The book of the week. The condition of the servants is at the heart of the fourth installment of the Goncourt prize for high school students 2020, embodied by the young Faydé.
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Critic. After the brilliant success of his previous novel, Les Impatientes, Goncourt prize for high school students 2020 (ed. Emmanuelle COLLAS), first published in Cameroon under the title MUNYAL, The tears of patience (ed. Proximity, orange price of the book In Africa 2019), the new and fourth opus by Djaïli Amadou Amal was eagerly awaited. With Heart of the Sahel, the Cameroonian novelist again takes the party of women and succeeds in brilliantly developing the cocktail of which she has the secret: mixing romance with social painting.
Faydé, her just teenage heroine, wants to leave the village which saw her being born in the middle of the mountains, to go and work as a servant in the large urban center of Maroua, in northern Cameroon. If she naively dreams of the Enlightenment of the city, she is above all pushed by the duty to support her family that the mysterious disappearance of the Father has plunged into misery.
Thanks to the help of comrades who preceded her, Faydé therefore makes the big leap and finds herself in the service of a rich merchant Peul, Alhadji Bakary, as well as his mother, his three wives and many children. The beginnings are difficult. Drivetable at thank you, Faydé discovers the exhausting reality of his new place and undergoes the displayed contempt for the wealthy classes with regard to the people of his condition.
“A servant remains a servant, even if he does a good job and is appreciated, reminds him of his friend Bintou. Even assiduous for years, he is never part of the family. You are neither their Ethnicity or their religion. They have no consideration for you. “Faydé must also learn the tacit and brutal rules that make her potential prey for the males of the house. Life despite everything will reserve for the girl her share of surprises, in turn tragic and happier. Perhaps she will have the chance to understand that “the shortest path to go from one point to another is not the straight line, but the dream”.
interior torments
From the title and the first pages of the book, the romance is there, with this young girl of modest condition but with strong values and live intelligence. If it happens that Faydé is naive or yields to sadness, his designer endowed it at other times with great lucidity and flawless courage. Thus we attach to this heroine with the skillfully spicy journey of suspense.
But the novel also offers readers a complex social backdrop which amplifies its interest. Because although evoking this northern Cameroon that she knows well, Djaïli Amadou Amal largely resonates the news of the world. It thus depicts the economic rout of farmers in the face of their land made unproductive by climate change, or the distress of populations fleeing the attacks of the terrorist fighters of Boko Haram, and whose “survivors are only haggard faces, in a world they do not recognize “.
The writer also knows how to point out the problems that undermine her society: escalation of the external signs of wealth, weight of traditions, xenophobia, communitarianism … but it is above all the fate of women who import him; It expects to denounce the violence they undergo as well as the multiple obstacles to their freedom that are among others patriarchy, the tradition of marriage by abstract and rape, the obligation of virginity, polygamy, prostitution, relations ancillary conjugal, the impossibility of pursuing a career …
The story makes us pass from the interior torments of Faydé, for whom everything is precarious, to those of Leïla, the future bride, who has no other desires than material possessions: “Leïla cares more than a of her friends have a better phone than her! … a crime of lese majesty that she promises to correct as quickly as possible. “
Stopped in her studies as she excelled, Faydé resumed them in secret, obtaining a nursing diploma a few years later. No doubt this professional destiny expresses the faith of the novelist in a possible sociological evolution, thanks to the education of women and young girls. Knowledge, essential access march to freedom, constitutes the most radiant horizon that a heart of the Sahel can ever dream.