The Satanic Verses (15 page)

           
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 mysteri—us
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 SilverHaired 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 qasidah, 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.

           
A curtained litter passes by; some fine lady of the city, out to see the fair,
borne on the shoulders of eight Anatolian slaves. Abu Simbel takes the young
Baal by the elbow, under the pretext of steering him out of the road; murmurs,
"I hoped to find you; if you will, a word." Baal marvels at the skill
of the Grandee. Searching for a man, he can make his quarry think he has hunted
the hunter. Abu Simbel's grip tightens; by the elbow, he steers his companion
towards the holy of holies at the centre of the town.

           
"I have a commission for you," the Grandee says. "A literary
matter. I know my limitations; the skills of rhymed malice, the arts of
metrical slander, are quite beyond my powers. You understand."

           
But Baal, the proud, arrogant fellow, stiffens, stands on his dignity. "It
isn't right for the artist to become the servant of the state." Simbel's
voice falls lower, acquires silkier rhythms. "Ah, yes. Whereas to place
yourself at the disposal of assassins is an entirely honourable thing." A
cult of the dead has been raging in Jahilia. When a man dies, paid mourners
beat themselves, scratch their breasts, tear hair. A hamstrung camel is left on
the grave to die. And if the man has been murdered his closest relative takes
ascetic vows and pursues the murderer until the blood has been avenged by
blood; whereupon it is customary to compose a poem of celebration, but few
revengers are gifted in rhyme. Many poets make a living by writing
assassination songs, and there is general agreement that the finest of these
blood-praising versifiers is the precocious polemicist, Baal. Whose
professional pride prevents him from being bruised, now, by the Grandee's
little taunt. "That is a cultural matter," he replies. Abu Simbel
sinks deeper still into silkiness. "Maybe so," he whispers at the
gates of the House of the Black Stone, "but, Baal, concede: don't I have
some small claim upon you? We both serve, or so I thought, the same
mistress."

           
Now the blood leaves Baal's cheeks; his confidence cracks, falls from him like
a shell. The Grandee, seemingly oblivious to the alteration, sweeps the
satirist forward into the House.

           
They say in Jahilia that this valley is the navel of the earth; that the
planet, when it was being made, went spinning round this point. Adam came here
and saw a miracle: four emerald pillars bearing aloft a giant glowing ruby, and
beneath this canopy a huge white stone, also glowing with its own light, like a
vision of his soul. He built strong walls around the vision to bind it forever
to the earth. This was the first House. It was rebuilt many times―once by
Ibrahim, after Hagar's and Ismail's angel- assisted survival―and
gradually the countless touchings of the white stone by the pilgrims of the
centuries darkened its colour to black. Then the time of the idols began; by
the time of Mahound, three hundred and sixty stone gods clustered around God's
own stone.

           
What would old Adam have thought? His own sons are here now: the colossus of
Hubal, sent by the Amalekites from Hit, stands above the treasury well, Hubal
the shepherd, the waxing crescent moon; also, glowering, dangerous Kain. He is
the waning crescent, blacksmith and musician; he, too, has his devotees.

           
Hubal and Kain look down on Grandee and poet as they stroll. And the Nabataean
proto-Dionysus, He-Of-Shara; the morning star, Astarte, and saturnine Nakruh.
Here is the sun god, Manaf! Look, there flaps the giant Nasr, the god in
eagleform! See Quzah, who holds the rainbow ... is this not a glut of gods, a
stone flood, to feed the glutton hunger of the pilgrims, to quench their unholy
thirst. The deities, to entice the travellers, come―like the
pilgrims―from far and wide. The idols, too, are delegates to a kind of
international fair.

           
There is a god here called Allah (means simply, the god). Ask the Jahilians and
they'll acknowledge that this fellow has some sort of overall authority, but he
isn't very popular: an all-rounder in an age of specialist statues.

           
Abu Simbel and newly perspiring Baal have arrived at the shrines, placed side
by side, of the three best-beloved goddesses in Jahilia. They bow before all
three: Uzza of the radiant visage, goddess of beauty and love; dark, obscure
Manat, her face averted, her purposes mysterious, sifting sand between her
fingers―she's in charge of destiny―she's Fate; and lastly the
highest of the three, the mother-goddess, whom the Greeks called Lato. Ilat,
they call her here, or, more frequently, Al-Lat.
The goddess
. Even her
name makes her Allah's opposite and equal. Lat the omnipotent. His face showing
sudden relief, Baal flings himself to the ground and prostrates himself before
her. Abu Simbel stays on his feet.

           
The family of the Grandee, Abu Simbel―or, to be more precise, of his wife
Hind―controls the famous temple of Lat at the city's southern gate. (They
also draw the revenues from the Manat temple at the east gate, and the temple
of Uzza in the north.) These concessions are the foundations of the Grandee's
wealth, so he is of course, Baal understands, the servant of Lat. And the
satirist's devotion to this goddess is well known throughout Jahilia. So that
was all he meant! Trembling with relief, Baal remains prostrate, giving thanks to
his patron Lady. Who looks upon him benignly; but a goddess's expression is not
to be relied upon. Baal has made a serious mistake.

           
Without warning, the Grandee kicks the poet in the kidney. Attacked just when
he has decided he's safe, Baal squeals, rolls over, and Abu Simbel follows him,
continuing to kick. There is the sound of a cracking rib. "Runt," the
Grandee remarks, his voice remaining low and good natured. "High-voiced
pimp with small testicles. Did you think that the master of Lat's temple would
claim comradeship with you just because of your adolescent passion for
her?" And more kicks, regular, methodical. Baal weeps at Abu Simbel's
feet. The House of the Black Stone is far from empty, but who would come
between the Grandee and his wrath? Abruptly, Baal's tormentor squats down,
grabs the poet by the hair, jerks his head up, whispers into his ear:
"Baal, she wasn't the mistress I meant," and then Baal lets out a
howl of hideous self-pity, because he knows his life is about to end, to end
when he has so much still to achieve, the poor guy. The Grandee's lips brush
his ear. "Shit of a frightened camel," Abu Simbel breathes, "I
know you fuck my wife." He observes, with interest, that Baal has acquired
a prominent erection, an ironic monument to his fear.

           
Abu Simbel, the cuckolded Grandee, stands up, commands, "On your
feet", and Baal, bewildered, follows him outside.

           
The graves of Ismail and his mother Hagar the Egyptian lie by the north-west
face of the House of the Black Stone, in an enclosure surrounded by a low wall.
Abu Simbel approaches this area, halts a little way off. In the enclosure is a
small group of men. The water-carrier Khalid is there, and some sort of bum
from Persia by the outlandish name of Salman, and to complete this trinity of
scum there is the slave Bilal, the one Mahound freed, an enormous black
monster, this one, with a voice to match his size. The three idlers sit on the
enclosure wall. "That bunch of riff-raff," Abu Simbel says. "Those
are your targets. Write about them; and their leader, too." Baal, for all
his terror, cannot conceal his disbelief. "Grandee, those
goons
―those
fucking
clowns?
You don't have to worry about them. What do you think?
That Mahound's one God will bankrupt your temples? Three-sixty versus one, and
the one wins? Can't happen." He giggles, close to hysteria. Abu Simbel
remains calm: "Keep your insults for your verses." Giggling Baal
can't stop. "A revolution of water-carriers, immigrants and slaves . . .
wow, Grandee. I'm really scared." Abu Simbel looks carefully at the
tittering poet. "Yes," he answers, "that's right, you should be
afraid. Get writing, please, and I expect these verses to be your
masterpieces." Baal crumples, whines. "But they are a waste of my, my
small talent . . ." He sees that he has said too much.