Xala

Xala (Présence Africaine, 2010)
by Sembène Ousmane
Senegal, 1973

On the eve of his third marriage, the status-conscious El Hadji Abdou Kader Bèye would seem to have it all going on as far as 50-something Senegalese polygamists are concerned: a prestigious seat on the country's first African-led Chamber of Commerce, a chauffeur-driven Mercedes, a villa for each of his three lovely ladies.  Then, unable to perform on his wedding night despite having coveted the teenage N'Goné's body something fierce, things quickly fall apart for the beleaguered El Hadji as he realizes that somebody in his entourage has cursed him with the impotence-inducing affliction the xala.  While something of a trifle compared to either 1956's Le docker noir or 1960's Les bouts de bois de Dieu, Xala is enjoyable enough on its own merits and sports the novelist's usual penchant for acutely observed social commentary.  An added bonus: beyond the skewering of its grasping protagonist, an easy mark in regard to his symbolic function as "la synthèse de deux cultures.  Formation bourgeoise européenne, éducation féodale africaine" ["the synthesis of two cultures: bourgeois European training, feudal African education"] (12), the novel's satire is much more slippery on the related matter of "africanité" vs. "modernité."  For example, a doctor who knows of El Hadji's resort to so-called holy men and witch doctors in addition to men of science for help overcoming his impotence refers to Africa as "le règne de l'irrationnel" ["the kingdom of the irrational"] (82).  El Hadji himself, despite his Evian-sipping ways and French-wannabe standard of living, finds that "l'atavisme ancestral du fétichisme" ["the ancestral atavism of fetishism"] is reborn in him after a visit to a seet-katt or seer (95).  Ditto the question of polygamy and what it means to be part of a time share arrangement with one's husband--although the complaint of Oumi N'Doye, El Hadji's second wife, cuts to the chase re: her disappointment with their sex life: "Il faut être jeune et bon cavalier pour monter deux juments à la fois" ["You need to be young and a good horseman to mount two mares at a time"] (100).  Sembène Ousmane turned Xala into a film in 1975; I'd be interested in seeing it if the opportunity ever arises.

Sembène Ousmane (1923-2007)

Le docker noir

 

Le docker noir (Présence Africaine, 2008)
par Sembène Ousmane
Le Sénégal, 1956

Le docker noir, le premier roman de l'écrivain et réalisateur sénégalais Sembène Ousmane, s'agit d'un livre, << Le dernier voyage du négrier Sirius >>, et du conflit sur la paternité de ce livre qui se termine avec la mort d'une Blanche aux mains d'un Noir.  Etait-ce un meurtre ou etait-ce un accident?  Pendant que Diaw Falla, << le docker noir >> du titre, attend le verdict qui déterminera son destin dans le << pays des toubabs >> (12), Ousmane contourne les clichés du drame judiciare en jugeant une civilisation entière pour les mauvais traitements des ouvriers africains à Marseille par les français.  << Civilisation ou barbarie >>, de quel parti êtes-vous?  À mon avis, Le docker noir a pour le moins trois points forts comme roman.  En premier lieu, la prose de Sembène, bouillant de colère de temps en temps, met au premier plan le problème économique avec audace: << Ces êtres qui sombrent sont des naufragés que l'océan du temps emporte, et qui, pauvres épaves, se cramponnent aux goulots >>, dit un personnage d'Afrique aux Docks à Marseille.  << On ne peut descendre plus bas, il n'est rien de pire >> (136).  Ensuite, le romancier ne recule pas de souligner le racisme comme un patrimoine culturel de l'esclavage pratiqué par les Européens comme dans ce coupure de presse français sur l'accusé sénégalais: << On a l'impression de se trouver devant un être n'ayant jamais subi l'influence de la civilisation >> (27).  En dernier lieu, la complexité du point de vue de Sembène sur les rapports entre les races c'est admirable et ne succombe pas à la Polémique: << Tu m'as pris pour un "Noir" >> Diaw Falla dit à Ginette Tontisane peu avant de la mort de celui-ci.  << Il avait fini par le dire.  Le " Noir ", pour lui, signifiat l'ignorant, la brute, le niais.  C'était plus qu'une lutte entre voleur et volé, deux races s'affrontaient, des siècles de haine se mesuraient >> (192-193).  Enfin, un très bon roman par l'auteur de l'exceptionnel Les bouts de bois de Dieu.  Vif et percutant.

 Sembène Ousmane (1923-2007)

Les bouts de bois de Dieu

Les bouts de bois de Dieu (Pocket, 2012)
by Ousmane Sembene
Senegal, 1960

Les bouts de bois de Dieu [God's Bits of Wood], my first but hopefully not my last Francophone selection for the Books on France 2014 Reading Challenge, is an eminently worthy, particularly hard-hitting rival to Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North for the title of the best African novel I've read in the last five years.  Based on the real life 1947-48 Dakar-Niger railroad strike in which hundreds of African workers shut down the French-owned line for almost half a year in an effort to wrest some hard-fought concessions from the colonial management, Sembene's novel is a gritty social realism curiosity in the sense that the railway men and their families--rather than a single protagonist--serve as the main narrative center of attention throughout.  Is this ensemble dramatic focus an example of Sembene's Marxist politics and/or his filmmaking interests informing his storytelling style?  Perhaps.  However, what's more self-evident is that the vignette-laden panoramic approach perfectly suits the epic sweep of a story of a people gradually being driven to either sell out to or to stand up against their colonial oppressors as the toubabs [whites] try to break the strike by cutting off food sales to strikers and by committing shameful acts of violence against women and children and the elderly.  Ah, civilization and progress.  So what makes the novel so compelling apart from the novelty of the group protagonist thing?  For one thing, I can't think of the last novel I read that conveyed a more convincing sense of place.  Although Sembene stops short of demonizing the French colonials or idealizing the Senegalese and other Africans supporting the strike, his depiction of local color and politics is so surehanded that even a drunken Frenchman's acid characterization of the white quarters in the city of Thiès-- "Savez-vous ce que nous sommes ici, jeune homme?  un poste avancé en pays ennemi!" ["Do you know what we are here, young man?  A forward operating post in enemy territory!"] (259)--is more than enough to delineate the confrontational state of race relations in the land.  On a related note, having casually mentioned "social realism" and "colonial oppressors" in passing above, I should probably clarify that thematically Les bouts de bois de Dieu is less about heroic resistance than about the trickier matter strike leader Ibrahima Bakayoko is forced to ponder as the bodies of the strike supporters start to pile up during the course of events: "Comment se dresser sans haine contre l'injustice?" ["How do you rise up against injustice without hate?"] (368).  A thorny issue given its due complexity here in powerfully rendered scenes with unpredictable outcomes in which a Frenchwoman patronizingly refers to the African workers on strike as "demi-civilisés...enfants" ["half-civilized children"] (257) and a Senegalese woman tearfully asks "Est-ce qu'on ne pourrait pas tuer tous les Blancs?" ["Can't we kill all the whites?"] (295).  Finally, in addition to the expected examples of powerful storytelling to be found here such as the vignette about the old man who keels over weak from hunger and then becomes food for rats or the extended passage on the women's protest march to Dakar that takes place to the insistent accompaniment of loud tam-tams, Sembene leaves the reader two unexpected ironies to mull over having to do with the intersection between language and culture and politics: 1) Who would have ever thought that the novelization of a railroad strike could be so fascinating?  2) In a work which persistently alludes to the everyday use of various indigenous languages/dialects such as Bambara, Fula, Songhay, Toucouleur, and the novelist's own native Wolof in opposition to the colonial language that one Bambara-speaking character refers to as "ce langage de sauvages" ["this language of savages"] (20), what did Sembene have in mind by using French, the language of the oppressors, rather than Wolof, which Bakayoko claims "est notre langue" ["is our language"] (271), to tell this story?  Who, in short, is the target audience for the novel which, as luck would have it, was published in Marseille the same year Senegal gained its independence from France?  Whatever, a fucking knockout.

 Ousmane Sembene (1923-2007)