The Famished Road by Ben Okri

to give off an acrid smell of burningmetal.
    ‘Mum!’ I cried again.
    She turned towards me, looked right through me, got up, went out of the kitchen, and collapsed beside the well. I screamed and women rushed to us and carried her to our room. She lay on the bed, breathing heavily, and the women stood around, casting deep shadows, hands to their breasts, heads low, standing in silence, as if in the presence of a corpse.
    I sat on Dad’s chair and watched over her. Women left and returned with confusing medications in green jars and dark bottles, and they administered conflicting treatments, and made her drink strange potions, drugs, oils, and distillates. Mum slept, breathing hoarsely, and the women left. I watched over her till my stomach ached and my eyelids became heavy. Then I woke up with a start. Mum’s breathing had changed. I listened. I watched. Then I noticed that her breathing had become almost inaudible. The room changed, voices sang in my head, a lizard clambered on to the bed and ran over Mum’s arm, and then everything seemed to stop. For a moment it seemed my own breathing had ceased altogether. I drew a breath and a spider fell from the ceiling. I drew another and I fell off the chair. I got up and sat again and then it became clear that it was Mum who had stopped breathing. Flies played around her mouth. She didn’t stir. Then as I watched, as I listened, a sharp pain went through my ears, colours and masks appeared in my eyes, and then as I held my breath I saw a blue mist rising from Mum’s form. I heard a child crying. The lizard scuttled past my feet. I woke Mum up and still she didn’t stir. I called her and she didn’t move. The blue mist grew thicker over her like steam from a boiling cauldron of water, and it collected and became more defined, and I grew really scared when the mist changed colours rapidly, becoming green, then yellow, turning red, bursting into a golden glow, and back to blue again. When I was sure I wasn’t imagining the mist, when it turned reddish silver, radiant in the darkness of the room, I couldn’t bear it any longer.
    When she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, I ran all the way to Madame Koto’s bar to tell her that my mother was dying.
    The bar was shut. At the backyard Madame Koto, wearing blue wrappers and a red blouse and a filthy head-tie, was strugglingwith a huge chicken.
    ‘Madame Koto!’ I called.
    She glared at me, striking me dumb, and the chicken flew out of her hands. She pursued it into the bushes, grabbed it firmly, gave me a sour look, and said:
    ‘Your father owes me money.’
    Then she forgot about my presence altogether. The chicken fought in her hands and she grabbed its thickly feathered neck. Twisting her mouth, she held the chicken’s body down with her foot, and sliced its throat with jagged motions of her long knife.
    The chicken’s blood burst out from the gash, staining the air, splattering my face, deepening the red of her blouse. The blood poured into a hole she had dug in the earth and the chicken fought, its comb rising and falling, its mouth opening and shutting in its final spasms, and when it died its eyes were open. They stared at me. Then Madame Koto washed the knife, sweat dribbling down her face and breasts. She regarded me with big eyes as if she were going to swallow me. I was crying.
    ‘Because of a chicken?’ she said, sucking her teeth.
    She reached for a kettle of boiling water. I held on to her blouse, pulling her, my mouth wet, unable to speak. She pushed me away and I fell backwards on the ground and I stayed there, kicking the air, and eventually I said:
    ‘My mother is dying.’
    ‘How do you know?’ she asked, eyeingme.
    ‘Smoke is coming from her.’
    ‘Smoke?’
    ‘Red smoke,’ I said.
    She got up immediately, washed her hands, and started to hurry towards our compound. But at the barfront she stopped and said:
    ‘Go and boil some water. I’m coming.’
    I was confused. She went to her room, came