SEMBENE OUSMANE

I can't recommend Sembene Ousmane enough. In fact, it was he who more or less singlehandedly initiated my interest in modern West African literature. I just read another story by him called Niiwam - about a poor, sheltered Muslim in Dakar who is so impoverished he has to transport the body of his dead son to a Muslim cemetery by public bus. It was absolutely brilliant!

A few months ago, I read his novel Xala:

El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye is a successful Dakar retailer who is now so wealthy and well-to-do that he is able to marry his third wife. On the conjugal bed, however, El Hadji (much to his horror) discovers that he can't get it up and seal the marriage. He realizes that he has become a victim of the infamous Xala curse - a curse that makes the recipient impotent. For the rest of the novel, he races about the city seeking remedies and insights from all manners of scientific and spiritual experts. Meanwhile, his business is falling to shambles, his other wives are in constant skirmish with one another, and the imperious Aunt of the new bride doesn't miss a beat to harangue and exploit El Hadji from all corners. The book culminates in El Hadji being brought down to such an emotionally and financially ransacked state that he is all too willing to perform an act of great humiliation.

What I love about this book is that it exhibits a masterful balance between political satire and slapstick escapade. It is essentially a critique of a certain class of African merchants that came to roost soon after Senegal's independence. The way it worked is that the former colonial mercantile powers remained for some time in Dakar and sold goods wholesale to these new African merchants who would then turn around and sell them to the public. In order to act as efficient go-betweens, these African merchants would adopt several un-African manners of dress, speech, custom, and sensibility. In the beginning of the novel, Ousmane states that El Hadji 'was what one might call a synthesis of two cultures: business had drawn him into the European middle class after a feudal African education. Like his peers, he made skillful use of his dual background, for their fusion was incomplete.' El Hadji exclusively drinks mineral water, is driven around by a chauffeur, and speaks primarily in French - not Wolof which was at that time spoken by over 80% of his country.

Of course through this lens, we might say that his literal impotence in the novel is to be taken as a pun. Because of his precarious straddling of two cultures, his inability to deal with as basic an activity as officiating his marriage bed is borne out. His impotence actually runs quite deep.

Despite the heavy political commentary of the novel, it is it's high farcical tone and romping narrative that makes it really worth the read. Though to some Ousmane's writing might beg comparison with other French and Francophone authors, in my opinion the book is more Gogol-esque (or maybe more aptly: Bulgakovian) than anything else.

Well, so far I've only read Ousmane's later writings. Some say that his first two novels are irremediably ideological - that it's not until his third novel, 'God's Bits of Wood' (about the Dakar-Niger railway strike of 1947), when Ousmane shows the first hints of his mastery. I'm anxious to read all of his work though. Till now I've been totally impressed by his eye for detail, his lack of fear for the modern era, and his devious way of teaching a dumb Florida boy like me about Senegalese culture without my noticing it.