Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses

– Whereas the migrant can do without the journey altogether; it's no more than a necessary evil; the point is to arrive. —

Quite recently, then, and like the shrewd businessmen they were, the Jahilians settled down at the intersection-point of the routes of the great caravans, and yoked the dunes to their will. Now the sand serves the mighty urban merchants. Beaten into cobbles, it paves Jahilia's tortuous streets; by night, golden flames blaze out from braziers of burnished sand. There is glass in the windows, in the long, slitlike windows set in the infinitely high sand-walls of the merchant palaces; in the alleys of Jahilia, donkey-carts roll forward on smooth silicon wheels. I, in my wickedness, sometimes imagine the coming of a great wave, a high wall of foaming water roaring across the desert, a liquid catastrophe full of snapping boats and drowning arms, a tidal wave that would reduce these vain sandcastles to the nothingness, to the grains from which they came. But there are no waves here. Water is the enemy in Jahilia. Carried in earthen pots, it must never be spilled (the penal code deals fiercely with offenders), for where it drops the city erodes alarmingly. Holes appear in roads, houses tilt and sway. The water-carriers of Jahilia are loathed necessities, pariahs who cannot be ignored and therefore can never be forgiven. It never rains in Jahilia; there are no fountains in the silicon gardens. A few palms stand in enclosed courtyards, their roots travelling far and wide below the earth in search of moisture. The city's water comes from underground streams and springs, one such being the fabled Zamzam, at the heart of the concentric sand-city, next to the House of the Black Stone. Here, at Zamzam, is a beheshti, a despised water-carrier, drawing up the vital, dangerous fluid. He has a name: Khalid.

A city of businessmen, Jahilia. The name of the tribe is Shark .

In this city, the businessman-turned-prophet, Mahound, is founding one of the world's great religions; and has arrived, on this day, his birthday, at the crisis of his life. There is a voice whispering in his ear: What kind of idea are you? Man-or-mouse?

We know that voice. We've heard it once before.

While Mahound climbs Coney, Jahilia celebrates a different anniversary. In ancient time the patriarch Ibrahim came into this valley with Hagar and Ismail, their son. Here, in this waterless wilderness, he abandoned her. She asked him, can this be God's will? He replied, it is. And left, the bastard. From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable. He moves in mysterious ways: men say. Small wonder, then, that women have turned to me. – But I'll keep to the point; Hagar wasn't a witch. She was trusting: then surely He will not let me perish . After Ibrahim left her, she fed the baby at her breast until her milk ran out. Then she climbed two hills, first Safa then Marwah, running from one to the other in her desperation, trying to sight a tent, a camel, a human being. She saw nothing. That was when he came to her, Gibreel, and showed her the waters of Zamzam. So Hagar survived; but why now do the pilgrims congregate? To celebrate her survival? No, no. They are celebrating the honour done the valley by the visit of, you've guessed it, Ibrahim. In that loving consort's name, they gather, worship and, above all, spend.

Jahilia today is all perfume. The scents of Araby, of Arabia Odorifera , hang in the air: balsam, cassia, cinnamon, frankincense, myrrh. The pilgrims drink the wine of the date-palm and wander in the great fair of the feast of Ibrahim. And, among them, one wanders whose furrowed brow sets him apart from the cheerful crowd: a tall man in loose white robes, he'd stand almost a full head higher than Mahound. His beard is shaped close to his slanting, high-boned face; his gait contains the lilt, the deadly elegance of power. What's he called? – The vision yields his name eventually; it, too, is changed by the dream. Here he is, Karim Abu Simbel, Grandee of Jahilia, husband to the ferocious, beautiful Hind. Head of the ruling council of the city, rich beyond numbering, owner of the lucrative temples at the city gates, wealthy in camels, comptroller of caravans, his wife the greatest beauty in the land: what could shake the certainties of such a man? And yet, for Abu Simbel, too, a crisis is approaching. A name gnaws at him, and you can guess what it is, Mahound Mahound Mahound.

O the splendour of the fairgrounds of Jahilia! Here in vast scented tents are arrays of spices, of senna leaves, of fragrant woods; here the perfume vendors can be found, competing for the pilgrims’ noses, and for their wallets, too. Abu Simbel pushes his way through the crowds. Merchants, Jewish, Monophysite, Nabataean, buy and sell pieces of silver and gold, weighing them, biting coins with knowing teeth. There is linen from Egypt and silk from China; from Basra, arms and grain. There is gambling, and drinking, and dance. There are slaves for sale, Nubian, Anatolian, Aethiop. The four factions of the tribe of Shark control separate zones of the fair, the scents and spices in the Scarlet Tents, while in the Black Tents the cloth and leather. The Silver-Haired grouping is in charge of precious metals and swords. Entertainment – dice, belly-dancers, palm-wine, the smoking of hashish and afeem – is the prerogative of the fourth quarter of the tribe, the Owners of the Dappled Camels, who also run the slave trade. Abu Simbel looks into a dance tent. Pilgrims sit clutching money-bags in their left hands; every so often a coin is moved from bag to right-hand palm. The dancers shake and sweat, and their eyes never leave the pilgrims’ fingertips; when the coin transfer ceases, the dance also ends. The great man makes a face and lets the tent-flap fall.

Jahilia has been built in a series of rough circles, its houses spreading outwards from the House of the Black Stone, approximately in order of wealth and rank. Abu Simbel's palace is in the first circle, the innermost ring; he makes his way down one of the rambling, windy radial roads, past the city's many seers who, in return for pilgrim money, are chirping, cooing, hissing, possessed variously by djinnis of birds, beasts, snakes. A sorceress, failing for a moment to look up, squats in his path: ‘Want to capture a girlie's heart, my dear? Want an enemy under your thumb? Try me out; try my little knots!’ And raises, dangles a knotty rope, ensnarer of human lives – but, seeing now to whom she speaks, lets fall her disappointed arm and slinks away, mumbling, into sand.

Everywhere, noise and elbows. Poets stand on boxes and declaim while pilgrims throw coins at their feet. Some bards speak rajaz verses, their four-syllable metre suggested, according to legend, by the walking pace of the camel; others speak the qas-idah, poems of wayward mistresses, desert adventure, the hunting of the onager. In a day or so it will be time for the annual poetry competition, after which the seven best verses will be nailed up on the walls of the House of the Black Stone. The poets are getting into shape for their big day; Abu Simbel laughs at minstrels singing vicious satires, vitriolic odes commissioned by one chief against another, by one tribe against its neighbour. And nods in recognition as one of the poets falls into step beside him, a sharp narrow youth with frenzied fingers. This young lampoonist already has the most feared tongue in all Jahilia, but to Abu Simbel he is almost deferential. ‘Why so preoccupied, Grandee? If you were not losing your hair I'd tell you to let it down.’ Abu Simbel grins his sloping grin. ‘Such a reputation,’ he muses. ‘Such fame, even before your milk-teeth have fallen out. Look out or we'll have to draw those teeth for you.’ He is teasing, speaking lightly, but even this lightness is laced with menace, because of the extent of his power. The boy is unabashed. Matching Abu Simbel stride for stride, he replies: ‘For every one you pull out, a stronger one will grow, biting deeper, drawing hotter spurts of blood.’ The Grandee, vaguely, nods. ‘You like the taste of blood,’ he says. The boy shrugs. ‘A poet's work,’ he answers. ‘To name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.’ And if rivers of blood flow from the cuts his verses inflict, then they will nourish him. He is the satirist, Baal.