Aissatou's husband married a second wife by kowtowing to his mother's wishes, who, because she came from "royal blood," desired that he marry a woman of royal blood rather than Aissatou, a "goldsmith's daughter." In contrast, Ramatoulaye's husband became a "sugar daddy" to one of his daughter's school friends and insisted she leave school to marry him. Aissatou responds to her husband's betrayal in a non-traditional way: she leaves him to become a Senegalese ambassador to the United States. Ramatoulaye responds to her husband in the traditional manner, by staying with him and expecting him to fulfill his duties to her according to the Koran. But Ramatoulaye's husband takes his second wife only to ignore his first, and Ramatoulaye is left alone.
Both women had forsaken the traditional African custom of marrying the parents' choice, and had married of their own choosing because of love. In one key moment, as Ramatoulaye describes the happiness they experienced during the early days of their marriages, she foreshadows the impending doom through metaphor. The two couples had spent many hours on the beach. In a moment of abandon, harking back to a particular moment, Ramatoulaye exclaims, "There is nothing more beautiful than a fish just out of water, its eye clear and fresh, with golden or silvery scales and beautiful blueish glints!" She stops with this image, ignoring the fact that this "beautiful" fish, just out of water, is on the verge of death, is in fact dying in front of their eyes. In the early days of their marriage, there was nothing more beautiful than Aissatou and Ramatoulaye, fish just out of water, women who have just left tradition and custom to form a new, untraditional marriage. But like the fish, their deaths are imminent. Their non-traditional, "beautiful" marriages are on the verge of breaking apart.
