BooksRant; One day I will write about this place (Review)

BooksRant; Songs of Enchantment (Review)

During literature classes, one of the things we always attempted to do when reviewing a book or its thematic content, would be to look at the meaning of whatever title the author had given it. I had mastered this ability and it was transcendent to any other question I would answer. Probably to show an instructor or impress them with my grasp of the issues that the author sought to bring out to our attention as it was to confuse him on my lack of knowledge sufficient to answer the question. I once was confronted with a CAT that required us to talk about our understanding of the book “Grain of Wheat”. And I had not given it much of a read beyond the introduction that the lecturer had done in class. I had instead decided to focus my attention on books I had deemed difficult reads, like, The Anthills of the Savannah. My fears were that we were more likely to be examined on such a difficult book than Ngugi Wa Thiong’o Grain of wheat.  Ridiculously though, Mr. Ndogo shocked me when he set a question from ‘Grain of Wheat’. I have some uncanny thing of not believing in failure, not at least before I attempt and as it were, I decided to discuss the book with little knowledge of the themes, characters, setting et al. To short the journey, I formed my own characters, placed them on a setting, decided on the themes and the flow of the plot and discussed the 15marks question. For the answers had undertones of Kameno and Makuyu (the ridges in the River Between) and a mix of other concepts drawn from other books. I actually got some marks for the efforts…I guess it was 08/30. Not so bad, I thought. Mr. Ndogo made some remarks on the side that amused me more than made me sad-(It seems you wrote your own book and set your own question and then proceeded to answer it).

The same nerve that made me do that also makes me wallow in difficult reads even when my mind agrees that the story is not clear on its direction. Perhaps the reason why I have held on to Ben Okri’s Songs of Enchantment that clearly wasn’t written for the ordinary reader. Not so because of the fact that it’s clouded with mythology and circling habits of the spirit world and inter-fuse with reality of the struggles of the ordinary village person in some village in Nigeria, but also because it takes a brilliant mind to piece that kind of book together. And I want to be that  brilliant reader that cracks its reading code. ha!

I had been enthusiastic to read this book and will still read Ben Okri again, until “I get him”. He is not the kind of authors to easily ‘get’, or understand if you like.  I read Philip Ochieng’ the other day saying that Ben Okri writes for Poets. Why, he is a Poet besides being a novelist. Am not sure yet, but if he so does, then those poets must be Soyinka and the like. It may come out as a little complex poetry. As I mused earlier, when I set out to read Okri, I was enthused, lit up, savoring in anticipation. Well, the language is rich. He is a cooked writer. What I don’t understand like many readers, to quote my friend Sheshi “Ben Okri killed me with the Famished road and no matter what you tell me about the sequel you are reading, I am not getting convinced”. He is a difficult writer.

I am not sure why the writer chooses to tell the story of a poor village in Nigeria, which could also be a setting anywhere in Africa, through an Abiku-a spirit child. The book picks up from where the Famished road left and again, Azaro, an Abiku finds himself in the center of the imaginative mind of the writer. He was not a child willing to be born and he always seems to be in a conflict, overpowered by the love for his parents and the calling world of the spirits. How he resolves this conflict of terrestrial versus supernatural creates some mess that is not easy to web through. He seems denied the life of a normal child and it does not help that the village is also gripped by the powers of political magicians and it’s hard to weave through the collective dreaming of that is upon the villagers, probably caused by their desire to free themselves off the shackles of suffering and the devastation caused by the political magicians. The weird hallucinating effect is annoying as it is devastating.

At the start of the book, there seems to be glimpse of where all this is headed but it keeps getting crowded by the whims of the supernatural. I at first hated to see Azaro and his spirit-child compatriot, Ade suffer. It even seems more annoying that the parents never seemed to see something amiss. The father was more overwhelmed at the time by the burdens of the poor, as a rep of the Party of the poor and the havoc the Party of the Rich, which Madame Koto seems to support. So that when he tells him that dad, my head grows bigger in the night, all the dad does is to ask him to stop reading.

Azaro is the unwilling adventurer into the chaos and sunlight, into the dreams of the living and the dead (pg4). My unforgiving attitude is why a child who is supposed to be leading a normal life has to bear the torturous burden of the sprit life.

(*In those days it didn’t rain, but I didn’t go to school anymore because even at school my spirit-companions tormented me. Their songs distracted and confused me, and when I copied the wrong things I got into trouble. There was a history class, for example, in which the teacher was horrified to find my exercise book covered in complex mathematical equations. I didn’t know where they had come from. When we were being taught mathematics under a dying silk-cotton tree the face of a penitent oppressor of our people stared at me from the drunk. On one day, I saw the radiant face of Pharaoh Akhnaton, on another the faces of the unborn. When I stared at them, mesmerized, the teacher flogged me for not paying attention. In the English class my spirit companions sang polyphonic chorales at me ……It became difficult to concentrate…..The worst thing was that I seemed to know our examination questions before they were set, and I knew the answers well. The teachers found this very peculiar. Suspicious of the accuracy of my answers, they often failed me because they thought I had been cheating. In short, my sprit-companions played havoc with my education. They made me seem strange to the other children, and so I didn’t have many friends. There was only Ade, but he was succumbing to the world of spirits……Pg. 4&5*)

Despite the heavy imagery, one does not fail to note the emblems of misery. The untold suffering of a child who wishes to live a normal life but is alienated in loneliness, and the spirit companions seems to take advantage of this loneliness by insinuating themselves into his vision. Tongue in cheek, the spirit havoc wreckers seems to cover up for this by making him a genius, an effort his teachers crack a whip on. This doesn’t deter them for they pour all manner of arcane knowledge into his head, to quote (“ in the midst of my new solitude, and particularly at night when I am asleep, they frequently read to me from invisible books of history and science, philosophy, musicology and geography…They filled me to bursting with spirit books of literature, archaeology, quantum physics and advanced lessons in counterpoint and chiaroscuro long before I even read…..Tired of being singled out for merciless whipping, I took to sneaking from class and wandering through the ghetto……”) And as the spirits filled poor Azaro with useless facts, the poor lad walked barefoot in a world breaking down under the force of hunger.

Meanwhile his father seems to be carrying the load of his poor people, which I felt, could be the reason why he ventured deeper into hallucinations. As he dreamed of building the beggars a school and he is disappointed when they decide to leave. His fiery energy and fantastic ideas are enviable. He talks to building the beggars a unique school. He was going to supervise the education of all poor and illiterate people. He said they needed education the most. “That is how the powerful people keep us down,” he maintained. “They keep us illiterate and then they deceive us and treat us like children.” Rings a bell? He swore that he was going to teach the beggars mathematics, accountancy, law and history. He said that Azaro would teach them how to read. He talked of turning all the ghettoes into special secret universities where the most effective knowledge in the world would be made available….pg. 8).

I get a feeling that a man weighed down by the madness of a society is at a bigger risk of becoming a philosopher. And it is worse when there is no implementing plan of the grand strategy to get his people to his dream. This is what Azaro’s father is going through so that when he is frustrated at the political front, he seems to take this to the domestic front. Chest heaving, he complains that his family is betraying him, that his wife only cares for herself. That they had no respect for him, that they didn’t even see the importance of carrying his schemes while he recovered from his fight. He harangues them as if they are failed members of a government cabinet. ….. (He was angry that that we had not supervised the beggars, had not encouraged them, and had not looked after Helen—FYI, he has a thing for this girl and this is the reason his wife gets more estranged later leading to more conflict – , ….He rounded on mum because she had not been keeping in touch with political developments, and had done nothing to recruit women to his political party. And he turned on both of us for failing to keep alive his dream of a university for beggars and the poor.

Mum said:

‘You spend all your time talking about this university for beggars, but what about us, eh? Are we not beggars? Don’t you hear how cracked my voice is? From morning till night I walked this ungodly city, hawking my provisions, crying out, while you slept like a goat for seven days.’

Of course the man leaps on his feet, vents his full anger at the wife and blindly hurls his boots at the cupboard, whose door flew open, revealing pots empty of food and cockroaches are sent scampering everywhere. And since the man cannot face the reality of what his wife is addressing, he stamps his feet, and goes berserk with shouting etc. He seems devoid of the irrationality of his passions and this reality seems poked by the boldness of the wife’s interruption, ‘improve our condition first’. It hadn’t occurred to him that he had neglected that role that was being filled by the wife who he says, is devoid of vision and spent all her energy counting her wretched profits, while he tried to improve the condition of the people.

“Where will you get the money to build a school for mosquitoes, talk less of beggars, eh? Will you steal, eh? Do you think money falls out of dreams, eh?

I am not sure why the wife and son forgot to take his lottery win from Sami the lottery shop man, worth of a sizeable fortune. Or they had been consumed by their everyday struggles that even when luck smiled on them, it also by passed them. Or luck was against them perpetually. The man definitely went with the loot. But perhaps the man was also stupid enough to trust his dreams in fragile hands that clearly had nothing to do with his political ambitions. Maybe also a failure to have proper strategy to make his wife buy in into his political ambitions. With a lost fortune and only empty dreams, a misty rage was sparked:

You are not on my side, he bellowed at mum. ‘You are clearly my enemy! You want me to fail! You want me to be destroyed by the world! You go around in dirty clothes, and ugly shoes, and a disgusting goat wig of a he-goat (would it matter if it was a she-goatJ), when I have hundreds of pounds across the street!”…

The man trolls on, that she enjoys poverty, that she starves the son while she eats in secret and chases her away. When her husband exhausts herself, she bundled her possessions, like someone who had almost reached her forbearance, her undergarments, her old wrappers, her moth eaten wig, her old blouses, her slippers, her cheap jewelry, her tin-can of money into an ancient box…and left, like someone carrying the weight of long-life frustration.

Meanwhile the man gets hypnotized by Helen’s beauty. The one the wife says had a bad goat eye. The lead of beggars. His spirit was whirling with grand dreams of love. He even begged her not to leave with the other beggars, but stay around and be his second wife. By the way, this is an interesting read, and a book worth every effort. It’s a book that spurs dialogue-and that’s the only thing that keeps my love for books alive btw.

The fellow loses the wife, who was tired of a profitless marriage, and also lost the beggar. He had also lost the money, as Sami had left, packed away. He had lost the beggars, whose interests had been close to his heart. He had only his son and dreams of course. Probably he also needed to learn how to fail. The interweaving of the spiritual confusion increases and seems to have overcome Azaro’s mum as well. They go out searching for her, and wandering in the dirty streets, rutted pathways that seemed calculated to make them lost.

Didn’t your mother ever take you with her, eh? Dad asked.

No. I replied.

After a long time, his voice humbler deep with shame, dad said:

‘I didn’t know that your mother walked so much every day. Why didn’t she ever tell me that she suffered so much to sell so little, eh?

I didn’t say anything. I don’t think he really expected an answer. After we had been conquered by fatigue, and had worn out our soles searching, we went to a kiosk, and dad bought some beans and soft drinks. He had finished eating when he remembered his promise not to eat or sleep till mum forgave him, and he tried to spit out the food but it had already gone inside and I was a little ashamed of him but I ate and drank because I had made no such promises and because my eyes were throbbing and red with hunger.

I think the conflict portrayed at the family front was reminiscent of what the entire poor village was struggling with. Misery that was beyond them and despite their attempts to break the fetters, more shackles would web their efforts. The aspiring political class was representation of greed, and with their political machinery, like the thugs hired by Madame Koto, and use of political magicians, threats that the Party of the Rich employed to keep their followers loyal, there doesn’t seem to be a chartered way out of their misery. Any efforts are unwelcome and in fact, any challenger gets double misery for any single effort they seem to employ.

‘Africa is the home of the world, and look at how we live in this world…’

‘poverty everywhere, wickedness, greed, injustice all over the place, goats wanting to lead the country, cows running for elections, rats scheming to be governors. This could be the great garden of the earth, but it is now a backyard,’ cried dad, pg. 126…………..

’We are fighting to be born, fighting to have our souls sit correctly in our bodies. So why don’t you sensible people vote for me, eh, instead of wasting your votes on a party that keeps oppressing us. Believe me, to be born, to stay alive, and to turn into a destiny is a long and great struggle. Pg., 127

At times hope seems to conquer the lethargy and:

He began to shout animatedly about the kind of ruler he would be if people voted for him. He said that a country that rules anyone who proposes war as a solution to any problem must first enlist their wives, their children, their parents, and all their relations into the army and must all be given front line positions before the war can begin. Pg. 210.

He was launching into another speech when the battle of mythologies started to rage at the bar front……

It’s rather frustrating. No progress of liberation. Ade had died in a failed assassin attempt on Madame Koto and the father (a carpenter) seems berserk and on a revenge mission. He also dies in the process. The mother is in the hospital dying of some incurable disease. Azaro is frustrated and the whole society seems to be dreaming, hallucinating, spirit infested and the imagery is so heavy and scaring. It’s not funny to hear of some blue snails stuck on Madame Koto’s car, or the snake perched on the roof of her car, or the masquerades that keep growing bigger at her bar front, or the father who turns blind for days and he doesn’t seem to close his eyes even at night, of Ade visiting and conversing with Azaro, even playing spirit mind games with him. Or Madame Koto bragging her magical prowess, as the daughter of the Iroko tree, the mother was a rock (bah!). It’s annoying. The circling suffering, the circling misery, the efforts that bear no fruits at either self or societal liberation. Unlike you have lived in heavily spirits infested society, where there is such high sorcery, most of the imagery and the mythology doesn’t make sense. It works to cloud the story line, even as it works to work the consequences of its actions on the people. Probably this is the point we need the poets, who recreate our dreams and shape our realities.

Here is a conversation between Azaro and Ade during one of the many visits. There is an eerie of triumph when he says ‘ my spirit companions had tried to scare me from life by making me more susceptible to the darker phases of things, and by making reality appear more monstrous and grotesque. But so far, they had failed. And they had failed because they had forgotten that for the living life is a story and a song, but for the dead life is a dream. I had been living the story, the song and the dream, pg. 293

Tell me something that will help me, I said:

‘One great thought can change the dreams of the world.’

I think I know that already. Tell me another.

‘One great action, lived out all the way to the sea, can change the history of the world.’

The book starts out with what they didn’t see, and seems what they didn’t see made them unprepared for the realities of what was awaiting ahead. The struggles in recreating lives, the upheavals to come, upheavals that were already in their midst.

 It also seems to end on a high tone of hope and longing;

‘Maybe one day we will see the mountains ahead of us. Maybe one day we will see the seven mountains of our mysterious destiny. Maybe one day we will see that beyond our chaos there could always be a new sunlight, and serenity.’

I am very skeletal in the concepts covered, and as I earlier indicated, this is not an easy book, and attempting to review it, is just another of my defying attempts to failure or success. As for where triumph lies in this book, I think it’s starts with the bold imagination of the writer.