The Famished Road

The narrator’s namesake—the biblical Lazarus brought back from the dead—certainly has resonance. Here, Azaro is a spirit-child who chooses whether or not to join the land of the living; he makes many journeys, both voluntary and involuntary, and is symbolically resurrected time and again (in these chapters, he is restored to his family). Clearly, much of the novel’s magical possibilities coalesce around the figure of Azaro, who is also often rendered Christ-like in his powers. For example, when the silent women kidnap him, “they stared at me imploringly, as if it were in my power to save their lives” (13). All of this is set against the backdrop of Nigeria’s independence (1960) and subsequent civil war (1967-70), though these events are not mentioned specifically. The specter of politics looms large over the characters’ interactions and fates, and Azaro’s peripatetic nature reflects the changing landscape of his country.

The corrupt policemen—wearing “colonial uniforms” (10)—are clear reminders of the not-so-distant past when Nigeria languished under foreign rule. The police beat back the rioters trying to flee the burning compound, and the officer who ostensibly takes Azaro home with him to protect him has ulterior motives, namely to keep Azaro as his son. The scene in which Azaro witnesses the monetary tributes the police officers pay to his supposed benefactor (turned imprisoner) reads as if the corruption is so ingrained as to become ritualistic: the group of officers commence to “deep chanting” and pledging “oath[s] of allegiance” (22) as if they are members of a religious order or cult. When the main officer takes the offerings, “[h]e grunted, stared at the first man, gave him his share, put some under the saucer, and kept the rest. The ritual was repeated with all the men” (23). Azaro wisely refuses the food he brings because “a bad smell wafted up from the food” (24). It is tainted like the officer’s motives and evident status. The colonial system was corrupt, and the powers that still mete out its partial justice are implicated in such corruption.

This recent past also complicates the notion of home and belonging. When Azaro is brought safely home, he observes the state of his parent’s place: “I was home. And being at home was very different from being in the comfortable house of the police officer. No spirits plagued me. There were no ghosts in the dark spaces. The poor also belong to one country” (33). He goes on to note that they had no working bathroom and only poor furnishings, but that “I was happy because I could smell the warm presences and the tender energies of my parents everywhere” (33). Still, he also wonders, looking at an old picture of his parents when they were young, “where the sweetness had gone” (33). While the police officer’s life is corrupted by power, his parents’ lives have been corrupted by the brutality of poverty and haunted by the lingering effects of colonialism. Azaro’s Dad, for example, elicits laughs by performing “an impersonation of the insane soldier who had fought the British wars in Burma” (33); war and colonialism are never far away. In addition, neither parent is given a name: this reflects the narrator’s childlike point of view and the invisibility that oppression and extreme poverty engenders. They are nameless pawns in a proxy war for control of the country, and both are persecuted for their political views.

Azaro’s homecoming feast and celebration symbolize the importance of sustenance—not only of nourishment but also of community—and its scarcity, as hunger is ubiquitous and food is precious. As their “little room was crowded with all kinds of people,” the people’s “[f]aces were bright with aroused appetites” (41). These appetites manifest themselves in various ways—for food and drink, power and politics, security and dignity. In some sense, stories feed the soul, but Azaro points out the limitations of such philosophical thinking: At the feast, the distinguished elder of the compound “released a torrent of proverbs and saws and anecdotes that fell like stones to the depths of our hunger” (42). These words “made us more famished, edgy and irritable” (42). Ancient proverbs are no match for physical hunger. Further, there is not enough to satisfy the outsized—because they are constantly deferred—appetites of the crowd: “People had talked themselves into such a hunger that the food barely went round. Like the miracle of multiplying fishes in reverse, the food diminished before it got to the guests” (44). The biblical reference here underscores the forsakenness of these impoverished people, and the aftermath of the celebration emphasizes the sense of disorientation and disrepair: There is only “the debris of the feast” with “clothes scattered everywhere” amid “broken” chairs and “shattered” glass (49). The consequences of the feast are dire, as Azaro’s parents become indebted to brutal creditors and the corrupt landlord.

Azaro never explicitly assumes guilt or responsibility for his parents’ predicament, but his nocturnal wanderings, spiritual visions, and knack for getting lost reflect anxiety over his role in their distress and his place in their home. When Dad sends Azaro home from the bar to check on his mother, he gets lost, even though “[i]t was a perfectly straightforward path from Madame Koto’s bar to our house” (65). He keeps wandering “along the fractured paths” (65), his vision attuned to the unreal spiritual world rather than the real world in front of him. Along the way, he meets himself and has a surreal conversation: “I was sent to tell you to go home,” one version says to the other. “That’s what I’m trying to do,” the lost Azaro replies. “Are you sure?” (66) his nemesis questions. The unreliability of Azaro’s visions—what he sees is not often real, and what he sees is rarely seen by others—coupled with his compulsive wandering reveal the contingent nature of his belonging, implicating the emerging nation as a whole. Home remains undefined, the locus of confusion and contention rather than security and comfort. Indeed, at the end of these chapters, Azaro has finally found his way home, only to be jolted awake by “the shrill intensity of the rats” (71) gnawing at the family’s provisions.