The Satanic Verses

by Salman Rushdie

  ‘You chose me,’ he dourly replied.

  On the seventh day after her disappearance Ayesha was sighted walking towards the village, naked again and dressed in golden butterflies, her silver hair streaming behind her in the breeze. She went directly to the home of Sarpanch Muhammad Din and asked that the Titlipur panchayat be convened for an immediate emergency meeting. ‘The greatest event in the history of the tree has come upon us,’ she confided. Muhammad Din, unable to refuse her, fixed the time of the meeting for that evening, after dark.

  That night the panchayat members took their places on the usual branch of the tree, while Ayesha the kahin stood before them on the ground. ‘I have flown with the angel into the highest heights,’ she said. ‘Yes, even to the lote-tree of the uttermost end. The archangel, Gibreel: he has brought us a message which is also a command. Everything is required of us, and everything will be given.’

  Nothing in the life of the Sarpanch Muhammad Din had prepared him for the choice he was about to face. ‘What does the angel ask, Ayesha, daughter?’ he asked, fighting to steady his voice.

  ‘It is the angel’s will that all of us, every man, and woman and child in the village, begin at once to prepare for a pilgrimage. We are commanded to walk from this place to Mecca Sharif, to kiss the Black Stone in the Ka’aba at the centre of the Haram Sharif, the sacred mosque. There we must surely go.’

  Now the panchayat’s quintet began to debate heatedly. There were the crops to consider, and the impossibility of abandoning their homes en masse. ‘It is not to be conceived of, child,’ the Sarpanch told her. ‘It is well known that Allah excuses haj and umra to those who are genuinely unable to go for reasons of poverty or health.’ But Ayesha remained silent and the elders continued to argue. Then it was as if her silence infected everyone else and for a long moment, in which the question was settled – although by what means nobody ever managed to comprehend – there were no words spoken at all.

  It was Osman the clown who spoke up at last, Osman the convert, for whom his new faith had been no more than a drink of water. ‘It’s almost two hundred miles from here to the sea,’ he cried. ‘There are old ladies here, and babies. However can we go?’

  ‘God will give us the strength,’ Ayesha serenely replied.

  ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you,’ Osman shouted, refusing to give up, ‘that there’s a mighty ocean between us and Mecca Sharif? How will we ever cross? We have no money for the pilgrim boats. Maybe the angel will grow us wings, so we can fly?’

  Many villagers rounded angrily upon the blasphemer Osman. ‘Be quiet now,’ Sarpanch Muhammad Din rebuked him. ‘You haven’t been long in our faith or our village. Keep your trap shut and learn our ways.’

  Osman, however, answered cheekily, ‘So this is how you welcome new settlers. Not as equals, but as people who must do as they are told.’ A knot of red-faced men began to tighten around Osman, but before anything else could happen the kahin Ayesha changed the mood entirely by answering the clown’s questions.

  ‘This, too, the angel has explained,’ she said quietly. ‘We will walk two hundred miles, and when we reach the shores of the sea, we will put our feet into the foam, and the waters will open for us. The waves shall be parted, and we shall walk across the ocean-floor to Mecca.’

  The next morning Mirza Saeed Akhtar awoke in a house that had fallen unusually silent, and when he called for the servants there was no reply. The stillness had spread into the potato fields, too; but under the broad, spreading roof of the Titlipur tree all was hustle and bustle. The panchayat had voted unanimously to obey the command of the Archangel Gibreel, and the villagers had begun to prepare for departure. At first the Sarpanch had wanted the carpenter Isa to construct litters that could be pulled by oxen and on which the old and infirm could ride, but that idea had been knocked on the head by his own wife, who told him, ‘You don’t listen, Sarpanch sahibji! Didn’t the angel say we must walk? Well then, that is what we must do.’ Only the youngest of infants were to be excused the foot-pilgrimage, and they would be carried (it had been decided) on the backs of all the adults, in rotation. The villagers had pooled all their resources, and heaps of potatoes, lentils, rice, bitter gourds, chillies, aubergines and other vegetables were piling up next to the panchayat bough. The weight of the provisions was to be evenly divided between the walkers. Cooking utensils, too, were being gathered together, and whatever bedding could be found. Beasts of burden were to be taken, and a couple of carts carrying live chickens and such, but in general the pilgrims were under the Sarpanch’s instructions to keep personal belongings to a minimum. Preparations had been under way since before dawn, so that by the time an incensed Mirza Saeed strode into the village, things were well advanced. For forty-five minutes the zamindar slowed things up by making angry speeches and shaking individual villagers by the shoulders, but then, fortunately, he gave up and left, so that the work could be continued at its former, rapid pace. As the Mirza departed he smacked his head repeatedly and called people names, such as loonies, simpletons, very bad words, but he had always been a godless man, the weak end of a strong line, and he had to be left to find his own fate; there was no arguing with men like him.

  By sunset the villagers were ready to depart, and the Sarpanch told everyone to rise for prayers in the small hours so that they could leave immediately afterwards and thus avoid the worst heat of the day. That night, lying down on his mat beside old Khadija, he murmured, ‘At last. I’ve always wanted to see the Ka’aba, to circle it before I die.’ She reached out from her mat to take his hand. ‘I, too, have hoped for it, against hope,’ she said. ‘We’ll walk through the waters together.’

  Mirza Saeed, driven into an impotent frenzy by the spectacle of the packing village, burst in on his wife without ceremony. ‘You should see what’s going on, Mishu,’ he exclaimed, gesticulating absurdly. ‘The whole of Titlipur has taken leave of its brains, and is off to the seaside. What is to happen to their homes, their fields? There is ruination in store. Must be political agitators involved. Someone has been bribing someone. – Do you think if I offered cash they would stay here like sane persons?’ His voice dried. Ayesha was in the room.

  ‘You bitch,’ he cursed her. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed while Mishal and her mother squatted on the floor, sorting through their belongings and working out how little they could manage with on the pilgrimage.

  ‘You’re not going,’ Mirza Saeed ranted. ‘I forbid it, the devil alone knows what germ this whore has infected the villagers with, but you are my wife and I refuse to let you embark upon this suicidal venture.’

  ‘Good words,’ Mishal laughed bitterly. ‘Saeed, good choice of words. You know I can’t live but you talk about suicide. Saeed, a thing is happening here, and you with your imported European atheism don’t know what it is. Or maybe you would if you looked beneath your English suitings and tried to locate your heart.’

  ‘It’s incredible,’ Saeed cried. ‘Mishal, Mishu, is this you? All of a sudden you’ve turned into this God-bothered type from ancient history?’

  Mrs Qureishi said, ‘Go away, son. No room for unbelievers here. The angel has told Ayesha that when Mishal completes the pilgrimage to Mecca her cancer will have disappeared. Everything is required and everything will be given.’

  Mirza Saeed Akhtar put his palms against a wall of his wife’s bedroom and pressed his forehead against the plaster. After a long pause he said: ‘If it is a question of performing umra then for God’s sake let’s go to town and catch a plane. We can be in Mecca within a couple of days.’

  Mishal answered, ‘We are commanded to walk.’

  Saeed lost control of himself. ‘Mishal? Mishal?’ he shrieked. ‘Commanded? Archangels, Mishu? Gibreel? God with a long beard and angels with wings? Heaven and hell, Mishal? The Devil with a pointy tail and cloven hoofs? How far are you going with this? Do women have souls, what do you say? Or the other way: do souls have gender? Is God black or white? When the waters of the ocean part, where will
the extra water go? Will it stand up sideways like walls? Mishal? Answer me. Are there miracles? Do you believe in Paradise? Will I be forgiven my sins?’ He began to cry, and fell on to his knees, with his forehead still pressed against the wall. His dying wife came up and embraced him from behind. ‘Go with the pilgrimage, then,’ he said, dully. ‘But at least take the Mercedes station wagon. It’s got air-conditioning and you can take the icebox full of Cokes.’

  ‘No,’ she said, gently. ‘We’ll go like everybody else. We’re pilgrims, Saeed. This isn’t a picnic at the beach.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Mirza Saeed Akhtar wept. ‘Mishu, I can’t handle this by myself.’

  Ayesha spoke from the bed. ‘Mirza sahib, come with us,’ she said. ‘Your ideas are finished with. Come and save your soul.’

  Saeed stood up, red-eyed. ‘A bloody outing you wanted,’ he said viciously to Mrs Qureishi. ‘That chicken certainly came home to roost. Your outing will finish off the lot of us, seven generations, the whole bang shoot.’

  Mishal leaned her cheek against his back. ‘Come with us, Saeed. Just come.’

  He turned to face Ayesha. ‘There is no God,’ he said firmly.

  ‘There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His Prophet,’ she replied.

  ‘The mystical experience is a subjective, not an objective truth,’ he went on. ‘The waters will not open.’

  ‘The sea will part at the angel’s command,’ Ayesha answered.

  ‘You are leading these people into certain disaster.’

  ‘I am taking them into the bosom of God.’

  ‘I don’t believe in you,’ Mirza Saeed insisted. ‘But I’m going to come, and will try to end this insanity with every step I take.’

  ‘God chooses many means,’ Ayesha rejoiced, ‘many roads by which the doubtful may be brought into his certainty.’

  ‘Go to hell,’ shouted Mirza Saeed Akhtar, and ran, scattering butterflies, from the room.

  ‘Who is the madder,’ Osman the clown whispered into his bullock’s ear as he groomed it in its small byre, ‘the madwoman, or the fool who loves the madwoman?’ The bullock didn’t reply. ‘Maybe we should have stayed untouchable,’ Osman continued. ‘A compulsory ocean sounds worse than a forbidden well.’ And the bullock nodded, twice for yes, boom, boom.

  1

  ‘Once I’m an owl, what is the spell or antidote for turning me back into myself?’ Mr Muhammad Sufyan, prop. Shaandaar Café and landlord of the rooming-house above, mentor to the variegated, transient and particoloured inhabitants of both, seen-it-all type, least doctrinaire of hajis and most unashamed of VCR addicts, ex-schoolteacher, self-taught in classical texts of many cultures, dismissed from post in Dhaka owing to cultural differences with certain generals in the old days when Bangladesh was merely an East Wing, and therefore, in his own words, ‘not so much an immig as an emig runt’ – this last a good-natured allusion to his lack of inches, for though he was a wide man, thick of arm and waist, he stood no more than sixty-one inches off the ground, blinked in his bedroom doorway, awakened by Jumpy Joshi’s urgent midnight knock, polished his half-rimmed spectacles on the edge of Bengali-style kurta (drawstrings tied at the neck in a neat bow), squeezed lids tightly shut open shut over myopic eyes, replaced glasses, opened eyes, stroked moustacheless hennaed beard, sucked teeth, and responded to the now-indisputable horns on the brow of the shivering fellow whom Jumpy, like the cat, appeared to have dragged in, with the above impromptu quip, stolen, with commendable mental alacrity for one aroused from his slumbers, from Lucius Apuleius of Madaura, Moroccan priest, A D 120–180 approx., colonial of an earlier Empire, a person who denied the accusation of having bewitched a rich widow yet confessed, somewhat perversely, that at an early stage in his career he had been transformed, by witchcraft, into (not an owl, but) an ass. ‘Yes, yes,’ Sufyan continued, stepping out into the passage and blowing a white mist of winter breath into his cupped hands, ‘Poor misfortunate, but no point wallowing. Constructive attitude must be adopted. I will wake my wife.’

  Chamcha was beard-fuzz and grime. He wore a blanket like a toga below which there protruded the comic deformity of goats’ hoofs, while above it could be seen the sad comedy of a sheepskin jacket borrowed from Jumpy, its collar turned up, so that sheepish curls nestled only inches from pointy billy-goat horns. He seemed incapable of speech, sluggish of body, dull of eye; even though Jumpy attempted to encourage him – ‘There, you see, we’ll have this well sorted in a flash’ – he, Saladin, remained the most limp and passive of – what? – let us say: satyrs. Sufyan, meanwhile, offered further Apuleian sympathy. ‘In the case of the ass, reverse metamorphosis required personal intervention of goddess Isis,’ he beamed. ‘But old times are for old fogies. In your instance, young mister, first step would possibly be a bowl of good hot soup.’

  At this point his kindly tones were quite drowned by the intervention of a second voice, raised high in operatic terror; moments after which, his small form was being jostled and shoved by the mountainous, fleshy figure of a woman, who seemed unable to decide whether to push him out of her way or keep him before her as a protective shield. Crouching behind Sufyan, this new being extended a trembling arm at whose end was a quivering, pudgy, scarlet-nailed index finger. ‘That over there,’ she howled. ‘What thing is come upon us?’

  ‘It is a friend of Joshi’s,’ Sufyan said mildly, and continued, turning to Chamcha, ‘Please forgive, – the unexpectedness et cet, isn’t it? – Anyhow, may I present my Mrs; – my Begum Sahiba, – Hind.’

  ‘What friend? How friend?’ the croucher said. ‘Ya Allah, eyes aren’t next to your nose?’

  The passageway, – bare-board floor, torn floral paper on the walls, – was starting to fill up with sleepy residents. Prominent among whom were two teenage girls, one spike-haired, the other pony-tailed, and both relishing the opportunity to demonstrate their skills (learned from Jumpy) in the martial arts of karate and Wing Chun: Sufyan’s daughters, Mishal (seventeen) and fifteen-year-old Anahita, leapt from their bedroom in fighting gear, Bruce Lee pajamas worn loosely over T-shirts bearing the image of the new Madonna; – caught sight of unhappy Saladin; – and shook their heads in wide-eyed delight.

  ‘Radical,’ said Mishal, approvingly. And her sister nodded assent: ‘Crucial. Fucking A.’ Her mother did not, however, reproach her for her language; Hind’s mind was elsewhere, and she wailed louder than ever: ‘Look at this husband of mine. What sort of haji is this? Here is Shaitan himself walking in through our door, and I am made to offer him hot chicken yakhni, cooked by my own right hand.’

  Useless, now, for Jumpy Joshi to plead with Hind for tolerance, to attempt explanations and demand solidarity. ‘If he’s not the devil on earth,’ the heaving-chested lady pointed out unanswerably, ‘from where that plague-breath comes that he’s breathing? From, maybe, the Perfumed Garden?’

  ‘Not Gulistan, but Bostan,’ said Chamcha, suddenly. ‘A I Flight 420.’ On hearing his voice, however, Hind squealed frightfully, and plunged past him, heading for the kitchen.

  ‘Mister,’ Mishal said to Saladin as her mother fled downstairs, ‘anyone who scares her that way has got to be seriously bad.’

  ‘Wicked,’ Anahita agreed. ‘Welcome aboard.’

  This Hind, now so firmly entrenched in exclamatory mode, had once been – strangebuttrue! – the most blushing of brides, the soul of gentleness, the very incarnation of tolerant good humour. As the wife of the erudite schoolteacher of Dhaka, she had entered into her duties with a will, the perfect helpmeet, bringing her husband cardamom-scented tea when he stayed up late marking examination papers, ingratiating herself with the school principal at the termly Staff Families Outing, struggling with the novels of Bibhutibhushan Banerji and the metaphysics of Tagore in an attempt to be more worthy of a spouse who could quote effortlessly from Rig-Veda as well as Quran-Sharif, from the military accounts of Julius Caesar as well as the Revelations of St John the Divine. In those days she had admired his pluralistic ope
nness of mind, and struggled, in her kitchen, towards a parallel eclecticism, learning to cook the dosas and uttapams of South India as well as the soft meatballs of Kashmir. Gradually her espousal of the cause of gastronomic pluralism grew into a grand passion, and while secularist Sufyan swallowed the multiple cultures of the subcontinent – ‘and let us not pretend that Western culture is not present; after these centuries, how could it not also be part of our heritage?’ – his wife cooked, and ate in increasing quantities, its food. As she devoured the highly spiced dishes of Hyderabad and the high-faluting yoghurt sauces of Lucknow her body began to alter, because all that food had to find a home somewhere, and she began to resemble the wide rolling land mass itself, the subcontinent without frontiers, because food passes across any boundary you care to mention.

  Mr Muhammad Sufyan, however, gained no weight: not a tola, not an ounce.

  His refusal to fatten was the beginning of the trouble. When she reproached him – “You don’t like my cooking? For whom I’m doing it all and blowing up like a balloon?’ – he answered, mildly, looking up at her (she was the taller of the two) over the top of half-rimmed specs: ‘Restraint is also part of our traditions, Begum. Eating two mouthfuls less than one’s hunger: self-denial, the ascetic path.’ What a man: all the answers, but you couldn’t get him to give you a decent fight.

  Restraint was not for Hind. Maybe, if Sufyan had ever complained; if just once he’d said, I thought I was marrying one woman but these days you’re big enough for two; if he’d ever given her the incentive! – then maybe she’d have desisted, why not, of course she would; so it was his fault, for having no aggression, what kind of a male was it who didn’t know how to insult his fat lady wife? – In truth, it was entirely possible that Hind would have failed to control her eating binges even if Sufyan had come up with the required imprecations and entreaties; but, since he did not, she munched on, content to dump the whole blame for her figure on him.