Xala

by Ousmane Sembène

  ‘It was wonderful yesterday. My congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you, Madame Diouf,’ replied El Hadji, taking refuge in the tiny room he called his office.

  Madame Diouf resumed her battle against the never-ending invasion of flies, cockroaches and geckos.

  El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye was very depressed. He contemplated the door of his office, without seeing anything of the carpenter’s bad handiwork. The noise from the street reached him, interrupting his reflections. The monotonous scraps of a beggar’s chanting on the other side of the road got on his nerves. He returned to reality like a drowning man who reaches the surface and finds he can breathe again. To his surprise he found himself already regretting this third marriage. Should he get a divorce this very morning? He put that solution out of his mind. Did he love N’Gone? The question brought no clear answer. It would not upset him to leave her. Yet to drop her after all he had spent seemed intolerable. There was the car. And the villa. And all the other expenses. To repudiate her now would hurt his male pride. Even if he were to reach such a decision he would be incapable of carrying it out. What would people say? That he was not a man.

  There had been a time when he had loved (or at least desired) N’Gone. She had attracted him. And now? What would become of him? What was he to do?

  Modu sat on his stool, his back against the wall, as he supervised the little boy who was washing the car. His torso bare, the lad was busily wiping the car with a sponge. Modu was one of his best customers, for his employer was a man of importance. At the corner of the same crowded, busy street, on the right-hand side, the beggar sat cross-legged on his worn-out sheepskin, chanting. Now and again his piercing voice dominated the other noises. Beside him lay a heap of nickel and bronze coins, the gifts of passers-by.

  Modu enjoyed the beggar’s song. The chant rose in a spiral, up and up, then fell back to the ground to accompany the feet of the pedestrians. The beggar was part of the décor like the dirty walls and the ancient lorries delivering goods. He was well-known in the street. The only person who found him irritating was El Hadji, who had had him picked up by the police on several occasions. But he would always come back weeks later to his old place. He seemed attached to it.

  Alassane, the chauffeur-domestic employed to drive El Hadji’s children to and from school, was late this morning. He too had been celebrating the day before. He had a great weakness for beer. The morning round began as usual at Oumi N’Doye’s villa.

  As soon as Alassane hooted the children came running out of the house with their satchels.

  ‘Alassane!’ called Oumi N’Doye, still in her dressing-gown, from the doorway.

  ‘Madam?’

  ‘Have you seen the master this morning?’

  ‘No, madam,’ replied Alassane, helping the children. into the vehicle.

  ‘Alassane, when you have dropped the children, come straight back here.’

  ‘Yes, madam,’ he said, driving off.

  Oumi N’Doye’s offspring were in their places. The back of the mini-bus was divided in two. Each family had its bench. This segregation had not been the work of the parents but a spontaneous decision on the part of the children themselves.

  In his office El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye was raging against the beggar. That vagabond! He had asked his secretary to telephone the President of the ‘Group’. The wait seemed interminable. He ached between the shoulders. The telephone rang. He grabbed the receiver.

  ‘Hullo! Yes! Speaking. I need your help, President. Yes, it’s very urgent. Very. In my office. In an hour? Fine.’

  He replaced the receiver and called out:

  ‘Come in!’

  It was Madame Diouf.

  ‘Your second wife is on the phone. The other line.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll take it.’

  When his secretary had left the room, he picked up the receiver again.

  ‘It’s me. What is it Oumi? I had a lot to do this morning. I have my work to do. What? Come round to your place’. Now? I can’t. What? Money? You’ve had enough already!’

  El Hadji held the receiver away from his ear. At the other end Oumi N’Doye stormed:

  ‘I’m not Adja Awa. After all you spent on this wedding, you can at least think of your children. I’m sending Alassane round.’

  ‘A waste of time,’ shouted El Hadji. ‘I’ll call this afternoon. Yes, I promise. Yes, yes!’

  El Hadji nervously replaced the receiver and took out his handkerchief to wipe his damp face. Oumi N’Doye exasperated him. The woman was a spendthrift. Only the day before yesterday he had given her plenty of money. What had she done with it? His suspicions returned to her. Was she responsible for his xala? Why had she phoned him at the shop?

  There was another knock at the door.

  ‘Come in!’

  It was the President, wearing a big smile.

  ‘I thought you must be exhausted! So the “stuff” worked then?’ he asked, settling himself comfortably into a worn-out easy-chair bought at a sale.

  ‘It’s not that,’ said El Hadji, coming from behind the table. ‘I have a problem. And you’re the only person I can trust. I have the xala.’

  The President started and looked up at El Hadji, who was standing over him.

  ‘I’ll be frank. I can’t manage an erection with the girl. Yet when I left the shower I was stiff. Then when I got to her, nothing. Nothing at all.’

  The President sat with his mouth open, unable to utter a sound.

  The beggar’s chant, almost as if it were inside the room, rose an octave.

  ‘This morning the Badyen advised me to see a marabout.’

  ‘You took no precautions?’

  ‘What precautions? I’ve never believed in all that nonsense,’ said El Hadji. The tone of his voice had changed, became agitated, as if broken. ‘The Badyen wanted me to sit on a mortar.’

  ‘When last did you make love?’

  ‘The day before yesterday with my second wife.’

  ‘Do you suspect anyone? Either of your wives?’

  ‘Which one?’ El Hadji wondered, walking over to the window and shutting it.

  ‘These beggars should all be locked up for good!’

  ‘Adja Awa Astou, for example?’

  El Hadji turned round to face him. His face was expressionless, only his eyes moved.

  ‘Adja Awa Astou?’ he mused aloud. He could not make up his mind. He could not say for sure that she was responsible for his condition,

  ‘No,’he confessed. ‘Our sexual relations are very infrequent but she never complains.’

  ‘The second then?’ .

  Frowning, El Hadji pondered the possibility.

  ‘Why would Oumi N’Doye do this to me? I spoil her more than the awa.’

  ‘All the more reason for her to make you impotent. As long as she. was the favourite she accepted polygamy and the rivalry. But now she has lost the privileges of being the youngest. She is not the first woman to behave like this and give her man the xala.’

  El Hadji was impressed by the President’s logic.

  ‘You mean it is Oumi N’Doye?’

  ‘No! No! I’m not accusing your second wife at all. But I do know that they are all capable of it.’

  ‘I am a Muslim. I have the right to four wives. I have never deceived either of them on this point.’

  The President realized his colleague was talking to himself.

  ‘The thing to do is to go and see a marabout.’

  ‘That is why I asked you to come round,’ said El Hadji eagerly.

  ‘I do know a marabout. But he is very expensive.’

  ‘His price will be mine.’

  ‘Let’s go then.’

  In the street the President said a few words to his chauffeur – a fat man with eyes reddened by chronic conjunctivitis who shook his head continuously – then took his place beside El Hadji in Modu’s Mercedes.

  At the same time as the President and El Hadji were driving in the Mercedes along the main r
oad of the town towards the suburbs, Yay Bineta, the Badyen, was leaving the conjugal villa. She was in a mood of bitter disappointment. The man might be suffering physically from his xala but she was the moral victim. Her dreams had been shattered. ‘I know how to defend myself. So El Hadji’s wives want to get rid of us, do they? They want to humiliate us perhaps? I swear by my ancestors that within three months the co-wives will be repudiated and thrown away like worn-out rags. Or else they will kneel before my N’Gone like slaves,’ she promised herself. She went past the two-seater wedding present, perched high on its trailer with its white bow. She had the key and the licence for the car under her cloth. She did not trust the man’s intentions.

  She crossed the road and hailed a taxi.

  In order to understand this woman one needs to know her background. Yay Bineta had always been hounded by bad luck, ay gaaf. She had had two husbands, both now in their graves. The traditionalists held that she must have her fill of deaths: a third victim. So no man would marry her for fear of being this victim. This is a society in which very few women overcome this kind of reputation. She was seen as a devourer of men, the promise of an early death. Because of her ay gaaf, men kept out of her way, and married women of her age preferred to divorce rather than risk widowhood near her. Yay Bineta suffered deeply from her situation. She knew she was condemned to remain a widow for the rest of her life. In order to save face and to preserve the balance of her mind her parents had gone so far as to ‘put her on offer’, as it were. But. no man would, take it up.

  The marriage of her brother’s daughter was her marriage.

  She exchanged the customary greetings and entered the single bed-sitting-room shared by her brother’s children and grandchildren. Babacar was seated on a mat reading the Koran. Mam Fatou hurried forward eagerly to welcome the Badyen. She wanted news of her daughter. Had she really kept herself a virgin? Mam Fatou had not slept a wink all night.

  ‘Can I talk?’ asked the Badyen.

  ‘Yes,’ said N’Gone’s mother, intrigued by the question.

  ‘We have been insulted! El Hadji has not consummated the marriage.’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’

  Babacar. stopped his reading.

  ‘Just what I said. El Hadji has the xala.’

  The three of them looked at one another without speaking.

  ‘Babacar, did you hear?’ said Mam Fatou breaking the silence.

  The old man had been so taken by surprise he could only nod his head up and down.

  ‘What’s to be done?’ asked Mam Fatou.

  ‘El Hadji has gone to find a healer,’ said Yay Bineta. ‘His wives are bad, worse than whooping-cough in an adult.’

  ‘To be honest I wasn’t happy about this marriage from the start. It was too easy, too good to be true in these times,’ said Mam Fatou, looking at her husband.

  A heavy silence followed this remark.

  ‘Say that again,’ shouted the Badyen, ready to, leap at her like a tigress. ‘You should have said so before it was too late, and openly. El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye didn’t force our hand.’

  The Badyen spoke harshly and glared angrily at her sister-in-law, her face hard.

  ‘You misunderstand me. I am worried for our N’Gone,’ said the mother, anxious to avoid a quarrel with the Badyen.

  Yay Bineta’s dislike for her brother’s wife was intense. She hated the woman for having turned her brother into a sheep.

  ‘Babacar, you must go and see El Hadji and help him,’ ordered Mam Fatou, addressing her husband.

  ‘Where will I find him?’ he asked.

  ‘At his office. A woman can’t talk to a man about such things,’ said N’Gone’s mother.

  ‘She’s right,’ said Yay Bineta.

  The old man closed his Koran, folded his mat in two and got to his feet.

  ‘And the car?’

  ‘It’s outside their front door. Here are the keys and the licence. It’s his wedding present, so the car belongs to N’Gone,’ the Badyen explained.

  Babacar went out, wearing his slippers. When they were left alone the two women put their heads together. They suppressed their mutual dislike in order to confront the ill-will of El Hadji’s wives together.

  An empty, cloudless sky. The torrid, stifling heat hung in the air. Clothes stuck to damp bodies. Everyone was returning to work after lunch, so the streets were very busy. Mopeds, bicycles and pedestrians streamed in the same direction towards the commercial centre of the city.

  Old Babacar had returned home. He had waited all morning in vain for El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye. After Tisbar, the midday prayer, Mam Fatou had insisted he try again. ‘He is your son-in-law after all,’ she had told him. Walking close to the walls and the balconies he tried to protect himself from the sun’s onslaught. He hoped he would find El Hadji.

  The secretary-saleslady recognized him. She took him for a cadger come to collect his ‘share’ of the wedding. She told him to take a seat and returned to her work. She had three customers to see to. Others came after them.

  The hours passed.

  The old man listened to the beggar’s chanting. He liked it. ‘What a fine voice,’ he thought.

  The second wife, Oumi N’Doye, came in and without preamble spoke to the secretary bossily in French.

  ‘Is he in?’

  Madame Diouf looked up. A stray lock of her black wig hung down over her narrow forehead. She recognized the newcomer. She pushed back the hair with her finger.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He left nothing for me?’

  ‘No. But if you’d care to wait... This gentleman is also waiting.’

  Oumi N’Doye sat on a chair, crossed her legs and opened the woman’s magazine she had just bought. The secretary eased the fan towards her. Feeling the gusts of cool air the second wife thanked her with a sour smile.

  Oumi N‘Doye was a great expert on overseas women’s fashions, those of the grands couturiers and the film stars. Photo-novelettes were her daily reading. She devoured them, believing everything in them, and dreamed of passionate love affairs she would have liked to experience. She had felt uneasy since the previous day. She found her husband’s third marriage intolerable; it devalued her. The thought that she was a second choice, an option, enraged her. The middle position, giving her a kind of intermediate role, was unbearable for a co-wife. 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 moomé, 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 could not overcome her feeling of ill-will towards Adja Awa Astou. ‘Why doesn’t she show disapproval of this marriage? She must be pleased about it, the old monkey-skin,’ she muttered to herself. She, Oumi N’Doye, had been El Hadji’s favourite. There had been times when she had kept the man longer than the code of polygamy allowed. There had been times too, at the height of her reign as the favourite, when she had robbed Adja Awa Astou of whole days and nights. The first wife had never complained, never demanded what was her right. Oumi N’Doye had come to think of herself as the only wife. Without the least concern for Adja Awa Astou she had accompanied El Hadji to receptions, even when it was not her moomé. With Adja Awa Astou she could accept the life of polygamy, but the advent of a third wife reopened the wound of frustration suffered by all the Muslim women of our country. She even thought momentarily of divorcing El Hadji.

  ‘But why divorce him? Without a man’s help a woman has to fall back on prostitution to live and bring up her children. This is the way our country wants it. It is the lot of all our women,’ her mother had told her, to persuade her not to divorce her husband. ‘If you had a job one could understand your rejection of this third wife. Your first co-wife was a Catholic. How can you, born a Muslim, dare refuse? What is more your husband has the means to support you. Look around you....’

  Chastened by t
his advice Oumi N’Doye did not return to her parents with her complaints. She was not going to accept being forgotten, a woman who only saw her man to couple with him.

  The telephone rang.

  ‘Hullo! Yes... No,’ said the secretary. ‘I’ll make a note. I don’t know when the boss will be back. All right. Yes! Yes!’

  Madame Diouf put down the receiver and looked at her watch.

  ‘I have to close now. It is time,’ she said, addressing Oumi N’Doye, who had got up.

  ‘Where is El Hadji?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. He went out this morning with the President.’

  Babacar had risen and stood at a distance.

  ‘Young woman, I am the father of N’Gone, his third. When you see him tell him I’ll expect him at my house.’

  Oumi N‘Doye stalked out in fury, without so much as a ‘good-bye.’ Her eyes had encountered Babacar’s. She had given him a look full of animosity and the old man, unsure of its intention, had felt awkward. He followed the retreating woman with his eyes.

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘It is El Hadji’s second wife.’

  ‘La illaxa illa la! I should have liked to make her acquaintance,’ said the old man hurrying after her.

  The shops and offices were closing. People were streaming back to the Medina and the dormitory blocks of the suburbs.

  Babacar looked up and down the road. He saw her in the distance disappearing into a taxi. Then his attention was caught by the beggar. He dropped a coin onto his sheepskin and walked on.

  Alassane had dropped Adja Awa Astou’s children and was helping the other children out of the vehicle in front of Oumi N’Doye’s villa.

  ‘Alassane! Alassane! Wait a moment!’ she shouted to the chauffeur.

  She paid the taxi-driver and called out to her daughter. ‘Mariem! Mariem! Listen! Come here!’

  The child went up to her.

  ‘Go and fetch your father for me. He is at his third’s house. Tell him I must see him.’