The Satanic Verses (56 page)

           
What finally finished Salman with Mahound: the question of the women; and of
the Satanic verses. Listen, I'm no gossip, Salman drunkenly confided, but after
his wife's death Mahound was no angel, you understand my meaning. But in
Yathrib he almost met his match. Those women up there: they turned his beard
half-white in a year. The point about our Prophet, my dear Baal, is that he
didn't like his women to answer back, he went for mothers and daughters, think
of his first wife and then Ayesha: too old and too young, his two loves. He
didn't like to pick on someone his own size. But in Yathrib the women are
different, you don't know, here in Jahilia you're used to ordering your females
about but up there they won't put up with it. When a man gets married he goes
to live with his wife's people! Imagine! Shocking, isn't it? And throughout the
marriage the wife keeps her own tent. If she wants to get rid of her husband
she turns the tent round to face in the opposite direction, so that when he
comes to her he finds fabric where the door should be, and that's that, he's
out, divorced, not a thing he can do about it. Well, our girls were beginning
to go for that type of thing, getting who knows what sort of ideas in their
heads, so at once, bang, out comes the rule book, the angel starts pouring out
rules about what women mustn't do, he starts forcing them back into the docile
attitudes the Prophet prefers, docile or maternal, walking three steps behind
or sitting at home being wise and waxing their chins. How the women of Yathrib
laughed at the faithful, I swear, but that man is a magician, nobody could
resist his charm; the faithful women did as he ordered them. They Submitted: he
was offering them Paradise, after all.

           
"Anyway," Salman said near the bottom of the bottle, "finally I
decided to test him."

           
One night the Persian scribe had a dream in which he was hovering above the
figure of Mahound at the Prophet's cave on Mount Cone. At first Salman took
this to be no more than a nostalgic reverie of the old days in Jahilia, but
then it struck him that his point of view, in the dream, had been that of the
archangel, and at that moment the memory of the incident of the Satanic verses
came back to him as vividly as if the thing had happened the previous day.
"Maybe I hadn't dreamed of myself as Gibreel," Salman recounted.
"Maybe I was Shaitan." The realization of this possibility gave him
his diabolic idea. After that, when he sat at the Prophet's feet, writing down
rules rules rules, he began, surreptitiously, to change things.

           
"Little things at first. If Mahound recited a verse in which God was
described as
all-hearing, all-knowing
, I would write,
all-knowing,
all-wise
. Here's the point: Mahound did not notice the alterations. So
there I was, actually writing the Book, or rewriting, anyway, polluting the
word of God with my own profane language. But, good heavens, if my poor words
could not be distinguished from the Revelation by God's own Messenger, then
what did that mean? What did that say about the quality of the divine poetry?
Look, I swear, I was shaken to my soul. It's one thing to be a smart bastard
and have half-suspicions about funny business, but it's quite another thing to
find out that you're right. Listen: I changed my life for that man. I left my
country, crossed the world, settled among people who thought me a slimy foreign
coward for saving their, who never appreciated what I, but never mind that. The
truth is that what I expected when I made that first tiny change,
all-wise
instead of
all-hearing
―what I
wanted
-was to read it back
to the Prophet, and he'd say, What's the matter with you, Salman, are you going
deaf? And I'd say, Oops, O God, bit of a slip, how could I, and correct myself.
But it didn't happen; and now I was writing the Revelation and nobody was
noticing, and I didn't have the courage to own up. I was scared silly, I can
tell you. Also: I was sadder than I have ever been. So I had to go on doing it.
Maybe he'd just missed out once, I thought, anybody can make a mistake. So the
next time I changed a bigger thing. He said
Christian
, I wrote down
Jew
.
He'd notice that, surely; how could he not? But when I read him the chapter he
nodded and thanked me politely, and I went out of his tent with tears in my
eyes. After that I knew my days in Yathrib were numbered; but I had to go on
doing it. I had to. There is no bitterness like that of a man who finds out he
has been believing in a ghost. I would fall, I knew, but he would fall with me.
So I went on with my devilment, changing verses, until one day I read my lines
to him and saw him frown and shake his head as if to clear his mind, and then
nod his approval slowly, but with a little doubt. I knew I'd reached the edge,
and that the next time I rewrote the Book he'd know everything. That night I
lay awake, holding his fate in my hands as well as my own. If I allowed myself
to be destroyed I could destroy him, too. I had to choose, on that awful night,
whether I preferred death with revenge to life without anything. As you see, I
chose: life. Before dawn I left Yathrib on my camel, and made my way, suffering
numerous misadventures I shall not trouble to relate, back to Jahilia. And now
Mahound is coming in triumph; so I shall lose my life after all. And his power
has grown too great for me to unmake him now."

           
Baal asked: "Why are you sure he will kill you?"

           
Salman the Persian answered: "It's his Word against mine."

           
* * * * *

           
When Salman had slipped into unconsciousness on the floor, Baal lay on his
scratchy straw-filled mattress, feeling the steel ring of pain around his
forehead, the flutter of warning in his heart. Often his tiredness with his
life had made him wish not to grow old, but, as Salman had said, to dream of a
thing is very different from being faced with the fact of it. For some time now
he had been conscious that the world was closing in around him. He could no
longer pretend that his eyes were what they ought to be, and their dimness made
his life even more shadowy, harder to grasp. All this blurring and loss of
detail: no wonder his poetry had gone down the drain. His ears were getting to
be unreliable, too. At this rate he'd soon end up sealed off from everything by
the loss of his senses. . . but maybe he'd never get the chance. Mahound was
coming. Maybe he would never kiss another woman. Mahound, Mahound. Why has this
chatterbox drunk come to me, he thought angrily. What do I have to do with his
treachery? Everyone knows why I wrote those satires years ago; he must know.
How the Grandee threatened and bullied. I can't be held responsible. And
anyway: who is he, that prancing sneering boy-wonder, Baal of the cutting
tongue? I don't recognize him. Look at me: heavy, dull, nearsighted, soon to be
deaf. Who do I threaten? Not a soul. He began to shake Salman: wake up, I don't
want to be associated with you, you'll get me into trouble.

           
The Persian snored on, sitting splay-legged on the floor with his back to the
wall, his head hanging sideways like a doll's; Baal, racked by headache, fell
back on to his cot. His verses, he thought, what had they been?
What kind of
idea
damn it, he couldn't even remember them properly
does Submission
seem today
yes, something like that, after all this time it was scarcely
surprising
an idea that runs away
that was the end anyhow. Mahound, any
new idea is asked two questions. When it's weak: will it compromise? We know
the answer to that one. And now, Mahound, on your return to Jahilia, time for
the second question: How do you behave when you win? When your enemies are at
your mercy and your power has become absolute: what then? We have all changed:
all of us except Hind. Who seems, from what this drunkard says, more like a
woman of Yathrib than Jahilia. No wonder the two of you didn't hit it off: she
wouldn't be your mother or your child.

           
As he drifted towards sleep, Baal surveyed his own uselessness, his failed art.
Now that he had abdicated all public platforms, his verses were full of loss:
of youth, beauty, love, health, innocence, purpose, energy, certainty, hope.
Loss of knowledge. Loss of money. The loss of Hind. Figures walked away from
him in his odes, and the more passionately he called out to them the faster
they moved. The landscape of his poetry was still the desert, the shifting
dunes with the plumes of white sand blowing from their peaks. Soft mountains,
uncompleted journeys, the impermanence of tents. How did one map a country that
blew into a new form every day? Such questions made his language too abstract,
his imagery too fluid, his metre too inconstant. It led him to create chimeras
of form, lionheaded goatbodied serpenttailed impossibilities whose shapes felt
obliged to change the moment they were set, so that the demotic forced its way
into lines of classical purity and images of love were constantly degraded by
the intrusion of elements of farce. Nobody goes for that stuff, he thought for
the thousand and first time, and as unconsciousness arrived he concluded,
comfortingly: Nobody remembers me. Oblivion is safety. Then his heart missed a
beat and he came wide awake, frightened, cold. Mahound, maybe I'll cheat you of
your revenge. He spent the night awake, listening to Salman's rolling, oceanic
snores.

           
Gibreel dreamed campfires:

           
A famous and unexpected figure walks, one night, between the campfires of
Mahound's army. Perhaps on account of the dark,―or it might be because of
the improbability of his presence here,―it seems that the Grandee of
Jahilia has regained, in this final moment of his power, some of the strength
of his earlier days. He has come alone; and is led by Khalid the erstwhile
water-carrier and the former slave Bilal to the quarters of Mahound.

           
Next, Gibreel dreamed the Grandee's return home:

           
The town is full of rumours and there's a crowd in front of the house. After a
time the sound of Hind's voice lifted in rage can be clearly heard. Then at an
upper balcony Hind shows herself and demands that the crowd tear her husband
into small pieces. The Grandee appears beside her; and receives loud,
humiliating smacks on both cheeks from his loving wife. Hind has discovered
that in spite of all her efforts she has not been able to prevent the Grandee
from surrendering the city to Mahound.

           
Moreover: Abu Simbel has embraced the faith.

           
Simbel in his defeat has lost much of his recent wispiness. He permits Hind to
strike him, and then speaks calmly to the crowd. He says: Mahound has promised
that anyone within the Grandee's walls will be spared. "So come in, all of
you, and bring your families, too."

           
Hind speaks for the angry crowd. "You old fool. How many citizens can fit
inside a single house, even this one? You've done a deal to save your own neck.
Let them rip you up and feed you to the ants."

           
Still the Grandee is mild. "Mahound also promises that all who are found
at home, behind closed doors, will be safe. If you will not come into my home
then go to your own; and wait."

           
A third time his wife attempts to turn the crowd against him; this is a balcony
scene of hatred instead of love. There can be no compromise with Mahound, she
shouts, he is not to be trusted, the people must repudiate Abu Simbel and
prepare to fight to the last man, the last woman. She herself is prepared to
fight beside them and die for the freedom of Jahilia. "Will you merely lie
down before this false prophet, this Dajjal? Can honour be expected of a man
who is preparing to storm the city of his birth? Can compromise be hoped for
from the uncompromising, pity from the pitiless? We are the mighty of Jahilia,
and our goddesses, glorious in battle, will prevail." She commands them to
fight in the name of Al-Lat. But the people begin to leave.

           
Husband and wife stand on their balcony, and the people see them plain. For so
long the city has used these two as its mirrors; and because, of late,
Jahilians have preferred Hind's images to the greying Grandee, they are
suffering, now, from profound shock. A people that has remained convinced of
its greatness and invulnerability, that has chosen to believe such a myth in
the face of all the evidence, is a people in the grip of a kind of sleep, or
madness. Now the Grandee has awakened them from that sleep; they stand
disoriented, rubbing their eyes, unable to believe at first―if we are so
mighty, how then have we fallen so fast, so utterly?―and then belief
comes, and shows them how their confidence has been built on clouds, on the
passion of Hind's proclamations and on very little else. They abandon her, and
with her, hope. Plunging into despair, the people of Jahilia go home to lock
their doors.

           
She screams at them, pleads, loosens her hair. "Come to the House of the
Black Stone! Come and make sacrifice to Lat!" But they have gone. And Hind
and the Grandee are alone on their balcony, while throughout Jahilia a great
silence falls, a great stillness begins, and Hind leans against the wall of her
palace and closes her eyes.

           
It is the end. The Grandee murmurs softly: "Not many of us have as much reason
to be scared of Mahound as you. If you eat a man's favourite uncle's innards,
raw, without so much as salt or garlic, don't be surprised if he treats you, in
turn, like meat." Then he leaves her, and goes down into the streets from
which even the dogs have vanished, to unlock the city gates.