"El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye 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 not complete."
This quote introduces us to El Hadji, our protagonist, and it explains that he encompasses aspects of both a more "modern" European culture and a more "traditional" African culture. On a deeper level, however, note that the ending of this quote collapses these binaries to show that what is happening in modern Senegal is, after all, an incomplete and attempted fusion of a colonial regime with an indigenous system of cultural practices, institutions, and values. With the independence of the nation, the former colonial powers have ostensibly exited, but with the example of El Hadji, we see that we have not completely returned to "the old ways," so to speak. Nor, however, have we completely banished the colonial powers. The postcolonial condition is an uneven hybrid, one where a dual conscience—and perhaps, dual loyalties—pays.
"To his surprise he found himself already regretting this third marriage. Should he get a divorce this very morning? He put that solution out of his mind. Did he love N'Gone? The question brought no clear answer. It would not upset him to leave her. Yet to drop her after all he had spent seemed intolerable. There was the car. And the villa. And all the other expenses. To repudiate her now would hurt his male pride. Even if he were to reach such a decision he would be incapable of carrying it out. What would people say. That he was not a man."
This quote sees El Hadji puzzle over in his mind how to best cope with the sexual and financial failures of his third marriage to N'Gone, especially after he has been publicly embarrassed by the shame of his xala. On a deeper level, however note how quickly El Hadji moves from certain thoughts of divorce to swearing off the idea completely, all because of public opinion, personal expenses, and fragile masculinity. The rumor mill is vicious, and El Hadji knows this, so he thinks it best to not stir the pot and risk being publicly emasculated (which, as we come to see in the novel, has consequences for his business and familial life as well). Moreover, we see here that El Hadji considers N'Gone and all of his other wives as no more than mere playthings or properties, only worth the price of what he has purchased for them and given them as gifts.
"Just as nature re-imposes its life on ruins with small tufts of grass, the ancestral atavism of fetishism was being reawakened in El Hadji."
This quote describes El Hadji's turn to more traditional rituals and forms of healing after failing to find a conventional cure for his xala. On a deeper level, however, this quote does not just describe El Hadji's progressing desperation, but rather his re-entry into a system that does not accommodate European power, mannerisms, and solutions. The xala is a Senegalese problem, and it demands a Senegalese solution like a trip to Sereen Mada. By the time El Hadji realizes that such problems exist, however, it is too late, and he has already been destroyed by his actions towards his own people (i.e., Sereen Mada and the Beggar). El Hadji can attempt to reawaken himself into the fetishist and traditionalist ways of healing, but they cannot remedy a problem he created by selling himself for a different kind of power.
"In our country, this so-called 'gentry', imbued with their role as master—a role which began and ended with fitting out and mounting the female—sought no elevation, no delicacy in their relations with their partners. This lack of communication meant they were no better than stallions for breeding. El Hadji was as limited, short-sighted, and unintelligent as any of his kind."
This quote sees a sharp social commentary being leveled at El Hadji and the other bourgeois businessmen of postcolonial Senegal. We see here that being in power like El Hadji does not require real business acumen, nor does it require real intelligence; rather, the act of power-holding has been symbolically reduced to dominating and having sex with different women. This echoes the sentiment earlier in the text that El Hadji has become a "captain" by marrying three women, further uniting the authoritarian and sexual spheres. This is another reason that El Hadji's xala is seen as a direct attack on his power and results in him becoming desperate and passive—for people like El Hadji, to reduce their sexual potency is to both symbolically and literally reduce their power.
"(It is worth knowing something about the life led by urban polygamists. It could be called geographical polygamy, as opposed to rural polygamy, where all the wives and children live together in the same compound. In the town, since the families are scattered, the children have little contact with their father. Because of his way of life the father must go from house to house, villa to villa, and is only there in the evenings, at bedtime. He is therefore primarily a source of finance, when he has work. The mother has to look after the children's education, so academic achievement is often very poor.)"
This quote sees the narrator comment on the difficult logistics and limitations of urban polygamy. On a deeper level, however, it comments on how the attempt to shoehorn polygamy into a more "modern," urban lifestyle can have disastrous effects for both the father involved and his many children. Taking the traditional lifestyle of polygamy—which many may oppose on principle, because it can lead to women being taken advantage of and devalued—and putting it in the city means that the nuclear family unit of the home becomes decentralized, since all the families cannot share one home. This, as opposed to the rural tradition of polygamy, leads to an objectification and passivity in the father, who is only used for financial purposes by his wives and children. Moreover, it forces the children into relative neglect, where their outcomes suffer. In sum, the uneven hybridity of El Hadji's life, trapped between the traditional and the contemporary, here affects not only him negatively, but also his wives and children.
"In effect, he had three villas and three wives, but where was his real home? At the houses of the three wives he was merely 'passing through.' Three nights each! He had nowhere a corner of his own into which he could withdraw and be alone."
This quote continues the above commentary on the negative effects of urban polygamy. Again, since our protagonist—be he cruel, unrelatable, and greedy—is El Hadji, we focus on the ways in which polygamy negatively affects him. Specifically, much as we see that he is reduced to his financial handouts in the above quote, here we see that making familial relationships so transactional leads to a growing sense of alienation in the family. Though El Hadji seems to be hoarding women and wealth with his various marriages, putting out a superficial image of control, virility, and masculinity, in reality his desire to control and dominate ever more has led to him being isolated and alone in the time that he most needs help—that is, when public opinion has turned against him on account of his xala.
"Papa John spoke about his life on the island. He talked about old times and the Feast of St Charles. [...] That year the feast had passed unmarked. There had been nothing to distinguish that Sunday from all the other Sundays. Holiday-makers, including many Europeans, had come to sunbathe on the warm sand of the beach. Papa John couldn't understand it at all: these Europeans who abandoned God's house for idleness. Hadn't they brought Catholicism to this country?"
This quote sees Rama's grandfather (Adja Awa Astou's estranged father) comment on the bygone traditions of the Senegal of his youth. As a devout Catholic, Papa John enjoys the time spent together with family in religious revelry and time spent at the church. What he finds odd, however, is the fact that, with passing time, the country—including the Europeans who brought Western religion to Senegal in the first place—has become more secular. This quote is thus significant because it points out the hypocrisy of the European colonial regime, which went out of its way to impose religion as a tool of authority building yet now allows those traditions to falter in service of living a more luxurious and self-indulgent lifestyle. This is a particularly important perspective to have, since it comes from within the colonially imposed religion (Catholicism) itself, rather than from the indigenous religious tradition or the Muslim tradition of Senegal.
"Today, for the first time in three months since he had slapped her on the afternoon of his wedding, they had had a serious conversation. Rama had been the only one who dared oppose the marriage. Pity she was a girl. He would have been able to make something of her had she been a boy."
This quote showcases the tense yet mutually respectful relationship between Rama and El Hadji. On a deeper level, however, it traces the sharp contours of gender inequity in the mind of the Senegalese elites. Rama is a headstrong and clearly intelligent young woman, participating in a variety of both cultural and academic activities, but even so, El Hadji laments that he was unable "to make something of her" on account of the immutable fact of her sex.
"All right. We are a bunch of clodhoppers. Who owns the banks? The insurance companies? The factories? The businesses? The wholesale trade? The cinemas? The bookshops? The hotels? All these and more besides are out of our control. We are nothing better than crabs in a basket. We want the ex-occupier's place? We have it. This Chamber is the proof. Yet what change is there really in general or in particular? The colonialist is stronger, more powerful than ever before, hidden inside us, here in this very place. He promises us the left-overs of the feast if we behave ourselves. Beware anyone who tries to upset his digestion, who wants a bigger profit. What are we? Clodhoppers! Agents! Petty traders! In our fatuity we call ourselves 'businessmen'! Businessmen without funds."
In this quote, El Hadji lays bare the truth of the postcolonial condition—that the former colonizers have never completely been kicked out by their former subjects, who remain politically and economically shackled to them. This quote is thus significant because it represents a kind of self-incrimination and confession by one of Senegal's own elites that he and the other bourgeois merchants are truly impotent and do not advance their countrymen through their own social and political advancement. This connects El Hadji's personal xala with the larger social xala of the Senegalese nouveau riche; moreover, the fact that we have learned to see El Hadji's own impotence as an attack on his masculine authority shows us why the other plutocrats in the Chamber react so negatively to El Hadji's mention of a wider, societal impotence among Senegal's wealthy.
"Daughter, don't you know that in this country the man who is in gaol is better off than the worker or the peasant? No taxes to pay and in addition you are fed, lodged, and cared for."
In this quote, the Beggar sharply rebuffs Rama after she comments that the impoverished people who have invaded her home will be arrested by the police. This scene in general highlights the truly horrendous physical conditions of the poor in Senegal—as well as the fact that it is the comprador elite who has afflicted them with their economic and social malaise—but this quote highlights something a bit different: the material conditions of Senegal's working poor and impoverished people. We see from their physical appearances alone that they are not the most healthy or stable of people, but in this quote, we see a clear picture of just how inverted Senegalese society truly is: people would rather be in prison than have to fend for themselves on the streets. The government's lack of care—and by extension, the elite's lack of care—for their average countryman is thus put on full display here.
