61 pages • 2 hours read
Laila LalamiThe Moor's Account
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 23-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 23 Summary: “The Story of the Guesthouse”
Mustafa is woken from a dream about his homeland by Dorantes’s wife, who is crying out as she labors with Dorantes’s child. As Dorantes waits with Mustafa, he lists the Spanish names he is thinking of giving the baby and reminisces about the day his brother Diego was born.
Oyomasot appears with the newborn, a girl. Both Mustafa and his wife feel envious. The child is given a Spanish name and fussed over, but she is sent to live in a convent outside the city when she is only a few months old.
In the spring, Viceroy Mendoza sends for Dorantes and Mustafa. He tells them that they should delay their plans to return to Seville and consider joining his mission to find the Seven Cities of Gold. After years of exploring, Mustafa considers the Seven Cities “nothing more than a legend, the kind of story that could be used to entertain children” (300). Mustafa is disgusted that Mendoza still wants more riches after plundering all of Tenochtitlán’s gold. He finds his greed “distasteful and destructive” (300).
Dorantes tells Mendoza he has no desire to explore new lands after the ordeal he’s been through. Mendoza then asks Mustafa and the native women to join him. Dorantes says he could never sell Mustafa after all the years they’ve been together and that he needs the native women to serve his household. Mendoza reluctantly accepts his refusal and then offers to introduce him to a rich widow.
Soon both Castillo and Dorantes are courting rich widows from Spain. Mustafa asks Castillo if he’d ever asked Dorantes about when he planned to sign and notarize the papers that would give Mustafa his freedom. Castillo tells Mustafa that each time he asks about setting Mustafa free, Dorantes tells him that it is none of his business. Mustafa sadly reflects that after all they’d been through together, his master is returning to his old ways: “whatever transformation had taken place within him had slowly been undone by his prolonged stay in the capital, where there was endless talk of money and power” (303).
Dorantes and Castillo each marry rich Spanish widows. Realizing that Dorantes is never going to grant his freedom, Mustafa convinces Dorantes to send him on the expedition by reminding him of the riches that might be found in the Seven Cities. Mustafa cleverly manipulates Dorantes into a decision that will allow him to “set himself free” (304).
Chapter 24 Summary: “The Story of the Return”
Mustafa embarks on a northern expedition with the newly appointed governor, Coronado. More than 100 Aztecs accompany them. Mustafa notes that the Aztecs have lost their name along with their freedom, as the Spanish colonizers refer to them simply as the Amigos (the friends):
The Amigos were Aztecs who had allied with the Crown of Castile against the other Aztecs—and for this betrayal they had earned the privilege of losing their tribe’s true name, replacing it with a common and unthreatening Spanish noun (305).
On their journey, they encounter a group of shackled, enslaved Indigenous people. This causes Mustafa to reflect that he “knew only too well how precious and how fragile a man’s freedom was” (306). Although the friar and Coronado inform the Castilian horsemen that they must set the slaves free, when they object, Coronado lets them keep their slaves.
When they arrive in Guadalajara, Mustafa realizes that Oyomasot may be pregnant: “It stunned me that the baby we had wanted for so long had chosen this delicate moment in our lives to announce its presence” (307). When the settlers in Guadalajara complain to Coronado, he explains that a new era has begun and that the Spanish way of life will be spread peacefully. Mustafa calls Coronado’s promises “tall tales” (308).
They return to Compostela and find it in disarray. Satosol is still living there and asks Mustafa many questions. Coronado orders improvements, including more land for the settlers and better treatment of the natives.
Mustafa slowly abandons his European clothing, and so does his wife. As Mustafa sets out ahead of Coronado, Coronado promises him that if he finds the Seven Cities, he will be greatly rewarded, but if Mustafa betrays his orders, Coronado will find him and punish him “in ways you cannot even imagine” (311).
One of the friars traveling with Mustafa asks whether the friars on the Narváez expedition considered Mustafa’s cures “an affront to God” (313). Mustafa informs him that the friars never saw any of his cures. The other friar on the expedition agrees, saying that the friars “had already been martyred by the time Cabeza de Vaca journeyed here” (313). Mustafa thinks, “That man’s sterile account would always be considered the truth—no matter what had happened” (313).
Feeling rebellious, he reveals that one of the friars on the Narváez expedition settled with the natives. He also explains that one friar drowned, while two others were eaten. Although he knows the cannibalism was committed by Castilians, Mustafa lets them think the friars were eaten by natives.
As they prepare to leave, the younger friar announces that he’s too sick to travel and that they should go on without him. When they reach the next town, Mustafa appeals to the remaining friar’s ambition, convincing him that he should let Mustafa go on to the next town before him:
Imagine if you were to be preceded by an ambassador who would introduce you and tell the people all you know and all you can do […] your reputation will grow. This is how Cabeza de Vaca used to proceed (315).
Mustafa devises a system for sending a group of Amigos back with a cross representing the wealth of each town they visit—the larger the cross, the richer the town. In each town, he sends a group back with a cross of an increasingly small size until there are no more Amigos left. Mustafa is relieved to be “free of the Amigos, who were not amigos” and that his “involvement with the empire was finally over” (316).
Chapter 25 Summary: “The Story of Hawikuh”
In the final chapter, Mustafa relaxes with his wife, listening to the heartbeat of the baby she’s carrying. In his wife’s native language, he says, “Let me tell you a story that you can tell our child” (317). Despite being content, he recalls the beauty of his homeland, yearns for its familiar customs, and dreams of seeing his brothers again. He wonders if his child will someday travel to his homeland and whether it will seem as “vast,” “mysterious,” and “beautiful” to his child as the new world seems to Mustafa (318).
Mustafa explains to the leader of the Zuni tribe that the “only means of salvation is to create a fiction” (319). He instructs the leader to send a group of men to tell the friar that the Zunis killed him. In this way, he saves the Zunis from the conquerors and finally frees himself: “Estebanico would be laid to rest. But Mustafa would remain, free to live a life of his own choosing” (321).
Mustafa decides to return to his wife’s tribe, the Avavares, and is determined that his unborn child “learn not to put his life in the hands of another man” (320). The novel ends as it begins, with Mustafa declaring God’s greatness.
Chapters 23-25 Analysis
Reflecting on his decisions, Mustafa blames his situation on ambition and greed:
It was greed that had led me to leave the notary’s life for the trader’s life. It was greed that had convinced me to sell men into slavery and it was greed that had led the three hundred men of the Narváez expedition to perish in La Florida (302).
He takes responsibility for his part in fate, acknowledging that he gave up his “right to go where I please, my right to work as I wished, my right to worship as I wanted […] I had willingly walked back into darkness” (296). He realizes that greed leads men, including himself, to make terrible, life-altering choices.
Mustafa sadly realizes that despite all they’d been through together, his enslaver is returning to his old ways and will never set him free. He decides that he must use what he learned among the natives to take control of his fate. By inventing his own truth, he finds new means of Survival in the Face of Colonial Dehumanization—a lesson he takes from the Indigenous groups who have pioneered the art of surviving colonialism. He observes that “the elders teach us, be a trickster and you will survive” (314).
After devising his escape from slavery, Mustafa is free to live peacefully with his wife and her people. Mustafa tells his story both to correct the official account of the expedition and to preserve his memory:
I wanted to tell a story to my child, so that he might share the joy or the pain it contained, that he might learn something from it, that he might tell it after my death or after his mother’s death, even if only to pass the time. I wanted to tell him a story that he might remember me (320).
This conclusion emphasizes the degree to which Mustafa has reconciled The Tension Between Storytelling and Recordkeeping. The European colonial world he left behind runs on recordkeeping. Its official records identify him as an enslaved person named Estabanico, and for this reason, he can never return to that world. In the story he tells, however, he is the keeper of his own identity. He decides what his experiences mean and how they fit together into a narrative that defines him. If his child learns this story and remembers him, then he can live on as his true self, not as a piece of property noted in a ledger.
Related Titles
By Laila Lalami
