Dirty Feet - Edem Awumey [13]
They camped by the side of the road during the night, which was inhabited by the dream of that final destination where they would at last be able to swing open the doors of the house, tie the donkey to a tree rising grandly in the middle of the yard, rest their bodies, and begin again to make plans: find work, a school for Askia, have more children, build friendships, and hold celebrations — in a word, the ritual of a life lived with a few joyful moments, and prayers for those who believe.
He remembered that they were camping out under the half-blind stars. In the towns and villages they had passed through, the talk was about the malicious pests that were devouring the fields. Migrating locusts. Or a similar species of small, voracious chops. And in fact it was possible that their exodus came about after the invasion of the locusts that destroy everything in their path. Locusts, eating and digesting the fields in an epiphany of utmost violence. And as they advanced along the red dirt road, through the forsaken villages and razed savannahs, he saw that he was not the only one marching with his father, his mother, and the donkey. There were also the locusts that went ahead of them, trailblazers of the migration.
Who are you? he read into Olia’s silences. And he thought of their journey. Of crossing through hamlets where the residents, standing in front of their homes, wondered, Who are they? The residents followed with their eyes the foursome made up of the father, the mother, the donkey, and the son, until they disappeared around the bend in the road. Among the residents, some took out machetes and slings to dissuade them from stealing even the most pitiful yam. These men and women scoffed.
“Who are they?”
“Who knows?”
“What I do know is that they’re not from here.”
“They’re as long as the road they must have travelled.”
“You mean that they don’t resemble us; that they’re thinner than us, we who’ve never gone down those long roads; that they’re better-looking than us?”
“It’s hard to disagree. They are better-looking than us.”
“We’re small and plain.”
“Could it be that their bodies have grown skyward from always being on the march?”
“That they despise us from atop their sky-
highness?”
“Yet can anyone deny that there is something noble in their appearance? Something princely, I mean.”
“Princely? Now I’ve heard everything! So then, should we expect to see their court following behind?”
“It’s easy to see they have no kingdom. Only the road.”
“Is it possible they must spend their whole life on the road?”
“That they don’t know the roads are not to be trusted?”
“One thing is for sure: they are dirty, and we can’t let them into our homes.”
And he thought of how best to answer Olia’s question, Who are you?
15
A WEEK HAD passed. Askia ended his shift a little before dawn. He came back to his squat. His eight square metres of housing. A large cockroach came to join him on the mattress. It moved along his outstretched legs, starting from his toes, climbing towards his stomach before going back to circulate around his knees. For the roach, this journey, this itinerary mattered. It travelled on a road of skin, and Askia was surprised to be viewing himself as a territory. His cockroach’s territory. After all, some meaning had to be ascribed to the roach’s trek across his body. After all, the bug too needed a territory.
He got up. The cockroach disappeared down a hole where the walls met, gone to explore the corners of other rooms, other worlds. Askia stood in front of the sink. The brass faucet ran steadily, unflappably. An unstoppable leak. It had always leaked. Askia removed his coat and shirt. He took the towel from the cabinet above the sink. He wet it, rubbed himself down, then wrung it out, sending dirty water down the pipes. He repeated the procedure several times: wet the towel, wash, wring it out, wet it, rub the belly, chest, back, armpits, neck. To make