Xala by Ousmane Sembène Page A

he would be alone with N’Gone. He had desired her with his whole body. He had carried his victim to the nest like a victorious bird of prey and now consummation seemed impossible, forbidden.

    The xala, which had started off as a confidential matter to be discussed in whispers, had become, as the days then the weeks went by, a subject of general conversation.
    El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye had consulted a host of facc-katt healers. Each had given his prescription. He had been anointed with safara – a liquid which the healer obtains by washing off verses of the Koran written on small planks of wood called alluba – and made to
drink it. He was given xatim (pronounced ‘hatim’), esoteric writings, to wear round his waist like fetishes. He was rubbed with ointments. He was made to cut the throat of a completely red cock. He did everything he was told to do in the hope of a cure. When they saw the Mercedes draw up in front of their grass huts or hot, cast-iron houses and out of it climb a man in European dress, the facc-katt all knew their patient to be a man of substance. He was required to pay high fees, nice fat ones. He always paid cash.
    Each of the experts gave lengthy explanations. Some said he was the victim of the jealousy of one of his wives. She was described to him: a woman of average build, perhaps small. He began to accept that it must be Oumi N’Doye. Another of the charlatans used and abused Yalla’s name: his head was swathed in a thick turban and he pulled all the time at his forked beard; he had a bony face and wet sheep’s eyes, and accompanied each sentence with an unctuous smile. Gazing all the time at a blackish liquid in a champagne bottle, he informed El Hadji that his xala was the work of a colleague who wished him harm.
    El Hadji mentally reviewed the members of the ‘Businessmen’s Group’. It was a wasted effort.
    The charlatan cleared his throat, making a strange noise as he did so, and returned to his contemplation of the bottle. No doubt at all, he could see the author of the xala : a well-built specimen, dark, but not excessively so.
    Days and weeks passed. At his ‘office’ El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye would spend hours lost in thought, his mind far away. His eyes no longer followed his secretary-saleslady, Madame Diouf. Before, whenever she turned her back, he would ogle her nicely rounded buttocks, her well-shaped thighs. His secretary’s behind was a great source of jokes and laughter among his friends.
    El Hadji suffered greatly from his xala . 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. Remorse overwhelmed him like a tide of mud covering a paddyfield. He thought back over his third marriage in the vain hope of finding some explanation there. Had he been in love with N’Goner? Or was it simply old age urging him towards young flesh? Or was it because he was wealthy? Or because he was weak? Because he was a libertine and a sensualist? Was it that his married life with his two wives had been intolerable? He asked himself these questions but he was careful to avoid the truth.
    He was. held in the blinding grip of an intense hatred. He aged overnight. Two deep lines starting at the top of the nostrils curved around his mouth, widening as they did so. His chin broadened. the lack of sleep showed at the edge of his eyelids and bathed his eyes in a reddish lustre crossed by threads which according to the time of day or the place would take on the colour of stale palm-oil.
    El Hadji