So Long a Letter Novel by Mariama Bâ
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EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General) North American (US West Coast - California, Portland)Transcript
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From so long a letter, a semi autobiographical epistolary novel originally written in French by the Sinaga writer Mamba. It was her first novel. Its theme is the condition of women in Western African society. As the novel begins, Ramala Fall is beginning a letter to her lifelong friend. As this is the very first chapter so long. A letter by Marimba dear. I see too. I have received your letter by way of reply. I am beginning this diary. My prop and my distress. Our long association has taught me that confiding in others, allies, pain. Your presence in my life is by no means fortuitous. Our grandmothers and their compounds were separated by a fence and would exchange messages daily. Our mothers used to argue over who would look after our uncles and aunts. As for us, we wore out wrappers and sandals on the same stony road to the Koranic school. We buried our milk teeth in the same holes and begged our fairy godmothers to restore them to us. More splendid than before. If over the years and passing through the realities of life, dreams die. I still keep intact my memories, the salt of remembrance I conjure you up. The past is reborn along with its procession of emotions. I close my eyes. I've been tired of feeling heat and dazzle the wood fires. The sharp green mango bitten into turns a delicacy in our greedy mouths. I close my eyes. Ebb. Been tired of images, drops of sweat, beating her mother's ultra colored face as she emerges from the kitchen. The procession of young wet girls chattering on their way back from the springs. We walked the same paths from adolescence to maturity where the past begins. The present, my friend, my friend, my friend, I call on you three times yesterday. You were divorced today. I am a widow. Modo is dead. How am I to tell you? One does not fix appointments with fate, fate, grasp whom it wants when it wants, when it moves in the direction of your desires, it brings you plentitude but more often than not, it unsettles crosses you than one has to endure. I endure the telephone call which disrupted my life. A taxi quickly held fast, fast, faster. Still my throat is dry. There was a rent lump in my chest fast faster. Still at last the hospital, the mixed smell of separations and ether. The hospital distorted faces. A train of tearful people known and unknown witnesses to this awful tragedy. A long corridor which seems to stretch out endlessly at the end. A rum in the room, a bed on the bed. Modu stretched out, cut off from the world of the living by a white sheet in which he is completely enveloped. A trembling hand moves forward and slowly uncovers the body. His hairy chest at rest forever is visible through his crumbled blue shirts with thin stripes, his face set in pain and surprise is indeed his, the bald forehead, the half open mouth or indeed his. I want to grasp his hand but someone pulls me away. I can hear Madu, his doctor friend explaining to me, a heart attack came on suddenly in his office while he was dictating a letter. The secretary at the presence of mind to call me. Ma recounts how he arrived too late with the ambulance. I think the doctor after death, he minds the massaging of the heart that was undertaken as well as the futile effort at mouth to mouth, resuscitation. Again, I think heart massage, mouth to mouth, resuscitation, ridiculous weapons against the divine. Will I listen to the words that curate around me a new atmosphere in which I move a stranger and tormented death. The tenuous passage between two opposite worlds, one tumultuous, the other still where to lie down? Middle age demands dignity. I hold tightly onto my prayer beads. I tell the beads ardently remaining standing on legs of jelly. My loins beat is to the rhythm of childbirth. Cross sections of my life spring involuntarily from my memory, Granado verses from the Koran Noble words of consolation. Fight for my attention, joyous miracle of birth, dark miracle of death between the two A life. A destiny says Madu. I look intently a Madu. He seems to be taller than usual in his white overall. He seems to be thin. His reddened eyes express 40 years of friendship. I admire his noble hands, hands of an absolute delicacy, supple hands used to tracking down illness. Those hands moved by friendship and a rigorous science could not save his friend.