Salman Rushdie: Luka and the Fire of Life

There were seven vultures flying down towards him, wearing ruffs around their necks, like European noblemen in old paintings, or like circus clowns. They were ugly, smelly and mean. The biggest, ugliest, smelliest and meanest vulture settled down on Luka’s windowsill, right next to him, as if they were old friends, while the other six hovered just out of reach. Bear the dog woke up and came to the window fast, growling and baring his teeth; Dog the bear leapt up a moment later and towered over Luka, looking as if he wanted to rip the vulture to pieces there and then. ‘Wait,’ Luka told them, because he had seen something that needed to be investigated. Hanging from the ruff around the Boss Vulture’s neck was a little pouch. Luka reached for it; the vulture made no move. Inside the pouch was a scroll of paper, and on the scroll of paper was a message from Captain Aag.

‘Dreadful black-tongued child,’ the message read, ‘disgusting witch-boy, did you imagine I would do nothing in return for what you did to me? Did you think, vile warlock infant, that I could not damage you more grievously than you damaged me? Were you so vain, so foolish, feeble pint-sized maledictor, that you thought you were the only witch in town? Throw out a curse when you can’t control it, O incompetent pygmy hexer, and it will come back to smack you in the face. Or, on this occasion, in perhaps an even more satisfying act of revenge, it poleaxes someone you love.’

Luka began to shiver, even though the night was warm. Was this the truth? Had his burning curse against the circus boss been answered by a sleeping curse on his father? In which case, Luka thought with horror, the Big Sleep was his fault. Not even the arrival in his life of Dog the bear and Bear the dog could make up for the loss of his dad. But on the other hand, he had noticed his father’s slowness long before the night of the dancing stars, so maybe this note was just a hideous lie. At any rate he was determined not to let the Boss Vulture see that he was shaken, so in a loud, firm voice, like the one he used in school plays, he said, ‘I hate vultures, to be honest with you, and I’m not surprised that you are the only creatures who stayed loyal to that terrible Captain Aag. What an idea, anyway, to have a vulture act in a circus! Just shows you the type of guy he is. This, also,’ Luka added, and tore the note to bits under the vulture’s cynical beak, ‘is the letter of a nasty man, trying to make out that he could make my father ill. He can’t make anyone unwell, obviously, but he does make everyone sick.’ Then, summoning up all his courage, he shooed the big bird off his windowsill and closed the window.

The vultures flew away in disarray, and Luka collapsed onto his bed, trembling. His dog and his bear nuzzled at him, but he could not be comforted. Rashid was Sleeping, and he, Luka, could not get rid of the notion that he himself – and he alone – was the one who had brought this curse down on his family.

After a sleepless night, Luka got up before dawn and crept into his parents’ bedroom, as he had done so often in happier times. There lay his father, Asleep, with tubes running into his arm to feed him, and a monitor showing his heartbeat as a jagged green line. To tell the truth, Rashid didn’t look cursed or even sad. He looked… happy , as if he were dreaming of the stars, dancing with them while he slept, living with them in the sky, and smiling. But looks weren’t everything, Luka knew that much; the world was not always what it seemed to be. Soraya was sleeping on the floor, sitting with her back against the wall. Neither parent woke up, as they always used to do when Luka was sneaking towards them. That was depressing. Dragging his feet, Luka made his way back to his own room. Through the window he could see the sky beginning to lighten. Dawn was supposed to cheer people up, but Luka couldn’t think of anything to be cheerful about. He went to the window to draw the curtain so that he could at least lie in the dark and rest for a while, and that was when he saw the extraordinary thing.

There was a man standing in the lane outside the Khalifa residence, wearing a familiar vermilion-coloured bush shirt and a recognisably battered panama hat, and plainly watching the house. Luka was just about to call out, and maybe even send Bear and Dog to chase the stranger away, when the man threw back his head and looked him right in the eye.

It was Rashid Khalifa! It was his father, standing out there, saying nothing, but looking wide awake!

But if Rashid was outside in the lane, then who was sleeping in his bed? And if Rashid was sleeping in his bed, then how could he be outside? Luka’s head was whirling and his brain had no idea what to think; his feet, however, had started to run. Pursued by his bear and his dog, Luka ran as fast as he could to where his father was waiting for him. He charged downstairs barefoot, stumbled slightly, took a step to the right, felt oddly giddy for a moment, regained his balance and hurtled on through the front door. This was wonderful, Luka thought. Rashid Khalifa had woken up and somehow slipped outside for a walk. Everything was going to be all right.

As he ran out of the front door with Dog and Bear, Luka had the strangest feeling: as if they had crossed an invisible boundary; as if a secret level had been unlocked and they had passed through the gateway that allowed them to explore it. He shivered a little, and the bear and the dog shivered, too, although it was not a cold dawn. The colours of the world were strange, the sky too blue, the dirt too brown, the house pinker and greener than normal… and his father was not his father , not unless Rashid Khalifa had somehow become partly transparent. This Rashid Khalifa looked exactly like the famous Shah of Blah; he was wearing his panama hat and his vermilion bush shirt, and when he walked and talked it became obvious that his voice was Rashid’s voice, and the way he moved was an exact copy of the original, too; but this Rashid Khalifa could be seen through, not clearly but murkily, as if he were half real and half a trick of the light. As the first whispers of dawn murmured in the sky above, the figure’s transparency became even more obvious. Luka’s head began to spin. Had something happened to his father? Was this see-through father some sort of… some sort of…

‘Are you some sort of ghost?’ he asked in a weak voice. ‘You are certainly something peculiar and surprising, to say the very least.’

‘Am I wearing a white sheet? Am I clanking chains? Do I look ghoulish to you?’ demanded the phantom dismissively. ‘Am I scary? Okay, don’t answer that. The truth is that there are no such things as ghosts or spectres and therefore I am not one. And may I point out that right now I am just as surprised as you?’

Bear’s hair was standing on end, and Dog was shaking his head in a puzzled way, as if he had just begun to remember something.

‘Why are you so surprised?’ Luka asked, trying to sound confident. ‘You’re not the one who can see through me, after all.’ The see-through Rashid Khalifa came closer and Luka had to force himself not to run away. ‘I’m not here for you,’ he said. ‘So it is, hmm, unusual for you to have crossed over when you’re in perfect health. And your dog and bear, too, by the by. The whole thing is exceedingly irregular. The Frontier is not supposed to be this easily ignored.’

‘What do you mean?’ Luka demanded. ‘What Frontier? Who are you here for?’ The moment he asked the second question, he knew the answer, and it drove the first question out of his mind. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh. Then is my father…?’

‘Not yet,’ said the see-through Rashid. ‘But I’m the patient type.’