"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.