‘Trapped amongst them.’
‘Wandering in this inferno of history.’
‘Where everything is remembered.’
‘Eternally remembered.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t know either.’
The words faded away. The voices ascended. No wind came to clear the air of their words.
THREE
Assassination of a Rain Queen
I WANDERED MUCH in that realm of a hundred thoughts and dreams. I kept trying to find my way back into the hard world that I had made my home. Then I came to a place where someone was telling a story of an elephant that was killed. They were not so much telling the story as performing it. I listened to how the elephant appeared. How it crashed about in the undergrowth, felling trees in its rage, stamping on mud huts. Trampling on people. Bellowing in the most horrid way. I listened to how the elephant fell into a pit and how the people finished it off with dane guns and spears. Then the storyteller, rendering the death of the elephant, released a powerful cry which blew me to another place where my father was riding a black horse.
I followed Dad. Soon I found myself becoming blind among the objects of that crepuscular realm. When my eyes cleared, I had surfaced into the familiar world. Into the rally that had gone wrong.
There were clashing supporters everywhere. Burnings and wailing all around. Anguished voices. Children being trampled. Men being whipped. Soldiers shooting at the moon. A man appealed for calm over a loud hailer. Thugs descended on him and beat him with it. Each blow became an ugly sound.
There were screams in the air. Cars on fire. Party flags set alight. Stampedes. Women dragged to corners, screaming. There was a man whose face was slashed with a broken bottle. Blood poured from his lips. I even saw the Photographer in all that madness. He had climbed a tree and was calmly taking pictures. I called to him but he couldn’t hear me; and I couldn’t get to him for the awfulness of the commotion.
So I ran where the stampede took me. I found myself lost again in another realm where a table was continuing its dream as a tree. It had sprouted little branches and green buds. The table frightened me. I ran on, flashing simultaneously in two streams of time. In one stream of time I saw images of the nation’s troubles in advance. Oil wells drying up. Valuable gases burning out on the city air. I saw the era of the great national squander to come, and the dissipation of its fabulous wealth. I saw coups and wars and animals eating the corpses of men. In the other stream of time, I walked the tributaries that became roads. People were sitting outside their houses, fanning themselves, unaware of the chaos.
I went on for what seemed like hours. It had become dark. I noticed two beggars following Madame Koto. I got confused. I saw Madame Koto hurrying back home. Then the women of her religion were setting upon her, stabbing her with knives that shone under the moon, sticking the knives in her repeatedly and shouting that she was growing too powerful. The blind old man was stabbing her too. Killing her. Because of her public confessions. Because of the change in her heart, her love for the poor and the suffering. And then it was all different. It was people I couldn’t make out who were attacking her from behind. Madame Koto might have saved herself if she could have turned her head round, for her assassins would have been petrified by the power of her eyes. But she couldn’t. And they cut her open with long knives. I heard one of the assassins saying:
‘So you want to become a god, eh? So you love the people now, eh?
’
He said it over and over again as they slaughtered her. She didn’t fall. They cut into Madame Koto many times and still she didn’t fall. They murdered the spirit-children growing in her and she stood there and spewed out all the food and drinks she had consumed that day. Blood and gore and vomit and gristle and the sigh of unborn children burst from her on to her assassins and on the mud and all over her rich garments.
And – yes – at that moment the wind howled. In a flash, a silver crack between spheres, I saw the old woman of the forest staring at her weavings of the rally gone mad and the brutal murder of a Rain Queen. I saw her surrounded by the weird birds of night. When the wind howled, the birds, wings beating in a convulsion of feathers, took off into the air, leaving the old woman in a stunned space.
And – yes – at that moment liverish rain clouds cracked above and thick rain poured down. The inklike water writhed with worms and sardines. The rain washed away the moon and the seven new stars. Masquerades on horseback released cultic cries. I heard the splitting fissures of a great rock. Potent spells rushed out from Madame Koto’s blubbery body. I heard the crackling of spells and the dissolution of sorceries. The downpour drenched the butterflies. I watched them writhing on the road. I saw deformations everywhere. Spells and animistic powers of Madame Koto’s spirit burst into the air, unleashing nightmares which ran mad amongst us. Trees cracked and weird birds piped haunting melodies. I heard the bursting of ancient powers and saw the spirits of Madame Koto’s unborn children wandering about the street, stunned at their release into the raw spaces. Madame Koto’s spirit floated above her and turned into the shadow of a big animal with anguished noises.
And – yes – caterwauling music started out from the emptiness. Peacocks cried out. The jackal-headed masquerade exploded into yellow flames. How many realities were in conflagration on that night? I was spun around by the forces freed from the spewing body of Madame Koto. And through all this, she still didn’t fall.
She stood upright like an indefatigable warrior. Her assassins were petrified by her fast-congealing blood on their faces. Then I saw something quite electrifying. I saw Madame Koto changing into a young girl, and then into an ancient Celtic warrior of great virility. Then into a crocodile-headed priest of Pharaonic Egypt. And then into an old woman of 203 years. When all her transformations stopped, I felt a grip of steel round my wrists. A brief darkness passed across my eyes.
