Xala

N’Gone is El Hadji’s third wife and the woman whom he is marrying when the novel opens. N’Gone is the daughter of Old Babacar, a retiree living on a modest quarterly pension, and her pushy mother, Mam Fatou. She is the niece of Yay Bineta. Before she married, Mam Fatou was concerned about her daughter becoming pregnant out of wedlock, due to her popularity with young men—none of whom was prosperous. N’Gone, who is 19, had twice failed to get her elementary certificate and her parents no longer had enough money to pay for her to return to school. Though she had acquired enough education to become a secretary, her mother was determined to marry her off. Her family, which had six other children, could no longer afford to care for her. After she married, her 12-year-old brother and nine-year-old sister went to live with her.

By the end of the novel, due to her husband’s financial collapse, she is seen going with an attractive and age-appropriate young man. Though El Hadji took no steps to divorce her, despite thinking about it, they end up separating.

Yay Bineta is the paternal aunt and godmother of N’Gone, or her “Badyen,” a special status that a man’s sister acquires when he has children. The Badyen’s nieces and nephews are more like her own children, and her status is equal to that of the husband. Mam Fatou appealed directly to Yay Bineta to get N’Gone married. Yay Bineta also serves as the “mistress of ceremonies” during N’Gone’s wedding to El Hadji.

She is described as “[a] dumpy woman with a large behind, a flabby black face and spiteful eyes” (4). She is also very status conscious. She had been acquainted with El Hadji for many years. Like her sister-in-law, she is an officious woman, but one who pretends to be deferential to patriarchy to maintain her hold on power through her brother. Thus, she maintains a rivalry with Mam Fatou. She had been married twice. Both husbands had died. She was unable to marry again due to fear that she carried bad luck. No man wanted to risk being her third dead husband, despite her parents making an offer of her. Unable to secure her own beneficial marriage, she lived vicariously through N’Gone. Yay Bineta also seems to be complicit with the patriarchal system but works astutely within it, manipulating El Hadji to bend to her will.

Adja is El Hadji’s first wife and the mother to his six children, including Rama. She is between the ages of 36 and 40. She is slim and “a soft black” color (11). She has “a prominent forehead,” almond-shaped eyes, and a delicate nose. Adja is meek, dutiful, and as prone to jealousy as Oumi N’Doye, but less comfortable with expressing her emotions out of what seems to be fear of reproach. Despite her ostensible meekness, Adja is also willful and determined in her own way.

Born on the island of Gorée and raised a devout Catholic, Adja Awa Astou converted to the Islamic faith out of love for her husband, thereby eschewing her Catholic father, Papa John, whom she adored. Her original name, Renée (French for “reborn”), hints at her future transformation into a Muslim and into the kind of wife that El Hadji would want, which simultaneously required her to undermine her father’s expectations. When she and her husband married, El Hadji was still a primary-school instructor. Adja is a pious and obedient woman. She took on her name when she and her husband went on their pilgrimage to Mecca and has been a Muslim for 20 years. Since that pilgrimage, she wore only white.

Oumi N’Doye is El Hadji’s second wife and mother to his five younger children, including Mariem and Mactar. Fiery, spendthrift, and eager to exploit her position, she is a foil to Adja. She is also more expressive of her jealous passions. This makes her a foil to Adja, though they are united in El Hadji’s mind as older women who are less sexually appealing to him.

Oumi N’Doye, unlike Adja, is sexually voracious, outspoken, and takes an interest in adorning herself. She is also competitive, which leads her to take great pains to make herself beautiful and to entertain El Hadji when he makes his weekly visits. She is aware of her difficult position as a middle wife—neither bestowed with the honorific status of the first nor the nubile beauty of the third. Like her husband, she prefers to mimic European cultures, particularly the standards of the French.

After El Hadji went bankrupt, rendering him unable to care for her and their children, Oumi N’Doye went to live with her poor family outside of town. Meanwhile, she courted other potential spouses in nightclubs. 

Rama is the headstrong daughter of El Hadji and Adja. She is 20 and grew up during Senegal’s struggle against colonial rule. She had participated in street protests alongside her father and others. She helped him paste posters throughout the city. Later, she joined activist groups. At university, she had joined a group that worked to restore Wolof as the dominant language in Senegal. While her mother is timid and deferential toward El Hadji and male authority in general, Rama willfully stands up to her father and expresses her disapproval of polygamy. She plans to marry Pathé, a psychiatrist. With him, she enjoys a relationship with an equal who playfully teases her, but only because he appreciates her intelligence, wit, and independence.

Modu is El Hadji’s chauffeur. He is dutiful toward his employer, whom he regards as a surrogate grandfather. Modu observes the changes in El Hadji as a result of the distress and despair brought on by the xala. Despite their class differences, Modu is empathetic and arranges for the meeting between El Hadji and the healer, Sereen Mada, who both lifts the curse and restores it. Every morning, he goes to have El Hadji’s car washed by a local boy. After El Hadji becomes bankrupt, Modu is the only one of El Hadji’s former employees who remains loyal to him.