Content Warning: The source material contains graphic depictions of rape and violence, including murder and torture.

Alfa Ndiaye opens the narrative with a confession of an unexplained and shameful action. The narrative flashes back to the day his best friend, Mademba Diop, died on the battlefield, disemboweled. He first asks and then later begs Alfa to end his life, but Alfa does not, and Mademba dies slowly.

As soon as Mademba is dead, Alfa regrets not having mercy on him. He says that it was “precisely because he spoke to me of our great marabout [a religious leader], precisely so as not to disobey the laws of humanity, the laws of our ancestors that I was not humane” (10). This experience is transformative for Alfa, and he swears to begin to ignore the laws of God and man and think for himself from now on.

After Mademba’s death, Alfa carries him across the battlefield and back toward the French line. As he approaches his trench, he believes that it looks like a woman’s genitals, an “unmentionable thing” he would not have thought of before he gave up propriety (13). Once inside the trench, his fellow soldiers welcome him as a hero and predict that he will be awarded the Croix de Guerre, but he secretly thinks that he does not care about the medal.