The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie Page A

chambers like great hollow
burial vaults, with bright light and brittle friends. When Salahuddin was a
little boy he had insisted on playing doorman, and would greet the jewelled and
lacquered guests with great gravity, permitting them to pat him on the head and
call him cuteso and chweetie-pie . On Fridays the house was full
of noise; there were musicians, singers, dancers, the latest Western hits as
heard on Radio Ceylon, raucous puppet-shows in which painted clay rajahs rode
puppet-stallions, decapitating enemy marionettes with imprecations and wooden
swords. During the rest of the week, however, Nasreen would stalk the house
warily, a pigeon of a woman walking on tiptoed feet through the gloom, as if
she were afraid to disturb the shadowed silence; and her son, walking in her
footsteps, also learned to lighten his footfall lest he rouse whatever goblin
or afreet might be lying in wait.
               
But: Nasreen Chamchawala's caution failed to save her life. The horror seized
and murdered her when she believed herself most safe, clad in a sari covered in
cheap newspaper photos and headlines, bathed in chandelier-light, surrounded by
her friends.
               
* * * * *
               
By then five and a half years had passed since young Salahuddin, garlanded and
warned, boarded a Douglas D C-8 and journeyed into the west. Ahead of him,
England; beside him, his father, Changez Chamchawala; below him, home and beauty.
Like Nasreen, the future Saladin had never found it easy to cry.
               
On that first aeroplane he read science fiction tales of interplanetary
migration: Asimov's Foundation , Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles .
He imagined the DC-8 was the mother ship, bearing the Chosen, the Elect of God
and man, across unthinkable distances, travelling for generations, breeding
eugenically, that their seed might one day take root somewhere in a brave new
world beneath a yellow sun. He corrected himself: not the mother but the father
ship, because there he was, after all, the great man, Abbu, Dad.
Thirteen-year-old Salahuddin, setting aside recent doubts and grievances,
entered once again his childish adoration of his father, because he had, had,
had worshipped him, he was a great father until you started growing a mind of
your own, and then to argue with him was called a betrayal of his love, but
never mind that now, I accuse him of becoming my supreme being, so that what
happened was like a loss of faith . . . yes, the father ship, an aircraft
was not a flying womb but a metal phallus, and the passengers were spermatozoa
waiting to be spilt.
               
Five and a half hours of time zones; turn your watch upside down in Bombay and
you see the time in London. My father , Chamcha would think, years later,
in the midst of his bitterness. I accuse him of inverting Time .
               
How far did they fly? Five and a half thousand as the crow. Or: from Indianness
to Englishness, an immeasurable distance. Or, not very far at all, because they
rose from one great city, fell to another. The distance between cities is
always small; a villager, travelling a hundred miles to town, traverses
emptier, darker, more terrifying space.
               
What Changez Chamchawala did when the aeroplane took off: trying not to let his
son see him doing it, he crossed two pairs of fingers on each hand, and rotated
both his thumbs.
               
And when they were installed in a hotel within a few feet of the ancient
location of the Tyburn tree, Changez said to his son: "Take. This belongs
to you." And held out, at arm's length, a black billfold about whose
identity there could be no mistake. "You are a man now. Take."
               
The return of the confiscated wallet, complete with all its currency, proved to
be one of Changez Chamchawala's little traps. Salahuddin had been deceived by
these all his life. Whenever his father wanted to punish him, he