The Satanic Verses (36 page)

           
"The angel has taken her away," marvelled the Sarpanch's wife
Khadija, and Osman burst into tears. "But no, it is a wonderful thing,"
old Khadija uncomprehendingly explained. The villagers teased the Sarpanch:
"How you got to be village headman with such a tactless spouse, beats
us."

           
"You chose me," he dourly replied.

           
On the seventh day after her disappearance Ayesha was sighted walking towards
the village, naked again and dressed in golden butterflies, her silver hair
streaming behind her in the breeze. She went directly to the home of Sarpanch
Muhammad Din and asked that the Titlipur panchayat be convened for an immediate
emergency meeting. "The greatest event in the history of the tree has come
upon us," she confided. Muhammad Din, unable to refuse her, fixed the time
of the meeting for that evening, after dark.

           
That night the panchayat members took their places on the usual branch of the
tree, while Ayesha the kahin stood before them on the ground. "I have
flown with the angel into the highest heights," she said. "Yes, even
to the lote-tree of the uttermost end. The archangel, Gibreel: he has brought
us a message which is also a command. Everything is required of us, and
everything will be given."

           
Nothing in the life of the Sarpanch Muhammad Din had prepared him for the
choice he was about to face. "What does the angel ask, Ayesha,
daughter?" he asked, fighting to steady his voice.

           
"It is the angel's will that all of us, every man, and woman and child in
the village, begin at once to prepare for a pilgrimage. We are commanded to
walk from this place to Mecca Sharif, to kiss the Black Stone in the Ka'aba at
the centre of the Haram Sharif, the sacred mosque. There we must surely
go."

           
Now the panchayat's quintet began to debate heatedly. There were the crops to
consider, and the impossibility of abandoning their homes en masse. "It is
not to be conceived of, child," the Sarpanch told her. "It is well
known that Allah excuses haj and umra to those who are genuinely unable to go
for reasons of poverty or health." But Ayesha remained silent and the
elders continued to argue. Then it was as if her silence infected everyone else
and for a long moment, in which the question was settled―although by what
means nobody ever managed to comprehend―there were no words spoken at
all.

           
It was Osman the clown who spoke up at last, Osman the convert, for whom his
new faith had been no more than a drink of water. "It's almost two hundred
miles from here to the sea," he cried. "There are old ladies here,
and babies. However can we go?"

           
"God will give us the strength," Ayesha serenely replied.

           
"Hasn't it occurred to you," Osman shouted, refusing to give up,
"that there's a mighty ocean between us and Mecca Sharif? How will we ever
cross? We have no money for the pilgrim boats. Maybe the angel will grow us
wings, so we can fly?"

           
Many villagers rounded angrily upon the blasphemer Osman. "Be quiet
now," Sarpanch Muhammad Din rebuked him. "You haven't been long in
our faith or our village. Keep your trap shut and learn our ways."

           
Osman, however, answered cheekily, "So this is how you welcome new
settlers. Not as equals, but as people who must do as they are told." A
knot of red-faced men began to tighten around Osman, but before anything else
could happen the kahin Ayesha changed the mood entirely by answering the
clown's questions.

           
"This, too, the angel has explained," she said quietly. "We will
walk two hundred miles, and when we reach the shores of the sea, we will put
our feet into the foam, and the waters will open for us. The waves shall be
parted, and we shall walk across the ocean-floor to Mecca."

           
* * * * *

           
The next morning Mirza Saeed Akhtar awoke in a house that had fallen unusually
silent, and when he called for the servants there was no reply. The stillness
had spread into the potato fields, too; but under the broad, spreading roof of
the Titlipur tree all was hustle and bustle. The panchayat had voted
unanimously to obey the command of the Archangel Gibreel, and the villagers had
begun to prepare for departure. At first the Sarpanch had wanted the carpenter
Isa to construct litters that could be pulled by oxen and on which the old and
infirm could ride, but that idea had been knocked on the head by his own wife,
who told him, "You don't listen, Sarpanch sahibji! Didn't the angel say we
must walk? Well then, that is what we must do." Only the youngest of
infants were to be excused the foot-pilgrimage, and they would be carried (it
had been decided) on the backs of all the adults, in rotation. The villagers
had pooled all their resources, and heaps of potatoes, lentils, rice, bitter
gourds, chillies, aubergines and other vegetables were piling up next to the
panchayat bough. The weight of the provisions was to be evenly divided between
the walkers. Cooking utensils, too, were being gathered together, and whatever
bedding could be found. Beasts of burden were to be taken, and a couple of
carts carrying live chickens and such, but in general the pilgrims were under
the Sarpanch's instructions to keep personal belongings to a minimum.
Preparations had been under way since before dawn, so that by the time an
incensed Mirza Saeed strode into the village, things were well advanced. For
forty-five minutes the zamindar slowed things up by making angry speeches and
shaking individual villagers by the shoulders, but then, fortunately, he gave
up and left, so that the work could be continued at its former, rapid pace. As
the Mirza departed he smacked his head repeatedly and called people names, such
as
loonies, simpletons
, very bad words, but he had always been a godless
man, the weak end of a strong line, and he had to be left to find his own fate;
there was no arguing with men like him.

           
By sunset the villagers were ready to depart, and the Sarpanch told everyone to
rise for prayers in the small hours so that they could leave immediately
afterwards and thus avoid the worst heat of the day. That night, lying down on
his mat beside old Khadija, he murmured, "At last. I've always wanted to
see the Ka'aba, to circle it before I die." She reached out from her mat
to take his hand. "I, too, have hoped for it, against hope," she
said. "We'll walk through the waters together."

           
Mirza Saeed, driven into an impotent frenzy by the spectacle of the packing
village, burst in on his wife without ceremony. "You should see what's
going on, Mishu," he exclaimed, gesticulating absurdly. "The whole of
Titlipur has taken leave of its brains, and is off to the seaside. What is to
happen to their homes, their fields? There is ruination in store. Must be
political agitators involved. Someone has been bribing someone.―Do you
think if I offered cash they would stay here like sane persons?" His voice
dried. Ayesha was in the room.

           
"You bitch," he cursed her. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed
while Mishal and her mother squatted on the floor, sorting through their
belongings and working out how little they could manage with on the pilgrimage.

           
"You're not going," Mirza Saeed ranted. ÓI forbid it, the devil alone
knows what germ this whore has infected the villagers with, but you are my wife
and I refuse to let you embark upon this suicidal venture."

           
"Good words," Mishal laughed bitterly. "Saeed, good choice of
words. You know I can't live but you talk about suicide. Saeed, a thing is
happening here, and you with your imported European atheism don't know what it
is. Or maybe you would if you looked beneath your English suitings and tried to
locate your heart."

           
"It's incredible," Saeed cried. "Mishal, Mishu, is this you? All
of a sudden you've turned into this God-bothered type from ancient
history?"

           
Mrs. Qureishi said, "Go away, son. No room for unbelievers here. The angel
has told Ayesha that when Mishal completes the pilgrimage to Mecca her cancer
will have disappeared. Everything is required and everything will be
given."

           
Mirza Saeed Akhtar put his palms against a wall of his wife's bedroom and
pressed his forehead against the plaster. After a long pause he said: "If
it is a question of performing umra then for God's sake let's go to town and
catch a plane. We can be in Mecca within a couple of days."

           
Mishal answered, "We are commanded to walk."

           
Saeed lost control of himself. "Mishal? Mishal?" he shrieked.
"Commanded? Archangels, Mishu?
Gibreel?
God with a long beard and
angels with wings? Heaven and hell, Mishal? The Devil with a pointy tail and cloven
hoofs? How far are you going with this? Do women have souls, what do you say?
Or the other way: do souls have gender? Is God black or white? When the waters
of the ocean part, where will the extra water go? Will it stand up sideways
like walls? Mishal? Answer me. Are there miracles? Do you believe in Paradise?
Will I be forgiven my sins?" He began to cry, and fell on to his knees,
with his forehead still pressed against the wall. His dying wife came up and
embraced him from behind. "Go with the pilgrimage, then," he said,
dully. "But at least take the Mercedes station wagon. It's got
air-conditioning and you can take the icebox full of Cokes."

           
"No," she said, gently. "We'll go like everybody else. We're
pilgrims, Saeed. This isn't a picnic at the beach."

           
"I don't know what to do," Mirza Saeed Akhtar wept. "Mishu, I
can't handle this by myself."

           
Ayesha spoke from the bed. "Mirza sahib, come with us," she said.
"Your ideas are finished with. Come and save your soul."

           
Saeed stood up, red-eyed. "A bloody outing you wanted," he said
viciously to Mrs. Qureishi. "That chicken certainly came home to roost.
Your outing will finish off the lot of us, seven generations, the whole bang
shoot."

           
Mishal leaned her cheek against his back. "Come with us, Saeed. Just
come."

           
He turned to face Ayesha. "There is no God," he said firmly.

           
"There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His Prophet," she replied.

           
"The mystical experience is a subjective, not an objective truth," he
went on. "The waters will not open."

           
"The sea will part at the angel's command," Ayesha answered.

           
"You are leading these people into certain disaster."

           
"I am taking them into the bosom of God."

           
"I don't believe in you," Mirza Saeed insisted. "But I'm going
to come, and will try to end this insanity with every step I take."

           
"God chooses many means," Ayesha rejoiced, "many roads by which
the doubtful may be brought into his certainty."

           
"Go to hell," shouted Mirza Saeed Akhtar, and ran, scattering
butterflies, from the room.

           
* * * * *

           
"Who is the madder," Osman the clown whispered into his bullock's ear
as he groomed it in its small byre, "the madwoman, or the fool who loves
the madwoman?" The bullock didn't reply. "Maybe we should have stayed
untouchable," Osman continued. "A compulsory ocean sounds worse than
a forbidden well." And the bullock nodded, twice for yes, boom, boom.