People had gathered all around. People had stopped what they were doing, just to see if this man who wasn’t really a giant could manage all that weight. They watched the spectacle of that squat, thick-set man, and it was the only moment I saw people in stillness. And whentheman,wobblingandweaving,gottowherehewassupposedto be relieved of the bags, the unloaders weren’t there. He turned, calling for them; they came running out of a bukka, and arrived too late; for he suddenly threw down the three mountainous bags all at once; one of them spilled open; and he stood perfectly still for a moment, blinking, while people all around cheered him and sang out his nicknames; and then he fell in slow motion on to the sacks and did not stir till he had been dragged to the roadside and revived with a bucket of water and a tumbler full of palm-wine.

After a while he got up, his knees knocking, and went back to the truck and took to carrying only two bags. People still kept watching him, to see if he would do something extraordinary with the bags. But the only thing he did, after a few trips, was go into a bukka, put away a great bowl of pounded yam, swallowing handfuls that would have choked a bull. The spectators who left, resuming their busy lives, missed seeing him perform an impromptu fandango with the madame of the bukka and then run off without paying, themadamehot on his heels wavingafryingpan.

The garage was the most confusing place I’d ever seen: people shoutingeverywhere, lorries revving, truck-pullers yelling, music blaring from new record shops and drinking houses, cars screeching, women screaming at pickpockets, and men fighting over who would carry the suitcases of travellers. Across the road a woman was whipping a madman with a broom. Behind me a thief was caught and set upon by traders. There were boys all over the place, roaming around with hungry and cunning eyes. Outside a run-down shed the old bicycle-repairer sat on a chair, smoking a cigarette, surveyingthewholeconfusion. A bus had broken down and peoplewerepushingit. A woman, fat and rich-looking in expensive lace, was ordering a lot of men around. She looked very powerful and had an expression of distilled scorn on her face as she commanded the men to take her baggage from the boot of a taxi. There was so much to see, so much to listen to,withclashingsoundsandvoicespullingtheattentionthis way andthat,witheverythinghappeninginfranticsimultaneity,thatitwasimpossible to walk straight. I kept bumpinginto people, stumblinginto potholes of mud, tripping over the rubbish that was soggy on the ground. I would be watching one thing, a girl washing a baby’s bottom at the roadside, when a car horn would blast noisily behind me, startling the life out of me. Or I would be wary of the cars behind me, driving by soclosethat it seemedtheywereslowlyanddeliberatelytryingtorunmeover,when someone would shout:

‘Get out of my way, you rat!’

I would jump out of the way and a truck-puller, dragging behind him the entire contents of a modest household, or a load-carrier, straining under a monstrous weight of yams, would storm past. I became dizzy, hungry, and confused. No one paid much attention to anyone else. On one side of the street a man would suddenly bolt off with a trader’s tinbox of money. On the other side a woman would be arguing with a customerabout thepriceofbreadfruit,whileherchildwascrawlingunderastationary lorry. I was going towards the lorry to get the child out when a great cry started all around me. The woman had just realised that her child was missing. The cry was so piercing that other women instantly gathered around, holding their breasts and agitating the air with their hands. The lorry driver started his engine, the child screamed, the women rushed towards me, shoved me out of the way, and some of them went under the lorry, while others pounced on the driver and harassed him for parking his ugly vehicle in front of their stalls. The driver didn’t stand for it and insulted them back and a frightening din of abuse ensued, the women getting so involved that they forgot the child they were concerned about in the first place. I was by now quite obliterated with mud and dirt and I went on further, looking for a water-pump.

I couldn’t find one and I came to a place where men were offloading cement bags from the back of a trailer. Again there was a multitude of load-carriers, their faces obscured by cement-dust, with cement on their sweatingeyebrows and on their hair. I wondered how they managed to comb it in the mornings. Some of the load-carriers wereboys alittletaller than me. I watched theboys bucklingunderthecementbags, staggering off, dumping them down, coming back, till their supervisor called for a break, and they all went and sat around the outdoor table of a bukka and washed their hands and sweated into their food, eatingvoraciously.

When they resumed work again I noticed that amongst them was an old man, his son, and his grandchildren, who could not have been much older than me. Among the grandchildren was one who had just started carrying loads that day. He kept crying about his neck and his back and he cried all through the carrying but his father wouldn’t let himstop anddrovehimonwithhistongue,sayinghemustlearntobea man, and that there were boys younger than him who were a pride to their families, and at that moment he pointed at me. Fearing that the supervisor might notice me as well and take it into his head to order me to break my neck carrying cement bags, I hurried on, searching for a water-pump, till I came to another lorry where men were offloading bags of salt. And I was staring at the strange number plate of the lorry when I heard the protestations of a familiar voice.

I heard the voice briefly and I sought the face. And then I saw Dad amongst the load-carriers. He looked completely different. His hair was white and his face was mask-like with engrained cement. He was almost naked except for a very disgusting pair of tattered shorts which I had never seen before. They loaded two bags of salt on his head and he cried ‘GOD, SAVE ME!’ and he wobbled and the bag on top fell back into the lorry. The men loading him insulted his ancestry, wounding me, and Dad kept blinking as the sweat and salt poured into his eyes. The men loading him shouted about how he had been giving them a lot of trouble and behaving like a woman and if he couldn’t carry mere bags of salt he should crawl back into his wife’s bed. Dad was still staggering, like a boxer under the onslaught of too many blows, when the loaders dumped the second bag on his head for the second time. For a moment Dad stood perfectly still. Then he wobbled. His muscles twitched erratically. The bags were very huge and compact, like boulders of rock, and salt poured out of one of them on to Dad’s shoulder.

‘MOVE! MOVE ON!’ said one of the loaders.

‘OR YOU WANT ANOTHER BAG, EH?’ said the other.

Foramoment IthoughtDadwasgoingtosuccumbtothedareandbeforceddeeper into the earth by the sheer weight of bags that could have been pillars of stone. And I couldn’t bear the thought of it and in a voice so thin in the midst of the chaos all around, I cried:

‘Dad! No!’

Severaleyesturnedtowardsme.Dadswungmany ways,tryingtolocatethesource ofthecry,andwhenhefacedmy directionhestopped.Hisfacekepttwitchingandhis neck muscles kept palpitating, as if hewas sufferingacramp. Oneof theloaders said:

‘MOVE ON, MAN!’

And as the salt poured on his shoulder, tears streamed from his eyes, and there was shame on his face as he staggered right past me, almost crushing me with his mighty bucklingfeet.Heappearednot tohaveseenmeandhestruggledon,tryingtobearthe load with dignity, weaving in the compensating direction of the load’s gravity. He weaved uncontrollably, women and children scattering before his advance as if he were an insane animal. Sweat poured down his back and I followed him at a distance, grievingfor thecuts and wounds on his arms. As hewasturningacornerhetripped, regained his balance, wobbled, and then slid on the mud and rubbish on the road, and fell.Thesalt bagsdroppedslowlyfromhishead,andIthought,shuttingmyeyesand screaming, that they would crush him. But when I opened my eyes I saw the bags in the mud. One of them had rolled over the gutter. Dad stayed on the ground, covered in mud, not moving, as if dead, while his blood trickled from his back and mixed with the rubbish of theearth. And then thesupervisor camerunningtowards him, shouting; and a truck-pusher went past him, growling; and Dad suddenly got up, rolling and sliding on the mud, losing grip and standing again, and then he ran in two directions before shooting across the road. A lorry almost knocked him over, but he went on running, and I could see him fleeing into the labyrinth of stalls, ducking under the eaves of kiosks, till he disappeared into the confusion of the garage market, with people tearing after him because they thought he was a thief. I didn’t stay and I didn’t want a water-pump any more. I half-ran, half-walked the distance home. And I was unhappy. My wanderings had at last betrayed me, because for the first time in my life I had seen one of the secret sources of my father’s misery.