After years of patience, young Nabou grows into a beautiful young woman. She adopts a little girl whom she renames Nabou. Meanwhile, Aissatou’s mother-in-law, Aunty Nabou, devises a plan to take revenge on Aissatou. Rama and Aissatou work as teachers, fulfilled by their careers and their youthful love. Rama’s mother-in-law is pushy and overbearing, whereas Aissatou’s mother-in-law is openly contemptuous of her daughter-in-law, thinking Aissatou beneath her. 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. Urn:oclc:9668743 Scandate 20110917210820 Scanner novel opens as Ramatoulaye begins her iddah, the isolation period required in Muslim Senegal after the death of one’s husband. OL16062892W Page-progression lr Page_number_confidence 89.00 Pages 102 Ppi 514 Related-external-id urn:isbn:0435902482 Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 19:12:53 Boxid IA135004 Boxid_2 CH105401 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City Oxford Donorīostonpubliclibrary Edition External-identifier

So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ