Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses

He held his breath.

‘I must think,’ Ayesha said.

‘Think, think,’ Saeed encouraged her happily. ‘Ask your archangel. If he agrees, it must be right.’

Mirza Saeed Akhtar knew that when Ayesha announced that the Archangel Gibreel had accepted his offer her power would be destroyed forever, because the villagers would perceive her fraudulence and her desperation, too. – But how could she turn him down? – What choice did she really have? ‘Revenge is sweet,’ he told himself. Once the woman was discredited, he would certainly take Mishal to Mecca, if that were still her wish.

The butterflies of Titlipur had not entered the mosque. They lined its exterior walls and onion dome, glowing greenly in the dark.

Ayesha in the night: stalking the shadows, lying down, rising to go on the prowl again. There was an uncertainty about her; then the slowness came, and she seemed to dissolve into the shadows of the mosque. She returned at dawn.

After the morning prayer she asked the pilgrims if she might address them; and they, doubtfully, agreed.

‘Last night the angel did not sing,’ she said. ‘He told me, instead, about doubt, and how the Devil makes use of it. I said, but they doubt me, what can I do? He answered: only proof can silence doubt.’

She had their full attention. Next she told them what Mirza Saeed had suggested in the night. ‘He told me to go and ask my angel, but I know better,’ she cried. ‘How could I choose between you? It is all of us, or none.’

‘Why should we follow you,’ the Sarpanch asked, ‘after all the dying, the baby, and all?’

‘Because when the waters part, you will be saved. You will enter into the Glory of the Most High.’

‘What waters?’ Mirza Saeed yelled. ‘How will they divide?’

‘Follow me,’ Ayesha concluded, ‘and judge me by their parting.’

His offer had contained an old question: What kind of idea are you? And she, in turn, had offered him an old answer. I was tempted, but am renewed; am uncompromising; absolute; pure .

The tide was in when the Ayesha Pilgrimage marched down an alley beside the Holiday Inn, whose windows were full of the mistresses of film stars using their new Polaroid cameras, – when the pilgrims felt the city's asphalt turn gritty and soften into sand, – when they found themselves walking through a thick mulch of rotting coconuts abandoned cigarette packets pony turds non-degradable bottles fruit peelings jellyfish and paper, – on to the mid-brown sand overhung by high leaning coco-palms and the balconies of luxury sea-view apartment blocks, – past the teams of young men whose muscles were so well-honed that they looked like deformities, and who were performing gymnastic contortions of all sorts, in unison, like a murderous army of ballet dancers, – and through the beachcombers, clubmen and families who had come to take the air or make business contacts or scavenge a living from the sand, – and gazed, for the first time in their lives, upon the Arabian Sea.

Mirza Saeed saw Mishal, who was being supported by two of the village men, because she was no longer strong enough to stand up by herself. Ayesha was beside her, and Saeed had the idea that the prophetess had somehow stepped out of the dying woman, that all the brightness of Mishal had hopped out of her body and taken this mythological shape, leaving a husk behind to die. Then he was angry with himself for allowing Ayesha's supernaturalism to infect him, too.

The villagers of Titlipur had agreed to follow Ayesha after a long discussion in which they had asked her not to take part. Their common sense told them that it would be foolish to turn back when they had come so far and were in sight of their first goal; but the new doubts in their minds sapped their strength. It was as if they were emerging from some Shangri-La of Ayesha's making, because now that they were simply walking behind her rather than following her in the true sense, they seemed to age and sicken with every step they took. By the time they saw the sea they were a lame, tottering, rheumy, feverish, red-eyed bunch, and Mirza Saeed wondered how many of them would manage the final few yards to the water's edge.

The butterflies were with them, high over their heads.

‘What now, Ayesha?’ Saeed called out to her, filled with the horrible notion that his beloved wife might die here under the hoofs of ponies for rent and beneath the eyes of sugarcane-juice vendors. ‘You have brought us all to the edges of extinction, but here is an unquestionable fact: the sea. Where is your angel now?’

She climbed up, with the villagers’ help, on to an unused thela lying next to a soft-drink stall, and didn't answer Saeed until she could look down at him from her new perch. ‘Gibreel says the sea is like our souls. When we open them, we can move through into wisdom. If we can open our hearts, we can open the sea.’

‘Partition was quite a disaster here on land,’ he taunted her. ‘Quite a few guys died, you might remember. You think it will be different in the water?’

‘Shh,’ said Ayesha suddenly. ‘The angel's almost here.’

It was, on the face of it, surprising that after all the attention the march had received the crowd at the beach was no better than moderate; but the authorities had taken many precautions, closing roads, diverting traffic; so there were perhaps two hundred gawpers on the beach. Nothing to worry about.

What was strange was that the spectators did not see the butterflies, or what they did next. But Mirza Saeed clearly observed the great glowing cloud fly out over the sea; pause; hover; and form itself into the shape of a colossal being, a radiant giant constructed wholly of tiny beating wings, stretching from horizon to horizon, filling the sky.

‘The angel!’ Ayesha called to the pilgrims. ‘Now you see! He's been with us all the way. Do you believe me now?’ Mirza Saeed saw absolute faith return to the pilgrims. ‘Yes,’ they wept, begging her forgiveness. ‘Gibreel! Gibreel! Ya Allah.’

Mirza Saeed made his last effort. ‘Clouds take many shapes,’ he shouted. ‘Elephants, film stars, anything. Look, it's changing even now.’ But nobody paid any attention to him; they were watching, full of amazement, as the butterflies dived into the sea.

The villagers were shouting and dancing for joy. ‘The parting! The parting!’ they cried. Bystanders called out to Mirza Saeed: ‘Hey, mister, what are they getting so fired up about? We can't see anything going on.’

Ayesha had begun to walk towards the water, and Mishal was being dragged along by her two helpers. Saeed ran to her and began to struggle with the village men. ‘Let go of my wife. At once! Damn you! I am your zamindar. Release her; remove your filthy hands!’ But Mishal whispered: ‘They won't. Go away, Saeed. You are closed. The sea only opens for those who are open.’

‘Mishal!’ he screamed, but her feet were already wet.

Once Ayesha had entered the water the villagers began to run. Those who could not leapt upon the backs of those who could. Holding their babies, the mothers of Titlipur rushed into the sea; grandsons bore their grandmothers on their shoulders and rushed into the waves. Within minutes the entire village was in the water, splashing about, falling over, getting up, moving steadily forwards, towards the horizon, never looking back to shore. Mirza Saeed was in the water, too. ‘Come back,’ he beseeched his wife. ‘Nothing is happening; come back.’

At the water's edge stood Mrs Qureishi, Osman, the Sarpanch, Sri Srinivas. Mishal's mother was sobbing operatically: ‘O my baby, my baby. What will become?’ Osman said: ‘When it becomes clear that miracles don't happen, they will turn back.’