![]() Now married, the two friends experience the joys and discomforts of married life. Though Mawdo is of a higher class than Aissatou, being the son of a princess, the two marry in defiance of caste traditions. Aissatou, meanwhile, dates a friend of Modou’s, Mawdo. She chooses to marry him over a wealthier suitor her parents prefer, eschewing the traditional lavish wedding and customary dowry for a simple ceremony. There she meets Modou, who is handsome and romantic. In the next chapters, Rama recalls her years at the teachers’ training college with Aissatou. Rama reflects on the pain she felt when Modou took another wife after 25 years of happy marriage. The family gathers to divide the estate, and Modou’s wives learn that he was heavily in debt. Rama is irked that equal status has been given to her and her husband’s new, second wife, who gave him only five children to Rama’s twelve. Modou, Ramatoulaye’s husband, has recently died of a heart attack, and in her letter, she describes the funeral rituals to Aissatou, who has been divorced for many years. ![]() The novel opens as Ramatoulaye begins her iddah, the isolation period required in Muslim Senegal after the death of one’s husband. ![]()
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