Luka and the Fire of Life

by Salman Rushdie

  “You have taken us away from our Handloom,” the soft sword-voices said. “We are Weavers, the three of us, and on the Loom of Days we weave the Threads of Time, weaving the whole of Becoming into the fabric of Being, the whole of Knowing into the cloth of the Known, the whole of Doing into the garment of the Done. Now you have taken us from our Loom and things are disorderly. Disorder displeases us. Displeasure displeases us also. Therefore we are doubly displeased.” And then, after a pause: “Return what you have stolen and perhaps we will spare your lives.”

  “Look at what’s happening around you!” Luka shouted back. “Can’t you see it? The calamity of this whole World? Don’t you want to save it? That’s what I’m trying to do, and all you have to do is get out of my way and let me get home—”

  “It is of no consequence to us whether this World lives or dies,” came the reply.

  Luka was shocked. “You don’t care?” he asked disbelievingly.

  “Compassion is not our affair,” the Aalim replied. “The ages go by heartlessly whether people wish them to do so or not. All things must pass. Only Time itself endures. If this World ends, another will continue. Happiness, friendship, love, suffering, pain are fleeting illusions, like shadows on a wall. The seconds march forward into minutes, the minutes into days, the days into years, unfeelingly. There is no ‘care.’ Only this knowledge is Wisdom. This wisdom alone is Knowledge.”

  The seconds were indeed marching forward, and at home in Kahani, Rashid Khalifa’s life was ebbing away. “The Aalim are my mortal enemies,” he had said, and so they were. Passion rose up in Luka, and a scream of angry love burst out of him. “Then I curse you, just as I cursed Captain Aag!” he yelled at the Three Jo’s. “He caged his animals, and treated them cruelly, and you’re exactly the same, to be honest with you. You think you have everyone in your cage, and so you can ignore us and torment us and make us do what you want, and you don’t care about anything except yourselves. Well, curse you, all three of you! What are you, anyway? Jo-Hua, the Past has gone and will never return, and if it lives on, it’s only in our memories—and the memories of the Elephant Birds, of course—and it’s certainly not standing up there on the ramparts of this Cloud Fortress, wearing a stupid hood. As for you, Jo-Hai, the Present hardly exists, even a boy my age knows that. It vanishes into the past every time I blink an eye, and nothing as, um, temporary as that has much power over me. And Jo-Aiga? The Future? Give me a break. The Future is a dream, and nobody knows how it will turn out. The only sure thing is that we—Bear, Dog, my family, my friends, and us—we will make it whatever it is, good or bad, happy or sad, and we certainly don’t need you to tell us what it is. Time isn’t a trap, you phoneys. It’s just the road I’m on, and I’m in a real hurry right now, so get out of my way. Everyone here has been scared of you for too long. May they lose their fear and—and—and put you on ice for a change. Stop bothering me now. I—I snap my fingers at you.”

  So there it was. He had defied Time’s power, just as his mother (and, later, his father) had said he could, and all he had at the end of it was his recently acquired ability to snap his fingers loudly. It wasn’t much of a weapon, really. But it was interesting, wasn’t it, that the Aalim had been stopped in their tracks by his curse, and that they had put their heads together and were muttering and murmuring—it seemed to Luka—helplessly? Was that possible? Might it be that they were powerless against Luka Khalifa’s famous Cursing Power? Could it be that they knew that he was one of the Particular Children who would not be the victims of Time? If this was Rashid Khalifa’s Magic World, then were the Aalim his creation, too, and therefore subject to his laws? Very deliberately, like a sorcerer casting a spell, Luka lifted his left hand high above his head and snapped his fingers with all his might.

  Right on cue, the encircling Cloud Fortress of Baadal-Garh began to shake like cheap theater scenery, and, as the prisoners on the Flying Carpet watched in astonishment, large sections of the crenellated walls of that aerial jail began to crack and fall. “It’s under attack from the outside!” Luka yelled, and everyone on the Flying Carpet began to cheer as the Aalim disappeared from view to face the unexpected assault. “Who is it?” Soraya asked, gathering her strength and looking extremely embarrassed about her moment of weakness. “Is it the Otter Air Force? If so, they’re on a suicide mission, I’m afraid.” The naked Titan shook his head, and a slow grin spread over his huge face. “It’s not the Otters,” he said. “The gods are revolting.”

  “Well, on the whole we agree about what the gods are like,” said the Elephant Birds, “but there’s no need to be rude.”

  “I mean,” said the Old Boy with a sigh, “that the gods have risen in revolt.”

  And so they had. Looking back on these events later in his life, Luka was never sure if the Revolt of the Gods had been provoked by his speech under the Tree of Terror, when he had tried to persuade the forgotten deities that their survival depended on his father’s; or if it had been conjured up by his Curse, whose purpose had been to break the stranglehold of the Aalim over the affairs of both worlds, the Real and the Magical; or if the retired immortals had decided that enough was enough, and Luka and his friends had just been around at the right time to witness the consequences. Whatever the reason, the hornet swarm of the ex-gods of the Heart of Magic flew through the rip in the sky and descended in wrath upon the Cloud Fortress of Baadal-Garh. Bast the Cat Goddess of Egypt, Hadadu the Akkadian Thunder God, Gong Gong the Flood God of China whose head was so strong that it could crack the Pillar of Heaven, Nyx the Greek Night Goddess, the savage Nordic Fenris Wolf, Quetzalcoatl the Plumed Serpent of Mexico, and assorted Demons, Valkyries, Rakshasas, and Goblins could be seen alongside the big fellows, Ra, Zeus, Tlaloc, Odin, Anzu, Vulcan, and the rest, burning the Cloud Fortress, hurling tsunamis against its walls, blasting it with lightning, head-butting it, and, in the case of Aphrodite and the other Beauty Goddesses, complaining loudly about the Ravages of Time on their complexions, their figures, and their hair.

  If there had been a force field protecting the Cloud Fortress, the Assault of Magic* had been too much for it. And as the collected might of all the former deities demolished the Aalim’s stronghold, and a loud, strange, screechy, miaowing sound was heard, Luka shouted at Soraya, “This is our chance!” and at once the Flying Carpet rose high into the sky and bore its passengers away at speed.

  The getaway wasn’t easy. The Aalim were making their last stand; their day was ending, but they still had some loyal servants to call on. Soraya had only just set a course for the Bund, the embankment on the river Silsila where Luka would have to leap back into the Real World, when a squadron of bizarre one-legged birds, the fabled Shang Yang, or Rainbirds, of China, assaulted the Flying Carpet from above. The Shang Yang carried whole rivers in their beaks and poured them over the Resham in an attempt to extinguish the Fire burning in the Ott Pot around Luka’s neck. The Carpet lurched sideways and plunged downward under the weight of the falling avalanches of water; but then, showing remarkable powers of recovery, it straightened itself out and flew onward. The assault of the Rainbirds continued; five, six, seven times the floods fell from the sky, and the Carpet’s passengers fell over, collided with one another, and rolled dangerously near the edges of the Carpet. Still the defensive bubble held firm. At last the Shang Yang’s water supply ran dry, and they flapped bad-temperedly away. “Yes, it’s good to have resisted this attack, but it’s not the end of the trouble,” Soraya warned the cheering Luka. “The Aalim have made one more desperate effort to prevent the Fire of Life from crossing over into the Real World. You heard that dreadful, piteous miaowing sound that filled the air as we left the Cloud Fortress? That was the Aalim playing their final card. I’m sorry to tell you that that noise was the Summons that unleashes the deadly Rain Cats.”

  The Rain Cats—for it is time, at last, to speak of catty matters!—started falling from the sky soon enough. They were large Cats, raintigers and rainlions, rainjaguars and raincheetahs, Water
Felines of every spot and stripe. They were made of the rain itself, rain enchanted by the Aalim and turned into sabre-toothed Wildcats. They fell as cats fall, nimbly, fearlessly, and when they hit the Flying Carpet’s invisible security bubble they dug their claws in and held on. Soon there were Rain Cats all over the bubble, hundreds of them, then thousands, and their claws were long and powerful, and they slashed at the bubble to great and damaging effect. “I’m afraid they will break through the shield,” cried Soraya, “and there are too many of them for us to fight.”

  “No, there aren’t! Come down here, Fraidy Cats! We’ll soon show you what’s what!” Bear, the dog, barked bravely at the clawing, slashing Rain Cats above him, and the Old Boy prepared to grow to his full height again, but Luka knew all of that was just empty bravado. Thousands of feral enchanted felines would surely overpower even the great Titan, and while Bear and Dog (and maybe even Coyote) would fight for all they were worth, and no doubt Soraya had plenty of tricks up her sleeve, there could, in the end, be no victory against such unequal odds. “Every time I think we’ve cracked it,” Luka thought, “there’s another impossible obstacle in my way.” He took Soraya’s hand and squeezed it. “I only have one hundred and sixty-five lives left, and I don’t think they will be enough to get me through this last test,” he said. “So if we lose here, I just want to say thank you, because I would never have come half this far without your help.” The Insultana of Ott squeezed his hand back, looked over his shoulder, and burst into a wide smile. “No need to get sentimental on me just yet, stupid boy,” she said, “because you’re not only making too many enemies, although you do seem to have no shortage of those. Look behind you. You’re also acquiring some pretty powerful friends.”

  Enormous banks of cloud had piled up behind the Flying Carpet of King Solomon the Wise; but, Soraya pointed out with glee, those were not mere clouds. They were the assembled Wind Gods of the Magic World. “And their presence here,” she said reassuringly, “means that the gods are definitely determined to get you home to do what you have to do.”

  Now Luka saw the faces of the Wind Gods inside the cloud banks, cloud faces puffing up their cheeks and blowing with all their might. “Three Chinese Wind Gods are here,” Soraya said very excitedly, “Chi Po, Feng-Po-Po, and Pan-Gu! And you see that bunch of flying Wind-Lions, the Fong-shih-ye from the Kinmen archipelago of Taiwan? The Chinese usually refuse to speak to them, or even to accept that they exist—but here they are, working together! It’s really amazing how everyone has united behind you! Fujin from Japan has come, and he never goes anywhere. Look there, all the American gods, the Iroquois deity Ga-Oh, and Tate of the Sioux, and, see, the ferocious Cherokee Wind Spirit, Oonawieh Unggi, over there! I mean, the Sioux and the Cherokee were never allies, and to join up with the Iroquois Confederacy—oh, my! And even Chup the Wind God of the Chumash tribe from California has stopped sunbathing and showed up; he’s usually too laid back to rustle up much more than a light breeze. And the Africans are here as well—that’s Yansan the Yoruba Wind Goddess! And from Central and South America, Ecalchot of the Niquiran Indians, and the Mayan Pauahtuns, and Unáhsinte of the Zuni Indians, and Guabancex from the Caribbean … they’re so old, that lot, that frankly I thought they had blown themselves out, but it looks like they have plenty of puff left! And fat Fa’atiu the Samoan is over there, and bulgy Buluga of the Andaman Islands is over there, and Ara Tiotio the Tornado God of Polynesia, and Paka’a from Hawaii. And Ays the Armenian Wind Demon, and the Vila, the Slav Goddesses, and the Norse winged giant Hraesvelg who makes the winds just by flapping his wings, and the Korean goddess Yondung Halmoni—she’d be blowing better if she wasn’t stuffing her mouth with rice cakes, the greedy creature!—and Mbon from Burma, and Enlil—”

  “Stop, please stop,” Luka begged. “It doesn’t matter what they’re called—what they’re doing is more than enough.” What they were doing was this: they were blowing away the Rain Cats. With many loud roars and yowls the Rain Cats lost their grip on the bubble around the Flying Carpet and were sent flying to nowhere, blown head over heels into the depths of the broken sky. A great cry of happiness went up from everyone aboard the Resham, and then the Wind Gods really got going, and the Carpet began to travel at the most amazing speed. Even Soraya with all her skill could not have made it go half as fast. The Magic World below them and the sky above became a blur. All Luka could see was the Carpet itself and the massed Wind Gods behind it, blowing him all the way home. “Get me back in time,” he thought fervently once again. “Please don’t let me be too late, just get me back in time.”

  The wind dropped, the Carpet landed, the Wind Gods disappeared, and Luka was home: not on the bank of the Silsila as he had expected, but in his very own lane, in front of his very own house, in the very place where he first heard Dog and Bear speak, where he first met Nobodaddy and embarked on his great adventure. The colors of the world were still strange, the sky still too blue, the dirt too brown, the house much pinker and greener than usual; nor was it normal for a Flying Carpet to be parked here, with a Sultana of the Magic World, a Titan, a Coyote, and two Elephant Birds aboard, all of them looking distinctly ill at ease.

  “The truth is we don’t belong here, at the Frontier,” said Soraya, as Luka, Dog, the bear, and Bear, the dog, stepped off Resham into the dusty lane. “So, since you have to go, go quickly, so that we also can be off. Go to that other Soraya who lives in that house, and when you pop that Ott Potato into your father’s mouth, don’t forget it was the Insultana of Ott who gave it to you; and afterward, as you grow into a young man, think about that Insultana sometimes, if you don’t completely forget.”

  “I’ll never forget you,” Luka said, “but please, can I ask you one last question: can I pick up an Ott Potato with my bare hands? And if I put it into my dad’s mouth, won’t it burn him to bits?”

  “The Fire of Life does not wound those it touches,” said Soraya of Ott. “Rather, it heals wounds. You will not find that glowing vegetable too hot to pick up. Nor will it do your father anything but good. There are six Ott Potatoes in that Pot, by the way,” she concluded, “one for each of you, if that’s what you decide.”

  “Good-bye, then,” said Luka, and then he turned to the Old Boy and added, “And I meant to say, I’m sorry about what happened to Captain Aag, bcause he was your brother, after all.” The Old Boy shrugged. “Nothing to be sorry about,” he said. “I never liked him anyway.” Then, without further ado, the Insultana Soraya raised her arms, and the Flying Carpet of King Solomon the Wise rose into the sky and vanished with only a soft whoosh for farewell.

  Luka looked at his front door, and saw, standing on the doorstep, glistening in the day’s first light, a large golden orb: the Saving Point for the end of Level Nine, the end of the “game” that hadn’t been a game at all but, as Nobodaddy had said, a matter of life and death. “Come on!” he shouted to Dog and Bear. “Let’s go home!” He ran toward the Saving Point and just as he reached it he stumbled, as he had known he would; he managed to kick the point with his left leg as he lurched awkwardly to his right; he heard, for the last time, the telltale ding that confirmed his achievement; he saw all the numbers vanish from his field of vision; he felt oddly giddy for a moment; then he regained his balance, and saw that the golden orb had vanished, and the colors of the world had returned to normal. He understood that he had left the World of Magic behind, and was back where he needed to be. “And it looks like the same exact time it was when I left,” he marveled. “So all of that never happened, except, of course, that it did.” The Ott Pot was still hanging from his neck, and he could feel its warmth on his chest. He took a deep breath and ran indoors and up the stairs as fast as he could run, and Bear, the dog, and Dog, the bear, came, too.

  The sweet smells of home welcomed him back: his mother’s perfume, the thousand and one mysteries of the kitchen, the freshness of clean sheets, the accumulated fragrances of everything that had happened between those walls during all the years of his life,
and the older, more obscure scents that had hung in the air since before he was born. And at the top of the stairs was his brother, Haroun, with a strange expression on his face. “You’ve been somewhere, haven’t you?” Haroun said. “You’ve been up to something. I can see it on your face.” Luka charged past him, saying, “I don’t have time to explain it right now, to be honest with you,” and Haroun turned and ran after him. “I knew it,” he said. “You’ve had your adventure! So come on, out with it! And by the way, what’s that hanging from your neck?” Luka ran on without replying, and Bear, the dog, and Dog, the bear, pushed their way past Haroun as Luka rushed into his father’s bedroom. They had been part of the adventure, too, and they didn’t intend to miss the final scene.

  Rashid Khalifa lay in his bed, Asleep with his mouth open, just as he had been when Luka had last seen him, and the tubes were still running into his arm, and the monitor by his bedside showed that his heart was still beating, but very, very faintly. He looked happy, though, he still looked happy, as if he were being told a story that he loved. And by his bedside stood Luka’s mother, Soraya, with her fingers fluttering at her lips, and Luka understood, the moment he ran into the room and saw her, that she was about to kiss her fingertips and then touch Rashid’s mouth, because she was saying good-bye.

  “What on earth are you doing, running in here like a crazy person?” Soraya cried, and then Bear, the dog, Dog, the bear, and Haroun charged in as well. “Stop it, all of you,” she demanded. “What is this? A playground? A circus? What?”