Why are  the Women of “Heart Lamp” so Helpless ?

The plight of women in these stories reminds me of the story of the baby elephant tied to a tiny stake with a thin rope. It struggles and cannot break free, and eventually gives up, believing it cannot escape. As the elephant grows, even though it is now big enough to easily break this same rope and stake, it doesn't try because it does not recognize its own strength.  It is the story of learned helplessness.  

Is it possible for a man to cherish his wife and keep her happy? In “Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal”, Shaista is the wife of Iftikhar, a well-to-do worker in a factory.  He appears besotted with his beautiful wife, always making exaggerated declarations of love for her.  He would even build her a Taj Mahal, so pure and eternal was his love, he announced.  They had six children.  Shaista tells her friend Zeenat, “ ‘What to do Zeenat, I did not do any planning.  Before I even turned round to see what happened, I had had six children.  And your Bhai Saheb came in the way,’ she said, cocking her head at Iftikhar, ‘ when I thought of getting an operation done.  Now I will certainly get it done after number seven’.” With each pregnancy, she gets progressively weaker and dies after her seventh child.  She is complicit in allowing a chain of events that ends in disaster, fully aware that she is responsible for ruining her own health, her daughter’s life and the future of her seven kids.  Their daughter Asifa has to quit school to take care of her siblings.  Ifthikar “made her stop studying because girls do not need much education.” (10) However, Shaista feels she is helpless without the support of her husband.  And the husband who wanted to build a Taj Mahal for her,  marries an 18yr old girl soon after the appropriate mourning period the society mandates.  He is well on his way to ruining a few other lives. 

Husbands can do no wrong.  “Come to think of it, for us, that is, for us Muslims, it is said that, other than Allah above, our pati is God on earth.  Suppose there comes a situation where the husband’s body is full of sores, with pus and blood oozing out from them , it is said that even if the wife uses her tongue to lick these wounds clean, she will still not be able to completely repay the debt she owes him.” (8) Husbands do not owe wives anything.  In “Black Cobras” Aashraf’s husband Yakub leaves her because she gave birth to her third daughter and he was hoping for a son. She appeals to the local religious leader, who ignores her repeatedly because he has other work that takes priority.  The lady she works for tells her to stand up for herself and promises help, “People like you will not get justice if you don’t demand it.  Give a petition to the masjid, gather a panchayat around and call me.  I will tell your man, and that mutawalli, what the Sharia is, what justice is.  Twisting  the Qur’an and Hadiths the way they want in front of a helpless woman is not justice.”(54)  However, even this method did not get her justice.  All the wives of men in the community sympathized with her but were powerless to help her. They longed to comfort her; the mutawalli’s wife had food for her but didn’t want to be seen handing it to her.   Back at the mosque, the sight of his wife appealing to the religious leader further angered her husband. “Yakub burned with uncontrollable anger even in that cold.  ‘Lei! If you who squats to pee has this much arrogance, how much arrogance should I, who stands to piss, have?’ he screamed, in his very dignified manner.” (57).  It’s nothing short of cruelty for a man to treat his wife and children with such anger and contempt, to ignore his own flesh and blood’s obvious illness and instead to declare himself a victim.

What keeps these women shackled so effectively?  There is no punishment more effective than public shaming.  They are constantly threatened with social disgrace and any protest would be a moral transgression. In ‘Heart Lamp’, Mehrun goes back to her parents, tired of her husband’s deception and infidelity. The first thing her parents want to know is if she informed anyone she was leaving.  “Why didn’t you tell them before leaving? It seems like you have made up your mind to bring us dishonor.” (100) She tells her parents her husband was seen with another woman and accuses them of not confronting her husband.  “And what should we do after we come and see him? Say we catch hold of him and ask him about it, and he says, yes, it is true–what can we do then?...What can we do if he says, I don’t want this woman called Mehrun, I will give her talaq?”(101)  The thought of divorce and the public humiliation their married daughter would heap on their heads is enough for them to scold her for her selfishness and escort her back to her errant husband.  Back at her house, she feels she has no choice but to give up her life and it’s only the thought of her helpless children struggling without her that she abandons that idea.

Who do they turn to then?  Only Allah can save them.  “Be a woman once, oh Lord!” is the cry of a helpless humiliated woman.  For only a woman is forsaken by everyone and God (who everyone acknowledges is a man). In her life, as in her death, she is enclosed within walls that she cannot break. “There were four walls around me at all times, and freedom, in the form of a breeze, that marvellous product of your pure imagination, touched my face only when I opened the window.” (199)  The reader does not even know this woman's name--she clearly has no identity or agency. She is a complete nonentity.

Mushtaq’s women are isolated.  They do not benefit from being in a community.  They can rely only on their husbands to care for them and are most often abandoned by their parents who consider daughters a burden.  Religion, tradition and society allow Muslim men to remarry and not provide for their first wife and children. Not even other women bother to help.  Everyone preys on the vulnerable.  

Banu Mushtaq’s writings were part of a literary movement in Kannada in the 70s and the 80s called the Bandaya movement which challenged social injustices and protested the discrimination against relgious minorities, dalits and women. It was very important to use language that was colloquial, and contained the nuances of its dialect. Deepa Bhasthi translated these short stories taking into consideration the tone, the drama (the “haava-bhava”)  and the cultural knowledge of the original Kannada.

Mushtaq, Banu, and Deepa Bhasthi. Heart Lamp: Selected Stories. Penguin, 2025. 

Read more »

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Maame, a housegirl in Cobbe Otcher’s home, sets the woods outside of the compound on fire and escapes from slavery leaving behind her illegitimate daughter Effia.  And so begins a troubled lineage of the Fante tribe. Otcher knew then “that the memory of the fire that burned, then fled would haunt him, his children, and his children’s children for as long as the line continued” (3) The novel spans 250 years narrating the story of Effia and Esi,  two half-sisters and their descendants.

It is the story of West Africa which engaged in trade with the Europeans–human lives for guns.  The Asantes and the Fantes were complicit in the slave trade that destroyed the lives of countless people for so many centuries. Even today, descendants of those slaves have no roots, no home, no connection to their culture, language, family and values. It is the story of illegitimacy–ripping people away from their homes and families by those with illegitimate power, exercising illegitimate authority. The illegitimacy is in the abuse by Europeans, their disregard for human dignity, their indecency towards women and their greed for gold.  They robbed entire nations of their identity.  They continued the abuse long after slavery was abolished.  Quey predicted that “they would just trade one type of shackles for another, trade physical ones that wrapped around wrists and ankles for the invisible ones that wrapped around the mind.” 

James knew that the British had no intention of leaving Africa ever.  They wanted control over the people and the land.  They wanted power.  He himself wanted no part of his family business for he felt the weight of the guilt of his ancestors.  His daughter Abena who always thought him weak and ineffectual, deserving of his nickname “Unlucky”  finally understood what drove her father away from his family.  He told her, “My father was a slaver, a wealthy man. When I decided to leave Fanteland, it was because I did not want to take part in the work my family had done.  I wanted to work for myself.  I see how these townspeople call me Unlucky, but every season I feel lucky to have this land, to do this honorable work.”(153) The war between the Asante tribe and the British continued, but Effia’s lineage had had enough.  They were too ashamed of their role in the slave trade and in letting the Europeans disrespect their people and their values.  The British were the interlopers, they forced their culture on the Africans calling them barbaric and forced Christianity on them calling their religion black magic.  They even changed the names of the women (wenches) they married because they couldn’t pronounce them properly.  “The need to call this thing “good” and this thing “bad”, this thing “white”, and this thing “black”, was an impulse that Effia did not understand.  In her village, everything was everything.  Everything bore the weight of everything else.” (23)  Effia had to forget the folklores and accept her white husband’s ways. The white man was Abro Ni, the Wicked One, the illegitimate ruler.

Maame’s second daughter Esi became a slave and was housed in the same castle as Effia except Esi was in the dungeons.  She was starved, beaten and raped repeatedly.  Only her daughter knew her sorrow. Nothing cut the roots of an entire race like slavery in America.  They were stripped of their identity, family, language and religion.  They did not know who their ancestors were. The loss of the black stone necklace symbolized the loss of heritage. They were made aware of their illegitimacy  every second of their existence.  When Ness sang songs from memory, they were in Twi and she did not even know what they meant till another slave recognized the language. H’s girlfriend complains to him when he disrespects her, “The day you called me that woman’s name I thought, Ain’t I been through enough? Ain’t just about everything I ever had been taken away from me? My freedom. My family. My body. And now I can’t even own my name?...My mama gave me that name herself…All I had of her then was my name.  That was all I had of myself too.  And you wouldn't even give me that.”  With illegitimacy came impotence.  When Sonny was on the housing team with the NAACP taking surveys of living conditions at Harlem, a young boy asked him for help but immediately resigned himself to the inevitable commenting, “You can’t, can you?...You can’t do a single thing, can you?” This is the legacy of slavery in the United States.  Ness was impotent in saving Sam or keeping Kojo, Kojo/Anna was impotent against the Fugitive Slave Act, H against the Convict Leasing System.  Willie was part of the Great Migration which took her to Harlem but nothing had changed over the hundreds of years.  Black people were still illegitimate, impotent and whites held all the power.

How does history treat these slaves? “We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.”(226) Black people in America continue to feel the effects of slavery.  Like Sonny, they are angry because they would never be able to choose their life unlike the whites who could always choose theirs.

The fire that raged outside Otcher’s compound eventually spread over the entire African continent. It could not be doused by the tainted water in the ocean that the slave ships sailed on until Marjorie (Effia’s descendant) met Marcus (Esi’s descendant)  and the two branches of Maame’s family could come to terms with how their past shaped their present.

Gyaasi, Yaa. Homegoing. New York. Viking Books. 2016.

Read more »

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

 Nineteen years before Nora Seed decided to die, the world was her oyster.  Mrs. Elm, her school librarian, was telling her, “A whole life in front of you”, “You could do anything, live anywhere”.  And the next thing you know her father is dead.  Fast forward 19 years, we can see how much of an impact her father’s death had had on her.  We learn of her mother’s cancer, her brother’s depression, friends’ rejections. Just when she thought it couldn’t get worse, her cat dies and she gets fired from her dead-end job.  Initially, I thought she was battling with regrets.  Maybe some.  But the events between the day at the high school library and the day she got fired just built up an arsenal of guilt.  Her fault that the band broke up, her fault that Volts her cat died, her fault her brother isn’t talking to her, her fault customers at the store are not buying anything, her fault Dan broke up with her etc.  She feels she failed everyone and no one needed her. “I have nothing to give”, she laments and overdoses herself with antidepressants.

Nora finds herself between life and death, in a library.  All the books on these sliding shelves tell her story. Opening them provides her a chance to live the life she regretted not living.  Here is Mrs. Elm again, helping her as she did all those years ago. She reminds Nora of her talents--her swimming, philosophy, glaciology, music --all of which she never pursued.  She urges Nora to try those lives and “undo” those regrets. And her journey begins. Although she enters a life with Nora in it, she carries with her the knowledge only from the root life. (We do not know where the other Nora goes.) Each life reveals some truth about her root existence, which gives her a better understanding of it.

Living those regret lives slowly erode her feelings of guilt. Because in these lives, she gains new insights into her family's character, and learns that those regrets were not really hers--they were the regrets of others which she was burdened with.  As she gradually begins to understand herself better, the library becomes insecure, there are “system errors”.  Total self awareness happens when she realizes that she can choose “choices” but not their outcomes.  So then, even when she is happy with Ash and Molly (and Plato) she knows that she had not worked for it and that life couldn’t be hers unless she was in it from the start. With this epiphany, Nora does not need the library anymore. 

It was tiring, waiting for Nora to find herself, watching (reading) her reject all those lives.  And there was a lot of sermonizing and everyone was doing it--Nora, Elm, the author.  There was nothing subtle in the book.  Nothing left to the imagination.  All loose ends were taken care of--even Mr. Banerjee who was such a non entity in the narrative.  It was like reading Dale Carnegie’s self help books, “How to stop Worrying and start Living”.  Moral of the story:  don’t have regrets.  You have to make do with the life you have.  Be happy.   There were clues towards the end that she would find Ash ultimately.  And even if she didn’t there was a happy ending.  She became more confident and wiser.  And the idea of several folks doing these quantum leaps didn’t appeal.  But yes, it was easy reading.

Haig, Matt. The Midnight Library. USA. Viking. 2020

Read more »

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The book just made me weep.  For the senseless destruction, torture of human lives during Hitler’s reign.  The Jews, the ordinary, the poor non Jews.  What made it specially poignant was that the story is narrated by Death.  The personification of Death leaves no suspense, no doubt about the outcome of the novel.   It was a story about Death, a story narrated by Death about events on Himmel Street.  Himmel means Heaven and it is anything but.

It is hard to give an objective analysis of a book which you “feel” more than you read.  It was a beautiful, sensitive story of a young girl (Liesel Meminger) who saw power in words.  Reading was her life--she stole books so that she could live.  Her first book was “The Grave Digger’s Handbook (A Twelve-Step Guide to Grave-digging Success)” published by the Bayern Cemetery Association. A grave digger accidentally drops this book in the dirt when she is at her six year-old brother’s funeral.  She does not know how to read yet, but this book  keeps the memory of her brother alive--that is when she saw her brother last.  Her mother leaves her in the care of Hans and Rosa Hubermann  in a small town outside of Munich and disappears forever.  Her new Papa never leaves her side, and in the nights when she is haunted by nightmares he holds her, plays the accordion for her but most of all, teaches her how to read. In the days to come, the Nazi Party is gets more and more powerful, more and more demanding. Words of hate are sown.  But Molching town is a victim of it just as the Jews were.  Families had lost their children to the war. They had lost their livelihoods.  The young kids were almost always hungry while farmers were feeding Nazis and their propaganda.  Hans (Papa) is a kind man, stands up to the German soldiers, feeds the parade of Jews morsels of bread, hides a Jew (Max) in his home.  He is so full of love for humanity--but he is just very very poor.  His wife washes people’s clothes and we see under the Nazi regime people getting poorer and poorer.  Small businesses have to shut down.  Nobody works but Death.   
Death is a presence. Death is compassionate, affected by all the killings and the bombings.  It complains that it is overworked.  Death kneels at the bodies of children and the aged and the innocent.  If it weren’t for Death as a character in the book, this is just another book on the holocaust.  Death gives us hints constantly.  Periodically, in bold lettering, like a PowerPoint, it gives us a brief character analysis;

THE CONTRADICTORY POLITICS 

OF ALEX STEINER 

Point One: He was a member of the Nazi Party, but he did not hate the Jews, or anyone else for that matter. 

Point Two: Secretly, though, he couldn’t help feeling a percentage of relief (or worse—gladness!) when Jewish shop owners were put out of business— propaganda informed him that it was only a matter of time before a plague of Jewish tailors showed up and stole his customers. 

Point Three: But did that mean they should be driven out completely?

 Point Four: His family. Surely, he had to do whatever he could to support them. If that meant being in the party, it meant being in the party. 

Point Five: Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out. (page 59)

or a peek into the future--In the year 1940, Death says, "Flash forward to the basement, September 1943".  Usually, the forecast not a rosy one--it’s Death, after all.  “The trouble is, who could ever replace me?” (pg 5)  That’s Death’s burden. It is constantly hauling bodies  What was the takeaway from this book? In Death’s words, “I’m always finding humans at their best and worst.  I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both.  Still, they have one thing I envy.  Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die”.  (page 491)
Long book.  Lot of time to weep for death of innocence.  In one of Max Vandenburg's nightmares, he has a fistfight with Hitler and his men but he seems powerless against them. "In the basement of 33 Himmel Street (Hans' house), Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of an entire nation. One by one they climbed into the ring and beat him down."(page 254) In such moments he dreams of Liesel giving him succor. He talks of his dreams with her-- opens her palms, gives her the words and closes them again. The legacy of "The Word Shaker" that he leaves behind, inspires Liesel to write her own book which Death finds in the rubble after the bombing of Himmel Street. It holds on to it till it comes to fetch Liesel many many years later.
I don’t know why young adults should be exposed to so much grief. Very readable book but emotionally draining.

Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.

Read more »

The Gardens of Consolation

The Gardens of Consolation by Parisa Reza spans about 40 yrs of Iran’s political turmoil from 1920-1953.  The journey of the young couple,Talla and Sardar, from Ghamsar to Shemiran describes not just a change in physical landscape but a shifting political landscape as well.  Talla believed that Ghamsar, the beautiful green valley,  was a “lost corner of paradise fallen from heaven”.  At 12, she trusts Sardar enough to brave djinns and ogres in the mountains to move north towards Tehran and make a life there away from her cruel father.  The author talks about how Talla had no idea the country was ruled by a king, did not know his name. “She has never heard the words history, geography, Asia, Europe, Russia or England.”  Russians, French, British, Germans all lived in that country, but she had never seen them.  She did not know even Iran’s tribes. In keeping with this primitiveness of its main characters, the author uses the Iranian calendar as opposed to the Gregorian one.  Talla arrives at a more restrictive city  Sharh-e Rey where she is expected to wear the chador all the time. There is a new social order here of masters and peasants which was totally different from that of Ghamsar which was not ruled by any khan and where everyone owned his own house and land.  No one feared anyone else.  Reza Khan is now in power.  Ultimately, they move to Shemiran. The bazaaris of Tehran disturbed Sardar and he sought to move away from them.  This migration proved to be propitious as it brought Bahram, their son, close to schools and the right social and political contacts.  But Sardar only moved so that he could keep to himself. He never even went to the mosque. He did not want to make decisions for other people, “ to command or change the world”.  He was happy with his radio (which he listened to believing everything and commenting on nothing ) and the acquisition of property.  So why did he leave his hometown Ghamsar?  He wanted his son to know the world beyond the mountains. His son never wanted to reveal to important people what his father did for a living, but ultimately Sardar did make a lot of money out of the land he bought! Talla was happy housekeeping, did not worry about politics, or voting or women’s rights. That was Bahram’s life.  Not the women’s rights.  He used women, treated them shamefully.  I think that is another reason why democracy did not work in Iran. All the ‘farangi’ women were liberated enough, but the Iranian men treated their own women rather badly. We see signs of that quite early in his life when he exhibits jealousy towards his teacher’s husband. Bahram knew he wanted Iran to be a democratic state but he never worked to change his community--only networked for himself. Did he even notice that when he started school the schools had children of “mixed ages and every sort of background, the destitute and the well-to-do”? Soon, that too changes-- once Reza Shah abdicates the throne in favor of his son after the 1941 Allied offensive. And the new king reinstates old traditions. The author stresses at every crisis point in Iran’s political scene that the common man has no role to play in deciding the fate of his country. “Sardar has no part in it, and Talla does not even count.”

Each chapter described subtle changes in their lives due to political upheavals but life went on for Sardar and Talla. However, Bahram was in the world of men, “men of his own era: passionate, uncompromising, brave, self-centered, seductive, authoritarian.” Iran is still evolving.  It got rid of all the international elements-- Britain (that country again!) messed up big time. Partnered with Russia then with US… 

Iran was yet to find its political destiny.  It tried democracy but could not sustain it.  Because of people like Sardar and Talla, parents of Bahram.  In the last chapter of the book, Bahram’s friend’s father comments that democracy came too soon to the country.  It was brought by aristocrats who wanted “the best of everything here: the constitution,  a secular society, freedom of expression, civil rights….Except you can’t just place an order for things like that, or buy them; they have to be learned and they take time, a long time.”  That comes at a price.  Democracy was the political ambition of the intellectual elite not of the 80% illiterate masses. Which was very true.  Right after the coup against Mossadegh, the defeat of the Communist party, the operation AJAX by the CIA, Talla and Sardar are enjoying the Gholhaki night without Bahram.  Sardar is smoking his pipe, Talla is pouring out tea and Sardar exclaims “Allahu Akbar! The world is so beautiful here this evening.  What more could we ask?”

Bahram represents the challenges of a first generation literate who desires to do well but he was not very likable.  He only succeeded in projecting himself as a social climber. His attitude towards women, his seductions, his possessiveness are all positively scary. He abused women. They would “primarily be partners in seduction, the stake in men’s desires” for “an age-old culture of harems and favorites could not be erased from men’s consciousness in the space of a decade simply because Iran had come into the modern age.” And the women themselves turned the game of seduction into playing with fire which is where they think lies the power. Bahram had contempt for his mother as well--he found her love too overbearing, enough for a lifetime.  He was ashamed of them for being illiterate but the truth is he was the failure. The author is obviously a feminist; when she talks about Talla’s miscarriage and the death of her second child, she is telling the readers that Talla was married very early and was not ready to have children or raise them.  And notice that each section of her book is named for a girl or a woman.  In this book Iran is the main character—and the plot is the fall of democracy. And the western world that worshiped individuality and freedom, played a large role in defeating democracy in Iran. It was through the combined efforts of England, Soviet Union and USA that democracy was defeated in Iran. The common people had no say and the intellectuals had no say in their own government.
The short chapters make the novel episodic. They seem to be isolated incidents with no relevance to the plot but actually lend a spirit of adventure to the characters' lives. Talla's first experience with seeing a car in her life, was amusing. For a while the reader saw the world through Talla's eyes. Somehow, her journey ended when her ambitions were fulfilled--to live contently under the stars not really concerned about the state of her country or the world.

Reza, Parisa. The Gardens Of Consolation. Europa Editions. New York. 2015. Print

Read more »

The Householder by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

The Householder by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is bildungsroman fiction about a young, mediocre college teacher Prem, who is new to independence, marriage, job and a city life.  He is a shy innocent, transitioning from a sheltered life into true adulthood where his decisions lead to consequences. Initially, he identifies himself as the son of a college Principal and he thinks he is entitled to the same respect his father was given. “Prem had sometimes envied him his position of comfort and dignity and had looked forward to being married himself so that he occupy a similar one.” (p.38).  It is his immaturity that he is not able connect respect with effort but thinks of it as an entitlement.

He is not sure how his wife Indu fit into his life, although she is even pregnant when the novel starts. He is not willing to share his thoughts or his love with her.  In fact, he is irritated with her sighs and her quiet crying, totally unaware of his role in her unhappiness. When he is asked to bring his wife along for a tea party at the Principal’s house, he is in a conundrum.  “I hardly know her, he wanted to say; how can I bring someone I hardly know to such an important tea-party?” (p.35) His problem seems ridiculous even to him--”Yet it seemed a strange thing to say about one’s own wife, especially after he had already confessed to Sohan Lal that Indu was pregnant.”  Besides being embarrassed about his status as a young householder-- Grihasthashrama, the householder, is the second major phase in a Hindu’s life--  he is conscious of a heavy feeling of responsibility, the burden of a breadwinner.  A short but humbling search for a better paying job makes him realize that his present employment is doubly precious given his inadequate qualifications. He then decides to ask for a raise but each time he attempts to talk to the Principal a comic turn of events prevents him from doing so.  In fact, whenever he tries to assert himself, in any relationship, he finds he is being laughed at.  His wife leaves him when he demands she take care of his widowed mother.  His friend Raj practically ignores him. His mother interferes in his life, and he even has problems with his colleague, Mr. Chaddha which threaten his career. However, he finds strength to move on.  He attends prayer meetings where a Swamiji teaches him to accept the downs of life with the ups.  Unlike Hans Loewe, for whom the Indian mystique is elusive, Prem instinctively understands it as he matures.  He surrenders to the will of God and immerses himself in the role of the householder without actively seeking solutions. Intimacy between husband and wife deepens, and a new man emerges who can forget for a while the Khannas and the Seigals of the world who prey on innocent victims like him.

Writing with a lively sense of humor, Jhabvala makes the everyday landscape specially poignant. The readers laugh at Prem when he handles his life clumsily but sympathize with him when he has a tough time picking himself up.  They cheer for him because he has just started out in life, is extremely conscientious and he deserves every opportunity to prove himself.

Jhabvala, Ruth. The Householder. W.W. Norton & Company. New York. 1985. Print

Update 10/27/2013: Please read this chapter from Nagendra Kumar Singh's book, Society and Self in the novels of R.P. Jhabvala and Kamala Markandaya.

Read more »

"Xala" by Sembenè Ousmane

       

    “Xala” opens with the announcement of a proud moment in the history of Senegal.  An African is now the head of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  This is a period of transition from French colonial rule to African Independence.  Leading this country is a group of businessmen, at the peak of their career with a foot in the door of wholesale trade and the import-export field.  Having an African President to lead the Chamber of commerce and industry meant “access to the heart of the country’s economy, a foothold in the world of high finance, and of course, the right to walk with head held high.”(1) Among that elite group is El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye, a teacher turned entrepreneur.  After dabbling in various business schemes, he settles down as the “front” for overseas investors.  He establishes himself on the board of two or three local companies and acquires for himself a strong political and social influence.  This day is important to El Hadji in other ways as well.  He is acquiring a third wife.  “This third marriage raised him to the rank of the traditional notability; it represented a kind of promotion.”(4)  That actually reminds me of a Monkhouse limerick:

There once was an old man of Lyme
Who married three wives at a time,
When asked, “Why a third?”
He replied, “One's absurd!
And bigamy, sir, is a crime.” 

But I digress. 

On his wedding night, El Hadji is stricken with xala (A Wolof term for “impotence”) and is not able to consummate his marriage.  The novel is about the embarrassment it causes to his manhood and to his status in society which leads him to be a failure in business as well. In the few weeks that he has the xala, El Hadji suffers considerably.  “His bitterness had become an inferiority complex in the company of his peers.  He imagined himself the object of their looks and the subject of their conversation.  He could not endure the asides, the way they laughed whenever he went past, the way they stared at him.  His infirmity, temporary though it might be, made him incapable of communicating with his employees, his wives, his children and his business colleagues.  When he could allow himself a few moments of escape he imagined himself a carefree child again.”(38-9)

This reaction seems extreme. To El Hadji, however, who is on the threshold of “greatness” and for whom acquisition is a sign of progress, his impotence sounds his death knell.  He is the representative of the corrupt, and the hypocritical middle-class of Senegal.  He belongs to the world where only money talks.  Just as he is a fusion of two cultures, the book is a fusion of two apparently parallel plots—the story of El Hadji the man, and the story of the country he represents.  The author hints that the country is not yet ready to take responsibility for its own rule, because the very fabric of society reveals moral decadence.  The xala is not El Hadji’s alone.  The impotence had spread into all the nooks and crannies of Senegalese government and culture.

 

Change has to come from self-awareness.  Where does El Hadji really belong?  Sembenè calls him a “synthesis” of two cultures (French and Wolof)—“business had drawn him into the European middle class after a feudal African education.  Like his peers, he made skilful use of his dual background, for their fusion was not complete.” (4)  He has all the status symbols of a wealthy European businessman—the Mercedes Benz, three houses (referred to as ‘villas’) and of a rich Muslim—the three wives.  “I am a Muslim.  I have the right to four wives,” asserts Hadji.  Polygamy is one of Sembenè’s favorite themes. Herein lies the impotence of women. El Hadji’s first wife Adja Awa Astou, a Christian, had severed her ties with her own family to marry a Muslim and had accepted his religion.  Her sacrifice was for naught. She was forced to face the reality of an oppressive social structure when El Hadji married again.  “By an act of will she had overcome all her feelings of resentment toward the second wife.  Her ambition was to be a wife according the teachings of Islam by observing the five daily prayers and showing her husband complete obedience.”(20) She had no family support; as a result she was a lonely woman. Sembenè Ousmane seems to point out the importance of free will.  She chose to be alone and “as others isolate themselves with drugs she obtained her daily dose from her religion.”(22)  Although a victim by choice, she plays the role of the martyr. In fact, she warns Rama (her daughter) that it is not easy to change the world and that every woman was fated to share her man.  “You are young still.  Your day will come if it pleases Yalla.  Then you will understand.” (12)  Rama would not allow herself be put in that position.  Divorce may be a social stigma for her mother but not her. She is intelligent, feisty, and rebellious and has a mind of her own.  She is educated and questioning, the product of a new free generation that questions unfair traditional practices.  “A polygamist is never frank” (13) she tells her father and is slapped for her pains.  She has the courage of her convictions, and is the key to the change that is to take place in her country. She is conscious of the new political awakening in her country, and is determined to keep the African ethnicity alive by promoting Wolof language instead of the colonial French. 

As for the second wife, “as long as she was the favorite she accepted polygamy and the rivalry.”  However, Oumi N’Doye’s pride was hurt. At El Hadji’s third wedding she bravely lies to the aunt of the bride and the first wife: “I thank Yalla for putting me to the test so that in my turn I too can show that I am not jealous or selfish.”  But she is both of those things, and she does share the bitterness of polygamy with the first wife.  “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.  Neither spoke.” (20)  Neither had anything to say because they were carried by this tide that they had no control over.

Women felt that they had no way to defend themselves against the ignominy of being relegated to the back burner with the advent of a new co-wife.  Oumi is unhappy; but her introspection can only bring out her shallow nature.  She recalls how she would rob Adja Awa Astou of whole days and nights of her husband’s company, and pretend to herself she was the only wife.  Not that she is remorseful of her part in hurting her co-wife.  She plans now to extract all the privileges she can from her husband.  Aware that divorcing him would leave her destitute and force her to prostitution to maintain herself, she decides to help herself to El Hadji’s wealth. Her immediate target is the acquisition of a car.  She waits till her “moomé” (her rightful time with her husband) to make her move; plies him with delicious food and then speaks her piece.  “You must treat us all fairly as the Koran says.  Each household has a car except this one.  Why?” (51) Not being educated or intelligent, she does not realize that nothing about polygamy is fair to women or the children.  The third wife N’gone, for instance, is a mere nineteen years old and is manipulated by Yay Bineta (her aunt) to marry a middle aged man who has been married twice before and has had a brood of children, the eldest of whom is her age.  Afraid that N’Gone would make rash decisions and fall for men who “don’t have a pocket handkerchief and wear clothes only fit for a scarecrow”, Yay Bineta fixes El Hadji as her quarry and embarks on a systematic campaign to trap him into marrying her niece. El Hadji, always attracted by a pretty face, falls neatly into the trap. In a tongue-in-cheek fashion, the author terms El Hadji’s life as “Urban Polygamy” or “Geographical Polygamy” as opposed to “Rural Polygamy” where wives have to share their home.  In the towns, as in the case of El Hadji, the men have different houses scattered all over so the wives do not meet each other and the children have limited contact with their father.  The fathers have no particular interest in the raising of the children. They are to the children what the colonial rule is to Senegal.

The xala is a lesson.  Everything that El Hadji built up, crumbles like a deck of cards.  Corrupt and greedy that he is, he discovers that his personal and business worlds were propped up on a weak foundation and could not endure the vicissitudes of life.  Also, Sembenè Ousmane condemns the imposition of an alien culture over the traditional one.  When El Hadji suffers from the xala, it is not modern medicine that cures him.  He is cured by the wisdom of centuries, by a marabout who lives in a village not accessible by car away from the sphere of influence of the western civilization.  It is the deep mysticism of the African culture, thrust rudely aside by the colonists and Christianity, which feeds the soul of its people.  Suddenly, the novel is not about El Hadji anymore but of the prevalence of a more insidious influence, of the oppression of a race, of human dignity.  It is up to El Hadji to rediscover the visionary gleam, the glory and the dream of the African people.   In a cri de coeur at the end of the novel, he criticizes the citizens of Senegal for their lack of integrity and for pandering to the colonists. Although the country was free, he pointed out that the important positions of the state were still occupied by the French. 

“What are we?  Mere agents, less than petty traders!  We merely redistribute. Re-distribute the remains the big men deign to leave us.  Are we businessmen?  I say no!  Just clodhoppers!”(83)

The truth is out, and the other “businessmen,” in denial, are shocked.  El Hadji continues:

“We are a bunch of clodhoppers.  Who owns the banks? The insurance companies? The factories?  The wholesale trade? The cinemas?  The bookshops?  The hotels?  All these and more besides are out of our  control. We are nothing better than crabs in a basket.  We want the ex-occupier’s place?  We have it.  This Chamber is the proof.  Yet what change is there really in general or in particular?  The colonialist is stronger, more powerful than ever before, hidden inside us, here in this very place.  He promises us the left-overs of the feast if we behave ourselves.  Beware anyone who tries to upset his digestion, who wants a bigger profit.  What are we?  Clodhoppers! Agents! Petty traders! In our fatuity we call ourselves “businessmen”!  Businessmen without funds!” (83)

In a dramatic turn of events, reminiscent of the medieval Moral Interludes, El Hadji faces the consequences of this corrupt society.  He falls from grace, his homes are taken away, his wives leave him and he is subject to a ritual of spiritual cleansing that is at once atavistic and cathartic. He is stripped naked and spit on by beggars and lepers, who represent not the dregs of humanity but the people that were trampled upon without qualms by these corrupt businessmen and himself.  One of the lepers accuses him, “You are a disease that is infectious to everyone.  The virus of a collective leprosy.” (100) El Hadji surrenders to this treatment because he realizes the need for every man(personal level) and the country(collective level) to be purged of every evil on the soil.

Sembenè Ousmane’s skill as a film maker is obvious in the dramatic intensity of each ‘scene’ in the book, and there is really no other way to describe these chapters.  The humor of the bedroom scene on the wedding night with the woman and the cock, the mortar and the axe has the readers scoff at tradition, but the humor soon turns to seriousness at the dying mores and the collapse of an ancient civilization and the endemic ills such as polygamy. The book has representation from every strata of society, each searching for identity in the confusing world. The author is himself a griot, a wandering minstrel keeping alive the culture of the Senegalese.

Ousmane, Sembenè. Xala. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books. 1976

Rating 4 out of 5.

Read more »