Xala by Ousmane Sembène Page B

Abdou Kader Beye had found in the President of the ‘Businessmen’s Group’ a sympathetic listener who also spared himself no verbal effort. He had for El Hadji’s xala a throaty voice with a sympathetic ring to it which in our country always indicates a desire to be helpful.
    â€˜We shall find a good marabout,’ said the President, undaunted by their failure to do so.
    â€˜As a friend,’ he made a list of all the healers he knew. El Hadji placed his confidence in him. He had given up the struggle and was constantly on the verge of tears. A dense cloud took possession of his thoughts. Everything seemed to shake unsteadily. A skein of questions unwound itself in an endless thread through his mind.
    Before his wedding night El Hadji had obtained the agreement of his two wives for him to spend thirty nights with his third. Thirty nights of feasting, one could say. Now he would have to return to the regular moomé. Each wife to have her aye . Adja Awa Astou first. Yay Bineta had given it her blessing. ‘Perhaps with this cycle of moomé you will find out who is responsible for the xala ,’ she said.
    El Hadji returned with his shame to the unending rotation of the moomé. Adja Awa Astou was as self-effacing as the religious law required. Their chat did not extend beyond the hedge around the villa. The children had been well-behaved during his ‘absence’. The wife was careful not to touch on the xala. Did she even know about it? Her husband said nothing on the subject either. The two nights that
followed were identical. No sexual relations. The man showed no inclination for them. Her aye over, Adja Awa Astou watched her husband leave her for his six nights elsewhere, with his other wives.
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    Adja Awa Astou had no friends. She was lonely, very lonely. If she wanted to confide in someone or pour out her troubles, there was not a soul to whom she could turn. In her isolation she thought of her father. She missed Papa John terribly. There was a time when she used to go every Friday after the main prayer of the day to the Catholic cemetery to visit her mother’s grave. The caretaker had noticed the regularity of this woman, who was always dressed in the same way with her head covered in a white scarf. He watched her suspiciously from a distance. Was she mad? A former nun perhaps? Or a thief? Then one Sunday Papa John, whom he knew well, came to see him because the everlasting flowers had been removed.
    â€˜The lady in white put them over there behind the wall,’ the caretaker told him, pointing them out to him.
    â€˜Renée,’ muttered Papa John to himself. Then aloud: ‘Does this lady come on Sunday mornings?’
    â€˜No, on Friday afternoons. Her chauffeur told me she was her mother.’
    Papa John returned to his island. He would have liked to see his daughter, speak to her. One Friday in the month of Ramadan (the Muslim month of fasting) the caretaker waited for Adja as she was leaving and said to her:
    â€˜Madam, I don’t see your father any more. I hope it is nothing serious?’
    Adja Awa Astou looked at him with apprehension.
    â€˜Since when has my father not been coming?’
    â€˜I don’t know the date, madam, but it’s several Sundays.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ she said, giving him a couple of coins.
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    She returned to her villa and told her eldest daughter, Rama, to go and find out how her grandfather was. Thus it was that Rama travelled between them, the bearer of their messages to one another.
    Adja Awa Astou was too modest ever to speak to anyone about her
husband’s xala. She grew closer to her daughter, who began to return home early to keep her mother company so that she would feel less alone.
    One evening she went to her daughter’s room with a great urge to get things off her chest.
    â€˜Mother! Sit down!’ said Rama, putting aside her book. ‘I don’t see father around any