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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.”
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.
Rating 4 out of 5.
