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Summary: Chapter 10

Salim explains that he frequently saw Yvette and Indar together, and though he found it difficult to pin down each of their personalities, they remained dear to him. Salim felt a growing attraction to Yvette, and he reflects that as he learned more about Indar’s past, pity replaced jealousy.

Indar’s depression worsened as his departure date approached. Ferdinand, who had finished his studies at the polytechnic, also had plans to leave town. Salim accompanied Ferdinand to the steamer that would take him to the capital, where an administrative cadetship awaited. As they approached the ship, they encountered a mix of male and female officials asking to check their documents. In a bid for greater equality, the President had begun to employ women as civil servants. He also decreed that people should no longer address each other as “monsieur” and “madame,” i.e., “mister” and “misses,” but as “citoyen” and “citoyenne,” i.e., “citizen”.

Salim comments on the organization of the steamer, which contained white-painted cabins near the back of the ship, barrack-like facilities on the lower deck toward the front of the ship, and a detachable barge with cage-like structures of iron bars and wire netting. The luxury cabins served first-class passengers, and the barrack-like structures housed second-class passengers. Only poor Africans traveled on the barge.

Salim and Ferdinand encountered Indar and Yvette aboard the steamer. The four went to a bar on a deck below and drank beer together, and when a man came into the bar to announce the steamer’s imminent departure, Salim and Yvette took their leave. Standing on the dock, Salim and Yvette watched as the steamer maneuvered itself down the river.

Summary: Chapter 11

After sending Ferdinand and Indar off, Salim expressed how much he enjoyed the party Yvette had hosted shortly after Indar arrived, and she invited him to her house for a lunchtime lecture the next day. Salim accepted. By that time ,the steamer would have traveled fifteen miles downriver, and Salim imagined that locals would attach their canoe-like “dugouts” to the steamer for something to do, then paddle back upriver for hours.

When Salim showed up at Yvette’s house the next day, he found out that she’d canceled the lunch but had forgotten to inform him. Yvette offered to prepare scrambled eggs for them and disappeared into the kitchen. Salim noted that in full daylight the house he’d previously found so charming seemed shoddy.

Over lunch, Salim indicated his desire to read something Raymond had written. Yvette responded that Raymond had not yet published any books and that his current manuscript had run into difficulties with the government. Salim invited Yvette to join him for squash at the Hellenic Club the following day. She agreed, and as he left, she gave him a pile of magazines with articles that Raymond had written.

Walking away from the house Salim noted that the Domain’s model farm was overgrown, and the six tractors still stood rotting. He thought to himself that the Domain was not a piece of Europe in Africa but just another section of bush.

The next day, Yvette came to Salim’s house. Instead of proceeding to the Hellenic Club, they had sex. The experience had a profound effect on Salim, who’d only ever been intimate with women in brothels. He focused all his energy and attention on the act, which, as he explains, was not tender but intensely physical. Salim felt revitalized, but on her way out, Yvette kissed Salim’s trousers, which made him doubt the authenticity of the experience.

Though excited by the affair with Yvette, Salim still harbored anxieties about his future. He also experienced mixed feelings about Metty, at one moment filled with compassion for the young man’s isolation and then furious with him for minor oversights at the shop.

When Salim sat down to read the magazine articles Yvette had given him, he found Raymond’s writing disappointing. The work relied heavily on newspaper accounts and editorials, and Raymond didn’t seem to have spoken with any of the people involved in the events he wrote about. Salim concluded that despite his capacious research, Raymond had less of a feel for Africa than Indar, Nazruddin, or even Father Huismans. Salim thought about how Yvette must have initially found Raymond glamorous, just as he’d found their house in the Domain glamorous.

Analysis: Chapters 10–11

Salim’s account of his and Ferdinand’s approach to the steamer highlights a contradiction between the President’s recent declaration of universal equality and the actual state of things. Upon arrival, Salim notices numerous female officials working at the docks. The increased presence of female civil servants resulted from the President’s recent efforts to ensure greater gender equality. In addition, the President mandated that the people of his country should address each other as “citizen” rather than by using gender-specific terms. Such a form of address would theoretically enable everyone to feel like social and political equals. Yet these displays of equality quickly came under suspicion as Salim and Ferdinand drew closer to the steamer. Salim’s analysis of the steamer’s first-, second-, and third-class accommodations showed the extent to which inequality remained rampant. And not only that, but the inequality fell clearly along lines of nationality and race. Whereas European and other foreign passengers occupied the first- and second-class cabins, poor Africans were relegated to the precarious and prison-like cages on the barge. The President may have wished for all Africans to feel equal, but on the steamer, at least, they remained third-class citizens.

The way Salim imagined the steamer’s progress on its journey toward the capital reflected his inner desire to get escape the town and start a new life elsewhere. Salim experienced mixed feelings the day he went to the steamer, which would take Ferdinand and Indar away and leave him behind. In contrast to his friends, whom he imagined as living lives full of possibility and upward mobility, Salim felt a renewed sense of being stuck in life. The steamer therefore served as a ready symbol for his desire to follow his friends’ example and leave town. This explains why, in the midst of his meal with Yvette, Salim’s mind spontaneously returned to the steamer as he imagined how far along the river it must have already traveled. He envisioned the steamer passing a village and locals hitching their dugouts to the sides of the vessel to sell wares and produce, only to have to paddle back upriver into the night. In thinking about the Africans who would have to paddle back to their villages, Salim imaginatively put himself in the position of someone on the steamer watching others get left behind instead of him.

The affair between Salim and Yvette had as much to do with their mutual desire to escape their situations as it did with sexual attraction. Their affair began just after they each had a close friend leave town. In the wake of their friends’ departures, both Salim and Yvette felt unsatisfied with their unchanging lives. Though physical attraction certainly played a role for Salim and likely for Yvette as well, the beginning of their affair depended just as much on their shared loneliness. When they had sex for the first time, the experience was, as Salim describes it, “full of deliberate brutality.” Their intimacy provided a space for both of them to work out their frustrations and find the kind of escape they could not otherwise find in their lives. And yet, although the intensely physical nature of their sex was consensual, it also betokens the possibility of future violence. Such a possibility becomes clear when Salim describes how his initial feeling of reinvigoration evaporated into distrust of Yvette’s authenticity. Salim’s affair with Yvette thus may not relieve his isolation but make him feel more trapped than ever.

Salim’s critique of Raymond’s writing sheds light on why the historian had fallen out of the President’s favor and marks Raymond—and, by extension, Yvette—as a failure. When Salim finally sat down to read the articles Raymond had written, he was sorely disappointed. He found that Raymond’s research relied too heavily on newspaper journalism and hence only scratched the surface of the events he wrote about. In one sense, this realization seems to confirm the fear Raymond himself had articulated at the party about the impossibility of getting to the real truth of history. Yet Salim’s critique also implies that a more enterprising historian could have found the truth by speaking directly to the people who took part in or witnessed the events. Raymond’s failure to dig deeper into his subject resulted in shoddy historical work, which likely contributed the President’s loss of faith and Raymond’s increasing irrelevance. Yet for Salim, Raymond’s failure also belonged to Yvette. Salim imagines that she felt dazzled by his false glamor when she first met him, and for this reason, she shared in his fraudulence.

 

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