Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses

Zeeny, her medical surgeries, college lectures and work for the human-chain demonstration leaving her no time, at present, for Salahuddin and his moods, mistakenly saw his introverted silence as expressive of doubts – about his return to Bombay, about being dragged into political activity of a type that had always been abhorrent to him, about her. To disguise her fears, she spoke to him in the form of a lecture. ‘If you're serious about shaking off your foreignness, Salad baba, then don't fall into some kind of rootless limbo instead. Okay? We're all here. We're right in front of you. You should really try and make an adult acquaintance with this place, this time. Try and embrace this city, as it is, not some childhood memory that makes you both nostalgic and sick. Draw it close. The actually existing place. Make its faults your own. Become its creature; belong.’ He nodded, absently; and she, thinking he was preparing to leave her once again, stormed out in a rage that left him utterly perplexed.

Should he telephone Allie? Had Gibreel told her about the voices?

Should he try to see Gibreel?

Something is about to happen, his inner voice warned. It's going to happen, and you don't know what it is, and you can't do a damn thing about it. Oh yes: it's something bad .

It happened on the day of the demonstration, which, against all the odds, was a pretty fair success. A few minor skirmishes were reported from the Mazagaon district, but the event was, in general, an orderly one. CPI(M) observers reported an unbroken chain of men and women linking hands from top to bottom of the city, and Salahuddin, standing between Zeeny and Bhupen on Muhammad Ali Road, could not deny the power of the image. Many people in the chain were in tears. The order to join hands had been given by the organizers – Swatilekha prominent among them, riding on the back of a jeep, megaphone in hand – at eight am precisely; one hour later, as the city's rush-hour traffic reached its blaring peak, the crowd began to disperse. However, in spite of the thousands involved in the event, in spite of its peaceful nature and positive message, the formation of the human chain was not reported on the Doordarshan television news. Nor did All-India Radio carry the story. The majority of the (government-supporting) ‘language press’ also omitted any mentions...one English-language daily, and one Sunday paper, carried the story; that was all. Zeeny, recalling the treatment of the Kerala chain, had forecast this deafening silence as she and Salahuddin walked home. ‘It's a Communist show,’ she explained. ‘So, officially, it's a non-event.’

What grabbed the evening paper headlines?

What screamed at readers in inch-high letters, while the human chain was not permitted so much as a small-print whisper?

EVEREST QUEEN, FILM MOGUL PERISH

DOUBLE TRAGEDY ON MALABAR HILL – GIBREEL FARISHTA VANISHES

CURSE OF EVEREST VILAS STRIKES AGAIN

The body of the respected movie producer, S. S. Sisodia, had been discovered by domestic staff, lying in the centre of the living-room rug in the apartment of the celebrated actor Mr. Gibreel Farishta, with a hole through the heart. Miss Alleluia Cone, in what was believed to be a ‘related incident’, had fallen to her death from the roof of the skyscraper, from which, a couple of years previously, Mrs. Rekha Merchant had hurled her children and herself towards the concrete below.

The morning papers were less equivocal about Farishta's latest role. FARISHTA, UNDER SUSPICION, ABSCONDS.

‘I'm going back to Scandal Point,’ Salahuddin told Zeeny, who, misunderstanding this withdrawal into an inner chamber of the spirit, flared up, ‘Mister, you'd better make up your mind.’ Leaving, he did not know how to reassure her; how to explain his overwhelming feeling of guilt, of responsibility : how to tell her that these killings were the dark flowers of seeds he had planted long ago? ‘I just need to think,’ he said, weakly, confirming her suspicions. ‘Just a day or two.’

‘Salad baba,’ she said harshly, ‘I've got to hand it to you, man. Your timing: really great.’

On the night after his participation in the making of the human chain, Salahuddin Chamchawala was looking out of the window of his childhood bedroom at the nocturnal patterns of the Arabian Sea, when Kasturba knocked urgently on his door. ‘A man is here to see you,’ she said, almost hissing the words, plainly scared. Salahuddin had seen nobody coming through the gate. ‘From the servants’ entrance,’ Kasturba said in response to his inquiry. ‘And, baba, listen, it is that Gibreel. Gibreel Farishta, who the papers say...’ her voice trailed off and she chewed, fretfully, at the nails on her left hand.

‘Where is he?’

‘What to do, I was afraid,’ Kasturba cried. ‘I told him, in your father's study, he is waiting there only. But maybe it is better you don't go. Should I call the police? Baapu ré, that such a thing.’

No. Don't call. I'll go see what he wants .

Gibreel was sitting on Changez's bed with the old lamp in his hands. He was wearing a dirty white kurta-pajama outfit and looked like a man who had been sleeping rough. His eyes were unfocused, lightless, dead. ‘Spoono,’ he said wearily, waving the lamp in the direction of an armchair. ‘Make yourself at home.’

‘You look awful,’ Salahuddin ventured, eliciting from the other man a distant, cynical, unfamiliar smile. ‘Sit down and shut up, Spoono,’ Gibreel Farishta said. ‘I'm here to tell you a story.’

It was you, then , Salahuddin understood. You really did it: you murdered them both . But Gibreel had closed his eyes, put his fingertips together and embarked upon his story, – which was also the end of many stories, – thus:

It was so it was not in a time long forgot

Well, anyway goes something like this

I can't be sure because when they came to call I wasn't myself no yaar not myself at all some days are hard how to tell you what sickness is like something like this but I can't be sure

Always one part of me is standing outside screaming no please don’t no but it does no good you see when the sickness comes

I am the angel the god damned angel of god and these days it's the avenging angel Gibreel the avenger always vengeance why

I can't be sure something like this for the crime of being human

especially female but not exclusively people must pay

Something like that

So he brought her along he meant no harm I know that now he just wanted us to be together caca can't you see he said she isn't ohoh over you not by a longshot and you he said still crazy fofor her everyone knows all he wanted was for us to be to be to be

But I heard verses

You get me Spoono

V e r s e s

Rosy apple lemon tart Sis boom bah

I like coffee I like tea

Violets are blue roses are red remember me when I am dead dead dead

That type of thing

Couldn't get them out of my nut and she changed in front of my eyes I called her names whore like that and him I knew about him

Sisodia lecher from somewhere I knew what they were up to

laughing at me in my own home something like that

I like butter I like toast

Verses Spoono who do you think makes such damn things up

So I called down the wrath of God I pointed my finger I shot him in the heart but she bitch I thought bitch cool as ice

stood and waited just waited and then I don't know I can't be sure we weren't alone

Something like this

Rekha was there floating on her carpet you remember her Spoono