The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe (2 page)

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 spelled 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 labor and slavery. This project, which involved five hundred villages in the north of India, enabled the construction of several health, nutrition and education centers 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 mustache 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 a tracksuit and sandals had just stopped in front of him, pushing (not without difficulty) a shopping cart 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:
Eusku​zaymo​ameus​sieuo​riayv​ouleu​rsivo​uplay​?

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 straightaway, 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 cart toward 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 fit 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 spoiled 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 favor 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 airplane 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, openmouthed 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 traveled for more than ten hours, by bus and plane, to come here, and he did not 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 linoleum 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 mouthwatering 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.

As in his conjuring tricks, however, everything here was fake. The book he had picked up randomly from the Billy bookcase was nothing but a plastic brick in a book jacket, the television in the living room boasted no more electronic components than an aquarium, and not a single drop of hot water (or cold water, for that matter) would ever drip from the tap in the bathroom.

Nevertheless, the idea of spending the night here began to germinate in his mind. After all,
he had not reserved a hotel room, for financial reasons, and his airplane did not take off until 1 p.m. the next day. And all the money he had was his counterfeit €100 note, which he would need to buy the bed. And the invisible elastic would not work forever.

Relieved at knowing where he would be sleeping that night, Ajatashatru was now free to concentrate on his mission.

Ajatashatru had never seen so many chairs, spaghetti tongs and lamps in his life. Here, within arm’s reach, an abundance of objects stretched out before his wonder-filled eyes. He was ignorant of the function of quite a few of them, but that hardly mattered. It was the sheer quantity that excited him. This was a true Aladdin’s cave. There were objects everywhere. If his cousin had been there with him, he would have said: “Look at that! And that! And that too!,” leaping from one display to the next, touching everything he saw as if he were a little boy.

But he was all alone, so he could only say “Look at that! And that! And that too!” to himself, and if he leapt from one display to the next, touching everything he saw as if he were a little boy, people were likely to conclude that he was a madman. In his village, mad people were beaten with long wooden sticks. He had no desire to find out if a kinder fate awaited the insane in France.

The sight of all these salad bowls and microwave ovens reminded him that he came from a very different world. To think that if he had not come here, he would perhaps never have known that such a place existed! He would have to tell his cousin all about this. If only Parthasarathy could be here too. Ajatashatru found it difficult to enjoy all these new discoveries on his own. When he was away from his family, he missed them so much that even the most jaw-dropping landscapes seemed boring and bland.

As he was thinking this, Ajatashatru arrived at the bedroom section. In front of him were a dozen beds, each arrayed with bright and colorful duvets labeled with improbable and unpronounceable names. Mysa Strå, Mysa Rönn, Mysa Rosenglim (was this some kind of word game with letters picked up randomly?). Soft and fluffy pillows, thrown on the beds in neat patterns—or, rather, placed neatly on the beds in a way that suggested they had been thrown—coaxed customers to lie down and take a nap.

A couple lay decorously on a Birkeland, their minds filled with visions of the delightful nights they would spend there together. Perhaps they would even make a child in that bed? Indeed, a sign written in French and English informed visitors that one baby in ten was conceived in
an Ikea bed. Ajatashatru was pretty sure that the population of India had not been included in this statistic.

This idyllic scene was rudely shattered when two children jumped like savages onto an Årviksand and began a very loud and violent pillow fight. The young couple, lying two beds down from this battle, got up in a panic and fled toward the bathroom section, indefinitely postponing all plans for procreation.

Ajatashatru did not hang around this now-hostile environment either, and wove nimbly between the bedside tables. Not that he didn’t like children. Quite the contrary, in fact. He was simply not interested in any of the models of bed on display. What he was looking for did not seem to be located in this section.

He noticed three employees, dressed in the store’s colors—yellow and blue, the colors of the Swedish flag, like the sari worn by the beautiful Swedish woman who had served him tandoori chicken in his imagination—but they all seemed busy with other customers. So he went over to one of the three and waited his turn.

The sales assistant he had chosen was a short fat man wearing green-tinted glasses, diamond earrings and a toupee, the kind of person who would be caught within minutes were anyone
ever to witness him committing a crime. He was busy with his computer, occasionally lifting his head to look at the customers in front of him before returning his full attention to the screen. A few minutes later, he grabbed a sheet of paper from the printer and handed it to the couple who, apparently satisfied, walked quickly away, eager to tell their friends that Sir Elton John was now working in Ikea and that he had just sold them a shoe cabinet.

After checking that the sales assistant spoke English, Ajatashatru asked him if they had the latest model of the Hertsyörbåk bed of nails on display. To illustrate his query, he unfolded the piece of paper he had retrieved from his jacket pocket and handed it to the employee.

It was a color photograph of a bed for fakirs made of real Swedish pine, available in three colors, with stainless-steel nails of adjustable length. The page had been torn from the June 2012 Ikea catalog, 198 million copies of which had been printed worldwide, double the annual print run of the Bible.

Several models were available: 200 nails (very expensive and extremely dangerous), 500 nails (affordable and comfortable), and 15,000 nails (very cheap and, paradoxically, very comfortable). Above the bed, a slogan boasted:
Sharpen
your senses!
The price of €99.99 (for the model with 15,000 nails) was displayed in large yellow figures.