Xala

“He had to admit it, N’Gone had the savour [sic] of fresh fruit, which was something his wives had long since lost. He was drawn by her firm, supple body, her fresh breath. With his two wives on the one hand and the daily demands of his business life, N’Gone seemed to him like a restful oasis in the middle of the desert. She was good for his pride too—he was attractive to a young woman!” 

El Hadji marries N’Gone to satisfy his vanity. He fears growing old and wants to believe that he is still desirable to young woman. Thus, he deludes himself into thinking that N’Gone’s interest in him is unrelated to the financial comfort he can provide. 

“Being ordered about by a woman was not in the least to El Hadji’s liking and he was sufficiently Westernized not to have any faith in all this superstition.” 

El Hadji refuses to sit on the mortar, which Yay Bineta, N’Gone’s Badyen (godmother), orders him to do. This thought reveals both El Hadji’s resentment of Yay Bineta’s relentless meddling, which occurs throughout the novel, as well as his sexism and his selective rejection of certain African superstitions.

“As they watched someone else’s happiness the memory of their own weddings left a nasty taste. Eaten up with a painful bitterness they shared a common sense of abandonment and loneliness.” 

El Hadji’s first two wives, Adja Awa Astou and Oumi N’Doye, watch El Hadji with his new bride, N’Gone. Despite having very different characteristics, both women feel jealousy, and both are reluctant to acknowledge their feelings. Both pride and fear of losing their positions keep them silent and prevent them from forming a beneficial alliance with each other.

“As others isolate themselves with drugs she obtained her own daily dose from her religion.” 

Adja Awa Astou, El Hadji’s first wife, is characterized by her piety and her devotion to the tenets of Islam. She converted to Islam for her husband and her unwavering faith in it gives her a sense of purpose, despite her dissatisfaction with her marriage. Unable to maintain her appeal as a woman, she transforms herself into an impeccable feminine ideal, akin to the Virgin Mary (she was, at first, a Catholic) or Muhammad’s wife, Khadijah.

“The first wife implied a conscious choice, she was an elect. The second wife was purely optional. The third? Someone to be prized. When it came to the noomé, the second wife was more like a door-hinge. She had given a lot of thought to her position in the man’s marital cycle and she realized that she was in disgrace.” 

Oumi N’Doye considers her position as second wife. She has neither the honor of being the first wife—the one who had been with El Hadji the longest—nor the novelty of being his youngest and newest wife. This quote highlights her dilemma in the context of how vulnerable she is and how there were few options available to African women, particularly those, like Oumi, from poor backgrounds.

“It is perhaps worth pointing out that all these men who had given themselves the pompous title of ‘businessmen’ were nothing more than middlemen, a new kind of salesman. The old trading firms of the colonial period, adapting themselves to the new situation created by African Independence, supplied them with goods on a wholesale or semi-wholesale basis, which they then re-sold.” 

The narrator reveals what El Hadji will later repeat at the end of the novel—that the businessmen were not true leaders in their countries, but the means by which France retained control over the nation’s economy and resources. There are numerous instances in the novel in which the narrator offers critiques, such as this one, about the elevated statuses of El Hadji and his colleagues. 

“Africa will always be ahead of Europe. You’re lucky you can have as many wives as you need.” 

The French proprietor of a restaurant that El Hadji frequents congratulates his customer on his recent nuptials. The proprietor envies the ease with which it seems African men of means can acquire and keep more than one woman. The irony is that polygamy is regarded by the women in the novel, particularly Rama, as a sign of regression. Also, none of El Hadji’s wives are satisfied with the arrangement but feel compelled to remain silent out of fear of losing their respective positions. It is this silence and subordination, however, that appeals to the restaurant owner, who reveals his own sexist wish that he could similarly subordinate French women.

“In our country, this so-called ‘gentry,’ imbued with their role as master—a role which began and ended with fitting out and mounting the female—sought no elevation, no delicacy in their relations with their partners. This lack of communication meant they were no better than stallions for breeding. El Hadji was as limited, shortsighted and unintelligent as any of his kind.” 

El Hadji, as the son of a clan chief, has an elevated social status, but this, the narrator notes, does not mean that he is either exceptionally intelligent or capable. The snobbery of this social class encourages them to find mates for no other reasons than to secure social alliances or to make attractive children—not to build mutually beneficial partnerships.

“It is worth knowing something about the life led by urban polygamists. It could be called geographical polygamy, as opposed to rural polygamy, where all the wives and children live together in the same compound. In the town, since the families are scattered, the children have little contact with their father. Because of his way of life the father must go from house to house, villa to villa, and is only there in the evenings, at bedtime. He is therefore primarily a source of finance, when he has work. The mother has to look after the children’s education, so academic achievement is often very poor.” 

The narrator describes how the polygamist system works in Senegal. The system takes on a different character in urban areas, such as Dakar, requiring the husband to be mobile—hence, the necessity of El Hadji’s Mercedes both to help him see his families and to reinforce his financial status. Usually, the women in these marriages lack education themselves, which results in them not knowing how to ensure their children’s achievement in this area. 

“The village had neither shop nor school nor dispensary; there was nothing at all attractive about it in fact. Its life was based on the principles of community interdependence.” 

The narrator describes the village where El Hadji and Modu go to see the marabout, Sereen Mada, who cures El Hadji’s xala. The village is the opposite of Dakar, in that it offers none of the infrastructure that is common in cities. The community is also based on traditional tribal values and not on modern commerce rooted in Western standards of life. It is ironic that El Hadji, a man who prides himself on living according to Western values, and one who usually eschews African superstitions and traditional lifestyles, would go to such a village to cure himself.

“The ‘at which villa’ had taken him by surprise, interrupting the warm flow of his inner excitement. In effect, he had three villas and three wives, but where was his real home? At the houses of three wives he was merely ‘passing through.’ Three nights each! He had nowhere a corner of his own into which he could withdraw and be alone. With each of his wives everything began and ended with the bed.” 

With the curse over, El Hadji feels suddenly overwhelmed by his sexual duties, which he imposed upon himself by taking three wives. Though Adja Awa Astou demands the least of him sexually, his sense of manhood remains rooted in his ability to perform sexually. This leaves him unable to relax with any of them.

“That year the feast had passed unmarked. There had been nothing to distinguish that Sunday from all the other Sundays. Holiday-makers, including many Europeans, had come to sunbathe on the warm sand of the beach. Papa John couldn’t understand it at all: these Europeans who abandoned God’s house for idleness. Hadn’t they brought Catholicism to this country?” 

Papa John, who lives on the island of Gorée, is a devout Catholic. He also raised his daughter, Adja Awa Astou (formerly, Renée), in his faith. He laments the disappearance of Catholic traditions from the island, which is one of numerous signs of modernization in Africa. Papa John has been conditioned to this aspect of colonialism and has adopted Catholic traditions as part of his own way of life. He is a foil for his granddaughter, Rama, who seeks to restore Senegalese traditions as default. 

“Pity she was a girl. He would have been able to make something of her had she been a boy.” 

El Hadji is thinking about his daughter and eldest child, Rama. Despite her immense potential, her education, and her strong will, El Hadji cannot see how invaluable his daughter will be to the country’s future, simply because of her sex. He expresses concern about her future only in the context of her marrying Pathé, with whom she is informally engaged. El Hadji’s attitude toward his daughter offers explicit evidence of his sexism.