The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir who got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Dedication
Title Page
Epigraph
France
Great Britain
Spain
Italy
Libya
France
Copyright
About the Book
One day a fakir leaves his small village in India and lands in Paris. A professional con artist, the fakir is on a pilgrimage to IKEA, where he intends to obtain an object he covets above all others: a brand new bed of nails. Without adequate Euros in the pockets of his silk trousers, he is confident, all the same, that his counterfeit 100-Euro note (printed on one side only) and his usual bag of tricks will suffice. But when a swindled cab driver seeks his murderous revenge, the fakir accidentally embarks on a European tour, fatefully beginning in the wardrobe of the iconic Swedish retailer.
As his journey progresses in the most unpredictable of ways, the fakir finds unlikely friends in even unlikelier places. To his surprise – and to a Bollywood beat – the stirrings of love well up in the heart of our hero, as his adventures lead to profound and moving questions of the perils of emigration and the universal desire to seek a better life in an often dangerous world.
About the Author
ROMAIN PUÉRTOLAS was born in Montpellier and has lived in France, Spain and the UK, where he has been a DJ, singer-songwriter, language teacher, translator-interpreter and steward. Until recently he worked as a police inspector with the French border services, specialising in document fraud. The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir… was a number-one bestseller in France and is being published in 36 countries.
SAM TAYLOR is a translator, novelist and journalist. His translated works include Laurent Binet’s award-winning novel HHhH and Jöel Dicker’s The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair. His own novels have been translated into ten languages.
For Léo and Eva, my most
beautiful creations.
For Patricia, my most
beautiful journey.
The Extraordinary Journey of The Fakir Who got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe
Romain Puértolas
Translated from the French by Sam Taylor
A heart is a little bit like a large wardrobe
Ajatashatru Oghash Rathod
France
THE FIRST WORD spoken by the Indian man Ajatashatru Oghash Rathod upon his arrival in France was, oddly enough, a Swedish word.
Ikea.
That was what he said in a quiet voice.
Having pronounced this word, he shut the door of the old red Mercedes and waited, his hands resting on his silky knees like a well-behaved child.
The taxi driver, who was not sure he had heard correctly, turned round to face his customer, making the little wooden beads of his seat cover creak as he did so.
On the back seat of his car sat a middle-aged man, tall, thin and gnarled like a tree, with an olive-skinned face and a huge moustache. Pockmarks, the consequence of chronic acne, sprinkled his hollow cheeks. There were several rings in his ears and his lips, as if he wished to be able to zip them up after use. Oh, what a clever system! thought Gustave Palourde, seeing in this Indian zip idea the perfect remedy for his wife’s incessant chattering.
The man’s grey and shiny silk suit, his red tie – which he had not even bothered to knot, but had simply pinned on – and his white shirt, all terribly creased, suggested he had been on a long flight. Strangely, however, he had no luggage.
Either he’s a Hindu or he’s suffered a very serious head injury, the driver thought when he considered the large white turban that encircled his customer’s head. The olive-skinned face and the huge moustache made him lean towards the first of these theories.
‘Ikea?’
‘Ikea,’ the Indian repeated, elongating the last vowel.
‘Which one?’ he asked, in French. Then, in stuttering English: ‘Er . . . what Ikea?’ Gustave was as comfortable speaking English as a dog on ice skates.
The passenger shrugged as if to suggest that he couldn’t care less. Justikea, he said, dontmatazeoanezatbestasiutyayazeparijan. This is more or less what the driver heard: a series of incomprehensible babbling noises. But, babbling or otherwise, this was the first time in his thirty years spent working for Gypsy Taxis that a customer coming out of Terminal 2C of Charles de Gaulle Airport had asked to be taken to a furniture store. As far as he was aware, Ikea had not recently opened a chain of hotels.
Gustave had heard some unusual requests before, but this one took the biscuit. If this guy had really come from India, then he had paid a small fortune and spent eight hours in an aeroplane in order to buy Billy shelves or a Poäng chair. Crikey! It was incredible, really. He had to write this encounter down in his guest book, between Demis Roussos and Salman Rushdie, both of whom had once done him the honour of placing their noble posteriors on the leopard-skin seats of his taxi. He also had to remember to tell the story to his wife that evening, during dinner. As he generally had nothing to say, it was his wife (whose luscious lips were not yet equipped with a clever Indian zip system) who monopolised the mealtime conversation, while their daughter sent misspelt texts to other young people who did not even know how to read. This would change things a little, for once.
‘OK!’
The Gypsy Taxi driver, who had spent his last three weekends roaming the blue-and-yellow corridors of the Swedish store with the two aforementioned ladies in order to furnish the new family caravan, knew perfectly well that the closest Ikea was the one in Roissy Paris Nord, a mere €8.25 ride away. So he set his sights on the one in Paris Sud Thiais, located on the other side of the city, three-quarters of an hour from their current location. After all, the tourist wanted an Ikea. He had not specified which Ikea. And anyway, with his posh silk suit and his tie, he must be a wealthy Indian industrialist. Not likely to be short of a few bob, was he?
Pleased with himself, Gustave quickly calculated how much money the journey would make him, and rubbed his hands. Then he started the meter and set off.
What an excellent way to begin the day!
A FAKIR BY trade, Ajatashatru Oghash (pronounced A-jar-of-rat-stew-oh-gosh!) had decided to travel incognito for his first trip to Europe. For this occasion, he had swapped his ‘uniform’, which consisted of a loincloth shaped like an enormous nappy, for a shiny grey suit and a tie rented for peanuts from Dilawar (pronounced Die, lawyer!), an old man from the village who had, during his youth, been a representative for a famous brand of shampoo, and who still had an impressive head of (greying) hair.
In choosing this disguise, which he was to wear for both days of his trip, the fakir had secretly wished to be taken for a wealthy Indian industrialist – so much so that he had forsaken wearing comfortable clothes (i.e. a tracksuit and sandals) for the three-hour bus journey and a flight lasting eight hours and fifteen minutes. After all, pretending to be something he was not was his job: he was a fakir. He had kept only his turban, for religious reasons. Beneath it, his hair kept growing and growing. It was now, he estimated, about sixteen inches long, with a total population of thirty thousand (mostly germs and fleas).
Getting into the taxi that day, Ajatashatru (pronounced A-cat-in-a-bat-suit) had immediately noticed that his peculiar get-up had produced the desired effect on the European, in spite of the tie, which neither he nor his cousin knew how to knot correctly, even after the perfectly clear but somewhat shaky explanations of Dilawar, who had Parkinson’s. But obvi
ously this was a minor detail, as it had gone unnoticed amid the overwhelming elegance of his attire.
A glance in the rear-view mirror not being enough to contemplate such handsomeness, the Frenchman had actually turned round in his seat in order to better admire Ajatashatru, making the bones in his neck crack as he did so, as if he were preparing for an act of contortionism.
‘Ikea?’
‘Ikeaaa.’
‘Lequel? Er . . . what Ikea?’ the driver had stammered, apparently as comfortable speaking English as a (holy) cow on ice skates.
‘Just Ikea. Doesn’t matter. The one that best suits you. You’re the Parisian.’
Smiling, the driver had rubbed his hands before starting the engine.
The Frenchman has taken the bait, thought Ajatashatru (pronounced A-jackal-that-ate-you) with satisfaction. This new look was proving ideal for his mission. With a little luck, and if he didn’t have to open his mouth too much, he might even pass for a native.
AJATASHATRU WAS FAMOUS throughout Rajasthan for swallowing retractable swords, eating broken glass made from zero-calorie sugar, stabbing his arms with fake needles, and a heap of other conjuring tricks, the secrets of which were known only to him and his cousins, and which he was happy to label magical powers in order to bewitch the masses.
So, when the time came to pay the bill for the taxi ride, which amounted to €98.45, our fakir handed over the only money he had for his entire trip – a counterfeit €100 note printed on just one side – while nonchalantly gesturing to the driver that he could keep the change.
Just as the driver was sliding the note into his wallet, Ajatashatru created a diversion by pointing at the huge yellow letters that proudly spelt out I-K-E-A above the blue building. The gypsy looked up long enough for the fakir to pull nimbly on the invisible elastic that connected his little finger to the €100 note. A tenth of a second later, the money had returned to its original owner.
‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ said the driver, believing the note to be nestled safely within his wallet. ‘Let me give you my firm’s card. In case you need a taxi for the way back. We have vans as well, if you need. Believe me, even in flatpack form, furniture takes up a lot of space.’
Gustave never knew if the Indian had understood any of what he had just told him. Rummaging in the glove compartment, he pulled out a laminated business card emblazoned with a flamenco dancer and handed it to him.
‘Merci,’ said the foreigner.
When the red Mercedes of Gypsy Taxis had disappeared – although the fakir, who was only used to making small-eared Indian elephants disappear, could not claim to be responsible – Ajatashatru slipped the card into his pocket and contemplated the vast commercial warehouse that stretched out in front of him.
In 2009, Ikea had given up on the idea of opening a branch in India, as local laws would have forced the Swedish directors to share the running of their stores with Indian managers, who would also have been majority shareholders. At the same time, the company set up a partnership with Unicef, the aim of which was to fight against child labour and slavery. This project, which involved five hundred villages in the north of India, enabled the construction of several health, nutrition and education centres throughout the region. It was in one of these schools that Ajatashatru had ended up, having been controversially fired, in his first week in the job, from the court of the maharaja Abhimanyu Ashanta Nhoi (pronounced A-big-man-you-shouldn’t-annoy), where he had been hired as a fakir and jester. He had made the mistake of stealing a piece of sesame-seed bread, some cholesterol-free butter and two organic grapes. In other words, he had made the mistake of being hungry.
As punishment, he had first of all had his moustache shaved off, already a severe penalty in itself (even if it made him look younger), and then he had been given a straight choice between teaching schoolchildren about the perils of theft and crime, or having his right hand cut off. After all, a fakir fears neither pain nor death . . .
To the astonishment of his followers, who had become used to watching him perform all kinds of mutilation on his body (meat skewers in his arms, forks in his cheeks, swords in his belly), Ajatashatru had declined the offer of amputation and had gone for the first option.
‘Excuse me, sir, could you tell me the time, please?’
The Indian jumped. A middle-aged man in tracksuit and sandals had just stopped in front of him, pushing (not without difficulty) a trolley filled with at least ten cardboard boxes that only a Tetris champion, or a psychopath, could have arranged in that particular way.
For Ajatashatru, the question had sounded, more or less, as follows: Euskuzaymoameussieuoriayvouleursivouplay?
It was, in other words, completely incomprehensible, and the only response it could possibly prompt was: WHAT?
Seeing that he was dealing with a foreigner, the man tapped his left wrist with his right index finger. The fakir, understanding this straight away, lifted his head to the sky and, as he was used to reading the time with the Indian sun, told the Frenchman it was three hours and thirty minutes later than it actually was. The Frenchman, who understood English better than he spoke it, became suddenly aware that he was horribly late picking up his children from school for their lunch hour, and began frantically pushing his trolley towards his car.
Watching people enter and exit the store, the Indian noticed that very few customers – well, none, in fact – were dressed like he was. Shiny silk suits were apparently not in fashion. Nor were turbans, for that matter. Given that he had been aiming to blend in seamlessly, this was not a good sign. He hoped this fact would not compromise his entire mission. The tracksuit and sandals combination would have fitted the bill much better. When he got home, he would talk about this to his cousin Parthasarathy (pronounced Parties-are-arty). It was his cousin who had insisted he should dress like this.
Ajatashatru spent a few moments watching the glass doors open and close in front of him. All his experiences of modernity had come from watching Hollywood and Bollywood films on television at the home of his adoptive mother, Adishree Dhou (pronounced A-didgeridoo). It was surprising and somewhat distressing to him to see how these devices, which he thought of as jewels of modern technology, had become utterly banal to the Europeans, who no longer even paid any attention to them. If there had been an Ikea in Kishanyogoor (pronounced Quiche-and-yogurt), he would have contemplated the glass doors of this temple of technology with the same undimmed emotion each time. The French were just spoilt children.
Once, when he was only ten years old, long before the first signs of progress had appeared in his village, an Englishman had shown him a cigarette lighter and told him: ‘All sufficiently advanced technology is indiscernible from magic.’ At the time, the child had not understood. So the man had explained: ‘What that means, quite simply, is that things which are banal for me can seem magical to you; it all depends on the technological level of the society in which you grow up.’ Little sparks had then leapt from the foreigner’s thumb, before coalescing into a beautiful, hot, dazzling blue flame. Before leaving, the Englishman had given him – in return for a very strange favour which will be described in more detail later – this magical object still unknown in the small, remote village on the edge of the Tharthar Desert. And with this lighter, Ajatashatru had developed his first magic tricks, stirring the desire to one day become a fakir.
He had felt some of the same sense of wonder when he had taken the aeroplane yesterday. The journey had been an incredible experience for him. Before that, the highest from the ground he had ever flown was seven and a half inches. And even that was only when the special mechanism, cleverly hidden under his bottom during public levitations, was working perfectly. And so he had spent all night staring through the porthole of the plane, open-mouthed in amazement.
When he thought he had spent enough time in reverential contemplation of the sliding doors, the Indian finally decided to enter the store. He had travelled for more than ten hours, by bus and plane, to come here, and he did n
ot have much time left in which to accomplish his mission. He was due to fly home the next day.
Quickening his pace, he climbed the huge staircase covered in blue lino that led to the upper floor.
FOR SOMEONE FROM a Western democracy, Mr Ikea had developed a commercial concept that was, to say the least, somewhat unusual: the dictatorial shopping experience.
Any customer wishing to reach the self-service warehouse located on the ground floor is obliged to first go upstairs, to walk along a gigantic and never-ending corridor that weaves between showcase bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens, each one more beautiful than the last, to pass a mouth-watering restaurant, perhaps stopping to eat a few meatballs or salmon wraps, and then to go back downstairs so that they can finally make their purchases in the warehouse. So, basically, someone who has come to buy three screws and two bolts might return home four hours later with a fitted kitchen and a bad case of indigestion.
The Swedes, who are very shrewd people, even thought to draw a yellow line on the floor, indicating the correct way, just in case one of the customers thinks of straying from the beaten path. The whole time that he was on the first floor, Ajatashatru did not deviate from this line, believing that the Kings of Pine Furniture had undoubtedly posted snipers on the tops of wardrobes in order to prevent all escape attempts by shooting on sight any customer overcome by a sudden desire for freedom.
It was all so beautiful that our Rajasthani, who up to this point had known only the austerity of his modest Indian dwellings, wanted to take up residence in the store, to sit down at an Ingatorp table and be served tandoori chicken by a Swedish woman in a yellow-and-blue sari, to snuggle between the Smörboll sheets on this comfortable Sultan Fåvang and take a nap, to lie in a bath and turn on the hot-water tap so he could relax a little after his tiring journey.