Free Dangerous Love by Ben Okri Page A

night he had been sent on an errand by his father to go and buy some herbs. Omovo had walked in search of the herbalist’s house and was soon lost. He came to a mighty iroko tree. He stood under it and started crying. There was no one around. He had wandered into curfew time.
    As he stood under the tree crying, he saw a crowd of wild people coming down the street. They had sticks and cudgels. They chanted and in their songs called for the killing of Igbo people. Then they went towards a hut that wasn’t far from him. They sang around the hut, broke down the door, and charged in. Then he saw them drag out an old man and a girl. They beat the old man into a bloodied, whimpering mess. And they carried the girl away. He didn’t understand what was happening. Then he saw the crowd run towards the hut with a big piece of timber. They banged the hut several times. The walls suddenly gave way and the roof caved in. The crowd broke into a riot of cheering. And from within the hut came muffled cries that inexplicably reminded him of beetles being crushed with a bottle.
    When he got home his elder brothers beat him for staying away so long. But he didn’t cry because he knew that he had seen something terrible. He had never been able to come to terms with the forbidden sight, the serious stain of that night. Whenever he witnessed an act of terror, he always became that little boy who watched helplessly. And he could never escape the fact that he too was stained in some way.
    I
    That week there was a one-column article in the newspaper about the dead girl. The article only ventured to say that it was probably a ritual killing and an anonymous policeman was quoted as saying that such murders were almost impossible to investigate. Omovo didn’t see Keme throughout the week, but he couldn’t forget the rock hardness that came over his face that night.
    On Saturday morning he was in his room when someone knocked. Omovo opened the door. It was his father. ‘A letter from Okur,’ he said flinging it on the table. Then he left. Omovo felt that a phantom finger had suddenly touched him. He had got on well with his elder brothers, in spite of the fact that they beat him a lot when he was much younger. As the years passed they all seemed to grow away from one another. They grew into themselves, each wrestling with private torments. He knew very little about his brothers. When he was growing up, they were away at boarding-school. When he went to boarding-school, they had finished. Whenever he came on holidays he saw them lying about the house, depressed, ragged, unfriendly. And they often fought between themselves. It was only after their father had turned them out of the house that Omovo sensed how hard it must have been for them all those years. Especially when Mother died.
    Omovo sat at the dining table and read the letter. It was brief. It wasn’t dated and bore no address. The handwriting was scratchy. The envelope was filthy. And there was a poem contained within. Okur often wrote poetry when he was depressed, or when he was stoned. Nobody took his poetry seriously. But Omovo often found lines from them echoing in the gloom-cramped chambers within him.
    The letter read:
    Hi little brother,
    I just had to write. I’m working my way on a ship. It’s hard. I think often of you and of home and I feel like crying, but I don’t. I think of Dad too and I try to understand him and to forgive him, but I can’t. You, however, must try to understand him and to love him the way you always have. Try to forgive him too. He is weak and tired. I have no home and no destination and every day as I drink I see the dangerous things happening to me. And I fight a lot. Umeh says hello. He is ill. Injured. And by the way, do you still paint? I enclose a poem I wrote yesterday. Omovo, we have all badly lost something. I know you are growing strong.
    Your loving brothers, Okur & Umeh.
    Take care.
    Omovo read the