The Food Thief

I have been wandering the trees of the forest for a while now, taking in the beautiful views and sounds without a sense of direction or purpose. I don’t know how long I’ve been roaming and I don’t know where I am going. Against my expectations, my feet don’t feel heavy and I don’t feel hungry. I haven’t eaten a meal in years and I haven’t found a single person either. All I can do is continue wandering and searching for something in the forest.

There are some birds chirping in the trees of the forest around me, competing in volume with the crickets. There are streams and rivers in the forest with the sounds of flowing water. The flora is green and wild and the ground is earthy, littered with twigs, roots, and dead leaves. The trees, looming tall over the forest floor, partially block the soft sunlight as their branches and leaves sway in the cool wind, like lighthouses shining their beams down. At night, it gets dark and the lighthouses turn their lights off, and I feel more alone than ever.

All this was upsetting, my being lost and alone, but it would soon come to an end. One day, as I was going through the forest like a patrolling guard once again, I found a man on the floor with his back against a tree. He was not moving but his eyes were open, staring at a spot on the ground a small distance away. Of course, the first thing that came to my mind was to check his pulse. However, as odd as it sounds, as I reached for his hand with my own, my hand went through his. I could not touch him. I tried for some time before I decided to give up the futile task. Instead, I sat down in front of him and stared at him. It was not too long after that I trusted my judgement and believed the man was dead.

For my own entertainment, or rather, amusement, I tried to strike a conversation with him. Despite all the signs he was dead, and to my own boggling surprise, the man spoke back to me. “Hello.” His eyes were still lifeless and his mouth did not move in the slightest. But I was not going mad. I had clearly heard him speak. I spoke back and said, “Hello. Who are you?”

The strange man and I would then have a long and fruitful conversation about his past, told from his point of view.

“My name is Touka,” he said. “And let me tell you my story.”

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I don’t know when I’ll die, but I remember the day I was born.

The first thing I remember about my life was a bright, shining light. It was all I could see at first. Eventually, it faded away until all that was left was darkness. The next thing I knew, I was still in my home village with my family as if nothing had ever happened.

I am an ageless man. I don’t know how long I’ve lived anymore, but it could be anywhere from a few centuries to a few millennia. All my life I have lived in this very poor fishing village in the middle of a big forest on an island in an endless sea. I have asked the people of my village many times what is out there, and they always tell me that nothing is out there. That the sea stretches on infinitely, there is nothing beyond, and the island is all that we have. Whether I believe it or not, it matters little when our village is so poor that we cannot build any boat big enough to explore and find out. 

Our village is a collection of slums so dirty that it is impossible to find a house without a rat, a sleeping cot without maggots, or a fruit without flies all over it. Everyone is permanently starving or malnourished and as thin as the wooden fence poles that we have set up around the slums. Our diet consists of mostly fish. However, they are not always abundant. The fish in the rivers, the fish in the ocean, the fish in the streams; we have drained them all. So much that the air around our village now always reeks of the smell of dead fish. The ground is always littered with them, rotting away with swarms of flies around them, as well as empty fishing nets and fishing rods and fishing spears. Rope, torches, hooks, bait, wooden planks, metal plates, clothes, and clay pottery are some of the other things that litter our dirty streets and homes. Since we have depended too much on the fish, they are starting to die out and our supply is becoming increasingly unsteady. This is why people are always starving to death in the village, there is simply not enough food going around. Most of the children we birth lose their lives within the first few years. We try to spread the food that we have equally regardless of how old everyone is the best we can, but people are still starving. As far as I have known, it has been like this my entire life.

I have seen men take all the fish for themselves as if nothing else mattered. I have seen men so hungry that their eyes are red and wild and sent only one message: They would do anything to get some food. In a frenzy, they would always steal fish from others and hurt them to get it in their relentless pursuit to stay alive. We live so desperately that it takes all our willpower not to do the unspeakable with the flesh of our dead bodies. But it is nearly impossible because when you are that desperate, all that matters to you is survival.

Living as old as I have, my memory is far from razor-sharp. Recalling facts and details of my life isn’t always easy. What I do know is that for most of it I lived alone, uninterested in marrying anyone. I would not be able to grow old with them or die with them. Instead, I would have to watch them die, still in the body of a man timelessly stuck in his middle-to-late thirties. I would outlive all our children, and their children, and so on. But it all changed when I met my wife, Inwe.

Before meeting her, it felt as if I had lived on my own for the longest time. But after meeting her, I felt I had known her my whole life. All of a sudden I could not remember a day without her, a day she had not existed. In all the years I have lived, she was the first person I connected with deeply. Her love was compelling. She changed me into a man unwilling to start a family into one that would desire it over anything else. Our bond was so strong that I decided it was worth spending my time with her even if I was going to watch her grow old and die. But as long as she would not go through it by herself, as long as she had me, I was okay with that. 

The first of my many descendants was Malika, my daughter. We were a happy family for years. I saw Malika grow up into a bright young girl. But then one year came a particularly bad breeding season for the fish, and we had less food than ever. For once in my life I felt vulnerable, I felt as if it could end at any moment. People were going insane from the lack of food and riots began causing a village pandaemonium. People were beginning to starve to death.

My wife and I gave all the food we had to Malika. Call it love, call it a desire to continue the existence of our procreation, it didn’t matter. I have seen many things over my lifetime but none of them have surprised me as much as the braveness of my wife.

I remember everything. I remember looking into my daughter’s eyes, so hungry. I remember my wife, giving her all the food we had, not eating for weeks straight. I remember seeing my wife lie to her that she had eaten already, or that she was going to eat after her little girl went to sleep. I remember seeing her fight another woman for a fish, then just when I thought she was going to eat it for herself, seeing how starved she was, she gave it to Malika. All of it. She starved to death not long after.

I remember seeing Malika on the ground, crying in the rain over the death of her mother. When the rain cleared, I remember watching her grow up into a woman and having a child of her own. This was the beginning of my many descendants. Malika told her son all about me and my brave deed of giving my share of food to her when she was starving. His name was Aibou, her son, my grandson. Then he grew up and had Yuso and Nuru, my great-granddaughters. Aibou also told them about me, keeping my name alive. Then they grew up and had Naven, Melara, and Nerima, my great-great-grandchildren. Their mothers also told them about me and my name lived on, “Touka” being spoken by my countless progeny. I saw this process repeat a thousand times, seeing some of them die, some of them have children, some of them not. Each time, they always made sure to tell the story of their great-great-great-grandfather, or however many greats there were.

All the while, I continued to live indefinitely in the village. The people were nice to me, as they had always been, and the fishermen kept giving me their catch. I continued to eat the fish and live on because of it. But things were starting to change. 

A story can only be so remembered. When time goes by and generations keep passing a story on, the words are forgotten or changed. My descendants were beginning to do so with their own children. Each time this happened, the members of the village became a little more hostile toward me. Maybe they’d forget the number of days I starved for my daughter: People giving me cold stares in the street. Maybe they’d omit how many fish I had given my daughter: A small riot at my door. Over time, and as more and more generations passed and the details of my story became weaker, the banging on my door got louder and the village people got angrier.

Finally, it all changed on the day my last descendant died.

Raja was a small kid who lived in the village and was the last person to exist who was related to me. It was his mother who told him the story of me and he was the last person to remember my name, Touka. One day, the village was starving again and there was not enough food for even the children. His mother and father had already died. I remember seeing him walking on his own, his ribs pushing out against the skin on his chest and belly, stepping in muddy puddles. I remember seeing him draw his last breath while resting on the wall of a slum.

As soon as he died, the village turned extremely violent against me. They had never been one to count fish, but all of a sudden they became aware of how much I’ve eaten of it in my lifetime. “A thousand fish to one,” they said, describing how I must have eaten more fish than anyone else in the village, all while some of their very young children have only eaten one, or none at all. “Stop stealing our fish! A thousand fish to one.” They decided they would not give me any more fish.

They chanted in unison. “A thousand fish to one!” They picked up torches and pitchforks. “A thousand fish to one!” They marched on the streets in the dead of night. “A thousand fish to one!” 

They were looking for me and there was nowhere for me to hide. They wanted me gone. If I stayed, I would live a hundred more lifetimes while some of their children would not even live one. They wanted my share of food to feed them. So, I had no choice but to go. 

I ran from the village and vowed to never return. Lest they continue being angry about me taking all their food. A thousand fish to one. I would never find out why they tolerated me for all my life until the day Raja, the last person to remember my name, died. It was that moment that changed everything. It was at that moment I had to leave the village forever. 

As a vagrant outcast, I have tried looking for the village again, in the hopes I could catch a glimpse of my home one last time. But in all my time searching, even in the area it should be, it is never there. The slums and fishing boats are all gone. The wooden fences and torches are nowhere to be seen. The people have all disappeared. It’s as if once I had left, it became impossible to find it again.

Hence here I am now, in the middle of the forest, sitting under this tree. Eternally unmoving. I am basking in the light of the sun, talking to you. 

#

I thought a lot about the dead man’s story in the following days. 

After he had finished, he left me in silence. He did not say another word after that. I waved my hand in front of his eyes, said some words, and even tried to shake his shoulder, but alas, none had worked. And of course, my hand had gone through him again. No, he was truly dead this time. In fact, upon inspecting him closer, he had been dead for a long, long time. A lot longer than I had realized.

Now, I’m still wandering the forest, only now, the dead man’s story is the sole thing occupying my mind. It felt so familiar, as if I had lived it myself. Still, there was one thing about it that kept bothering me, something I couldn’t quite figure out. Why were his story and his name passed on through the generations as a family tradition? What reason was there for such an occurrence?

Then it dawned on me. He had been dead since the day his wife died. When his daughter was on the ground, crying in the rain, she was crying for both of them. That was the day he was born. He was not immortal, he was a regular man, only dead. It was such a monumental deed that generations were compelled to tell it to posterity.

As the days passed on, I continued to think about that a lot. One day, I floated near a pond to see my reflection. I didn’t have to drink, as I had already gotten used to me not needing food or water. I was just curious. I drifted near the water’s edge, hovered above the surface, and looked down. When I looked at the water, I saw the dead man’s face. I laughed.

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