book excerptise:   a book unexamined is not worth having

The satanic verses

Salman Rushdie

Rushdie, Salman;

The satanic verses

Viking, 1989, 546 pages

ISBN 0670825379, 9780670825370

topics: |  fiction | india | uk | english


Salman Rushdie on the SV: 

   The Satanic Verses is a committedly secular text that deals in part with
   the material of religious faith. For the religious fundamentalist,
   especially, at present, the Islamic fundamentalist, the adjective
   `secular' is the dirtiest of dirty words.

How faithful is it to Islamic tradition?


Following are a set of quotations from the Satanic Verses, followed by [my
comments].  Page numbers (from the Viking hardbound edition) appear after
each extract.

EXTRACTS:

	`To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from
the heavens,  `first you have to die.  Ho ji! Ho ji! To land
upon the  bosomy earth,  first one  needs to  fly.  Tat-taa!
Taka-thun!  How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry?
How to  win the  darling's love,  mister, without  a  sigh?'
(p.1)

Baba, if you want to get born again ...' Just before dawn one winter's
morning, New Year's Day or thereabouts, two real, full-grown, living men fell
from a great height, twenty-nine thousand and two feet, towards the English
channel, without the benefit of parachutes or wings, out of a clear sky.


   'I tell you, you must die, I tell you, I tell you,' and thusly and so
beneath a moon of alabaster until a loud cry cross the night, 'To the devil
with your tunes,' the words hanging crystalline in the iced white night, 'in
the movies you only mimed to playback singers, to spare me these infernal
noises now.'
   'Gibreel, the tuneless soloist, had been cavorting in moonlight as he sang
his impromptu gazal, swimming in air, butterfly-stroke, breast-stroke,
bunching himself into a ball, spreadeagling himself against the
almost-infinity of the almost-dawn, adopting heraldic postures, rampant,
couchant, pitting levity against gravity. Now he rolled happily towards the
sardonic voice. 'Ohé, Salad baba, it's you, too good. What-ho, old Chumcha.'
At which the other, a fastidious shadow falling headfirst in a grey suit with
all the jacket buttons done up, arms by his sides, taking for granted the
improbability of the bowler hat on his head, pulled a nickname-hater's
face. 'Hey, Spoono,' Gibreel yelled, eliciting a second inverted wince,
'Proper London, bhai! Her we come! Those bastards down there won't know what
hit them. Meteor or lightening or vengeance of God. Out of this air,
baby. Dharrraaammm! Wham, na? What an entrance, yaar. I swear: splat.'
   Out of thin air: a big bang, followed by falling stars. A universal
beginning, a miniature echo of the birth of time ... the jumbo jet Bostan,
Flight AI-420, blew apart without any warning, high above the great, rotting,
beautiful, snow-white, illuminated city, Mahagonny, Babylon, Alphaville. But
Gibreel has already named it, I mustn't interfere: Proper London, capital of
Vilayet, winked blinked nodded in the night. While at Himalayan height a
brief and premature sun burst into powdery January air, a blip vanished from
radar screens, and the thin air was full of bodies, descending from the
Everest of the catastrophe to the milky paleness of the sea.
   Who am I?
   Who else is there?
   The aircraft cracked in half, a seed-pod giving up its spores, an egg
yielding its mystery. Two actors, Gibreel and buttony, pursed mr. Saladin
Chamcha, fell like titbits of tobacco from a broken old cigar. Above, behind,
below them in the void there hung reclining seats, stereophonic headsets,
drinks trolleys, motion discomfort receptacles, disembarkation cards,
duty-free video games, braided caps, paper cups, blankets, oxygen masks.

---

	A man  who sets out to make himself up is taking on the
Creator's role,  according to one way of seeing things; he's
unnatural, a  blasphemer, an  abomination  of  abominations.
From another  angle, you could see pathos in him, heroism in
his struggle,  in his  willingness to  risk: not all mutants
survive.   Or, consider  him sociopolitically: most migrants
learn, and can become disguises.  Our own false descriptions
to counter  the falsehoods invented about us, concealing for
reasons of security our secret lives.

	A man  who invents  himself needs someone to believe in
him, to prove he's managed it. ... Love.  (p.49)

---

	The city  of Jahilia  is built  entirely of  sand,  its
structures formed  of the  desert whence  it  rises.    [Its
citizens] have  learned the  art of  transforming  the  fine
white dune-sand of those forsaken parts, - the very stuff of
inconstancy, -  the quintessence  of unsettlement  shifting,
treachery, lack-of-form,  - and  have turned it, by alchemy,
into the fabric of their newly invented permanence. (p.93)

---

	What kind  of an  idea am  I?   I bend.   I  sway.    I
calculate the  odds, trim  my  sails,  manipulate,  survive.
That is  why I  won't accuse Hind of adultery.  (thoughts of
Abu Simbel, the Grandee of Jahilia, p.102)

---
	Mahound comes to me for revelation, asking me to choose
between monotheist and henotheist alternatives, and I'm just
some idiot actor having a bhaenchud nightmare, what the fuck
do I  know, yaar,  what to  tell you, help.  Help. (Gibreel,
p.109)

---

    Not my voice I’d never know such words I’m no classy speaker never was
    never will be but this isn’t my voice it’s a Voice.

    Mahound’s eyes open wide, he’s seeing some kind of vision, staring at it,
    oh, that’s right, Gibreel remembers, me. He’s seeing me. My lips moving,
    being moved by. What, whom? Don’t know, can’t say. Nevertheless, here
    they are, coming out of my mouth, up my throat, past my teeth: the
    Words. (Gibreel, as he is uttering the "satanic verses", p.112)

    “Have you thought upon Lat, Uzza, and Manat, the third, the other?
    . . . They are the exhalted birds, and their intercession is desired
    indeed” (p. 114). [This concession to Abu Simbel, the Grandee of Jahila,
    violates the major tenant of Islam: “There is no god but Allah”]

---

	tilk-al-gharaniq al-'ula  wa inna  shafa'ata-hunna  la-
turtaja.   These are  the exalted females whose intercession
is to  be desired.  [Lines that  were inspired by Satan when
Muhammad agreed  to accept  three goddesses - Al-Lat,  Al-
Manat, and  Al-Uzza, as  daughters of  Al-lah into the islam
religion.   This forms the central story of one of Gibreel's
many extended dreams].  (p.340)

	He stands  in front  of the  statues of  the Three  and
announces  the   abrogation  of  the  verses  which  Shaitan
whispered in  his ear.   These  verses are banished from the
true recitation,  al qur'an.   New  verses are  thundered in
their place.   `Shall  He  have  daughters  and  you  sons?'
Mahound recites.  `That would be a fine division!  These are
but names  you have  dreamed of,  and your  fathers.   Allah
vests no  authority on  them.' [This argument of sons versus
daughters appears repeatedly in the Koran.] (p.124)

---

	Khalid the  water-carrier hangs  back..  Awkwardly,  he
says: `Messenger,  I doubted  you.   First we  said, Mahound
will never  compromise, and  you compromised.  Then we said,
Mahound has  betrayed us,  but you were bringing us a deeper
truth.   You brought us the  devil himself, so that we could
witness the  workings of  the Evil One, and his overthrow by
the Right.   You  have enriched  our faith.   I am sorry for
what I thought.'

	Mahound moves  away from  the sunlight  falling through
the window.   `Yes.'   Bitterness,  cynicism.    `It  was  a
wonderful thing  I did.   Deeper  truth.   Bringing you  the
devil.  Yes, that sounds like me.' (p.125)

---

	Any new  idea, Mahound,  is asked  two questions.   The
first is  asked when its weak: WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU?
Are you  the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates
itself to  society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are
you  the   cussed,  bloody-minded,   ramrod-backed  type  of
damnfool notion  that would  rather break than sway with the
breeze?   The kind  that will  almost certainly, ninety-nine
times out  of hundred,  be  smashed  to bits; but, the 100th
time, will change the world.
	`What's the second question?' Gibreel asked aloud.

	Answer the first one first.  (p.335)

---

	Such is  the miraculous  fate of  the future of exiles:
what is  first uttered  in the  impotence of  an  overheated
apartment becomes  the fate  of nations.  (The Imam's dream,
p.209)

---

	The moon is heating up, beginning to bubble like cheese
under a grill.  Gibreel sees pieces falling off from time to
time, moon-drips  that  hiss  and  bubble  on  the  sizzling
griddle of the sky. (p.212)

---

	In  those  years  Mahound - or  should  one  say  the
Archangel  Gibreel? - should  one  say  Al-Lah? - became
obsessed by  the law.   Amid  the palm  trees of  the  oasis
Gibreel appeared  to the prophet and found himself sprouting
rules, rules,  rules, until the faithful could scarcely bear
the prospect  of any  more revelation,  Salman  said,  rules
about every damn thing, if a man farts let him turn his face
to the  wind, a rule about which hand to use for the purpose
of cleaning  one's behind.   It was as if no aspect of human
existence was  to be left unregulated, free.  The revelation
- the  recitation -  told the  faithful how much to eat, how
deeply they  should sleep,  and which  sexual positions  had
received divine  sanction, so  that they learned that sodomy
and  the   missionary  position  were  approved  of  by  the
archangel, whereas the forbidden postures included all those
in which  the female  was on top. Gibreel further listed the
permitted  and   forbidden  subjects  of  conversation,  and
earmarked the parts of the body which could not be scratched
no matter  how unbearably  they may  itch.   He  vetoed  the
consumption of prawns, those bizarre other-worldly creatures
that no  member of  the faithful had ever seen, and required
animals to  be  killed  slowly,  by  bleeding,  so  that  by
experiencing their  deaths to  the full they might arrive at
an understanding of the meaning of their lives.. (364).

	... Salman the Persian got the wondering what manner of
God this  was that sounded so much like a business man .. he
recalled that Mahound himself had been a business man, and a
damned succesful  one at that, a person to whom organization
and rules  came naturally,  so how excessively convenient it
was that  he should  come up  with such  a very businesslike
archangel, who  handed down the management decisions of this
highly corporate, if non-corporeal, God.
	After that  Salman began to notice how useful and well-
timed  the  angel's  revelations  tended  to  be.    (363-4)
[Subsequently, Salman  the scribe,  begins to alter a few of
the words  - the  revealed words  of God  himself - small at
first, and  gradually larger, until he feels Mahound nod but
with a little doubt]

	[This section  is one of the most direct attacks on the
religious traditions  of Islam.   According  to some Muslims
(Hou Post), Islam forbids sodomy, and no other positions are
forbidden;   animals must  be slaughtered with a sharp knife
as quickly  as possible  so that the animal does not suffer.
Time and  again, it is clear that Rushdie has used the facts
more as  an artist  than a  historian; Muhammad's sojourn to
Yathrib  is   thus  twenty-five   years   instead   of   the
historically correct  ten (622-632 A.D., the first ten years
of the  Hejira), Mecca is the magic city of Jahilia, but the
name Yathrib  is correct,  since the  city became  known  as
Medina (city  of the  Nabi or  prophet) only after Muhammad,
and was  the mostly Jewish oasis of Yathrib previously.  The
problem for the reader is to discern which is fact and which
is not.

	Clearly, as  a lyric  novelist, Rushdie  can alter  the
script as  he  wishes,  but  Muslims  are  also  correct  in
claiming that  to most  ill-informed  or  partially-informed
(non-Islamic) readers,  many  of  the  details  will  appear
familiar and  tend to  reinforce the  impression  of  truth.
Historical incidents  include the  initial scorn  of Mecca's
populace for  Muhammad's disciples,  many  of  them  slaves;
flight  to  Yathrib  and  the  triumphal  return  against  a
spineless Mecca;  the  Ka'aba  stone  that  predates  Islam;
Muhammad's business  acumen  and  his  wives  Khadija,  and,
later, Ayesha, and many others; and also correct are many of
the rituals  of Islam.   According  to one Islamic reviewer,
this section,  by weaving  in the  true  with  the  patently
false,  constitutes   a  virulent  and  "untruthful"  attack
against Islam  and serves to excite the divisive forces.  To
me, the  borderline  between  truth/fiction  in  this  story
remains largely  unknown, but  it does arouse my interest in
determining more about the Islam in general and the Koran in
particular, which should be a desirable objective for Islam.
For example,  I would  like to  find the section where Moses
sends Muhammad  back to  God so  that he  can negotiate  the
number of daily prayers down to five from forty (the current
number is  indeed five).   I  would also  like to  know more
about the traditions of animal butchery in Islam, etc].

---

	Prophet, We  have made lawful to you the wives whom you
have granted  dowries ...  This privilege  is  yours  alone,
being granted to no one else. (Koran 33:50)  [This is one of
the  examples   from  the   Koran  that   Rushdie  sites  as
"convenience driven".]

---

	[Eventually Salman is captured].  Salman swears renewed
loyalty, begs some more, and then, with a gleam of desperate
hope, makes  an offer.   `I  can show  you where  your  true
enemies are.'   This  earns  him a few seconds.  The Prophet
inclines his  head... And Salman says a name.  Mahound sinks
deep into his cushions as memory returns.

	`Baal,' he says, and repeats, twice: `Baal, Baal.'

	Much to  Khalid's disappointment, Salman the Persian is
not sentenced  to death.   Bilal intercedes for him, and the
Prophet, his  mind elsewhere,  concedes:  yes,yes,  let  the
wretched fellow  live.  (375) [Is this to be the fate of the
writer Salman also?  How prophetic indeed!!  Is this the end
that Rushdie  perceived, perhaps?   This  passage  at  least
seems to  hint that  Rushdie had some notion of the hornet's
nest he  was stirring.   Note  that the  reprieve for Salman
comes from  mere indifference  and  not  from  any  rational
perceptions of  justice.   Will the  real life  Salman plead
"renewed loyalty"?]

---

	[Most of  the book is really about other issues. Here
is one  of the  bitter invectives describing the immigrant's
rage against the British authorities.

	Club Hot  Wax (291-292)  where effigies  of  the  day's
villains are melted in an oven.. ] the one most selected, if
truth be  told; at least three times a week.  Her permawaved
coiffure, her  pearls, her  suit of  blue.    Maggie-maggie-
maggie, bays  the crowd.   Burn-burn-burn.   The doll, - the
guy, -  is strapped into the Hot seat.  Pinkwalla throws the
switch.   And O how prettily she melts, from the inside out,
crumpling into  formlessness.  Then she is a puddle, and the
crowd sighs  its ecstasy:  done.   Music regains  the night.
[293] [If  anything the  attacks against  the British  - and
especially the  British immigration system - are more direct
and more virulent than those against Islam]

---

	The death of Dr.  Uhuru Simba, formerly Sylvester Roberts, while in
custody awaiting trial, was described by the Brickhall constabulary's
community liaison officer, a certain Inspector Stephen Kinch, as `a
million-to-one-shot'.  It appeared that Dr. Simba had been experiencing a
nightmare so terrifying that it had caused him to scream piercingly in his
sleep, attracting the immediate attention of the two duty officers.  These
gentlemen, rushing to his cell, arrived in time to see the still-sleeping
form of the gigantic man literally lift off its bunk under the malign
influence of the dream and plunge to the floor.  A loud snap was heard by
both officers; it was the sound of Dr. Uhuru Simba's neck breaking.  Death
had been instantaneous....

	Hanif Johnson,  as Uhuru  Simba's solicitor,  added his
own clarification,  pointing out  that his  client's alleged
fatal plunge had been from the lower of the two bunks in his
cell;  that  in  an  age  of  extreme  overcrowding  in  the
country's lock-ups  it was  unusual, to  say the least, that
the other  bunk should  have been  unoccupied, ensuring that
there were  no witnesses  to the  death  except  for  prison
officers; and  that a  nightmare was  not the  only possible
explanation for  the screams  of a black man in the hands of
custodial authorities. (449-50)

---

	[Pamela  Chamcha   tries  to   expose  witches  in  the
constabulary.   At this point, Pamela was pregnant.] ...when
Pamela admitted to being nervous at possessing the only copy
of the  explosive documents  in the plastic briefcase, Jumpy
once again  insisted on  accompanying her  to the  Brickhall
community relations  council's offices, where she planned to
make photocopies  to  distribute  to  a  number  of  trusted
friends and  colleagues.  So it was that at ten-fifteen they
were in  Pamela's beloved  MG, heading east across the city,
into the  gathering  storm.    An  old,  blue  Mercedes  van
followed them ... without being noticed. (453)

---

	The building occupied by the Brickhall community center
... was  not an  easy building to enter ... There was also a
burglar alarm.

	This alarm, it afterwards transpired, had been switched
off, probably  by the two persons, one male, one female, who
had effected  an entry  with the assistance of a key...  The
reasons  for   the  crime   remained  obscure,  and  as  the
miscreants had  perished in  the blaze, it was unlikely that
they would ever come to light.

	A tragic  affair;  the  dead  woman  had  been  heavily
pregnant. (464)

---

	Names, once  they are in common use quickly become mere
sounds, their  etymology being brushed aside like so many of
the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

---

the narrator of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses never explicitly
reveals his identity. Most of the novel is narrated in a multiple
third-person style, in which the narrator follows various different
characters, and has access to all of their thoughts and everything
they perceive. However, the narrator periodically inserts himself into
the story, in a series of very short passages that are written in the
first person. In these passages, the narrator not-so-subtly hints that
he is the devil himself, Satan. This changes the tone of the entire
novel. The devil is the complete opposite of an objective narrator;
traditionally, he cannot be trusted. In the New Testament, he even
goes so far as to tempt Jesus, the son of God, to suicide: "Then the
devil took him to the holy city, and set him on the pinnacle of the
temple, and said to him, 'If you are the Son of God, throw yourself
down...'"

---

    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. 
    	   [p. 97, Grandee fo Jahila, Abu Samil, talking to Baal]

"Things are ending," he told her. "This civilisation; things are closing in
on it. It has been quite a culture, brilliant and foul, cannibal and
Christian, the glory of the world. We should celebrate it while we can; until
night falls."

'I know you,' Baal said.
'Yes.'
'The way you speak. You're a foreigner.'
' "A revolution of water-carriers, immigrants and slaves,"' the stranger quoted. 'Your words.'
'You're the immigrant,' Baal remembered. 'The Persian. Sulaiman.' The Persian smiled his crooked smile. 'Salman,' he corrected. 'Not wise, but peaceful.'
'You were one of the closest to him,' Baal said, perplexed.
'The closer you are to a conjurer,' Salman bitterly replied, 'the easier to
spot the trick.'

Rushdie on SV, before its release


    [the new novel would be about] “angels and devils and about how it’s very
    difficult to establish ideas of morality in a world which has become so
    uncertain that it is difficult to even agree on what is happening. When
    one can’t agree on a description of reality, it is very hard to agree on
    whether that reality is good or evil, right or wrong. Angels and devils
    are becoming confused ideas… What is supposed to be angelic often has
    disastrous results, and what is supposed to be demonic is quite often
    something with which one must have sympathy. It (the novel) is an attempt
    to come to grips with a sense of the crumbling moral fabric or at least
    for the reconstruction of old simplicities. It is also about the attempt
    of somebody like myself, who is basically a person without a formal
    religion, to make some kind of accommodation with the renewed force of
    religion in the world; what it means, what the religious experience is.”
         - interview to Salil Tripathi and Dina Vakil, Indian Post 1987

from New York Times review by A. G. Mojtabai

	 	review by AG Mojtabai of U. Tulsa

One of the most vivid of these [spinoff narratives] concerns an epileptic
woman, a seer, who leads a pilgrimage to Mecca, a tale evoking the Sufi
theme of the immolation of the moth, the Exodus account (with the promise
of the Arabian Sea parting for the pilgrims), the Pied Piper, Jonestown and
other more recent religio-political movements in which the faithful follow
a charismatic leader into the depths of destruction. There are many magical
embellishments: The pilgrims follow a cloud of butterflies by day; their
leader is literally clothed in butterflies, and feeds upon them for her
sustenance. Her name is Ayesha, which is - but only coincidentally here, I
think - the name of the youngest and favorite wife of the prophet Mohammed.

Which brings us to the controversial part of the book - the tales of
Mahound and Jahilia that embroider upon the life of Mohammed and the
founding of Islam. Indeed, the title ''The Satanic Verses'' refers to an
incident in the life of Mohammed, recorded by two early Arab historians
(al-Waqidi, A.D. 747-823, and at-Tabari, A.D. c. 839-923), discredited by
later commentators on the Koran, but taken up in Western accounts as the
''lapse of Mohammed'' or his ''compromise with idolatry.''

The story goes like this: confronted by the resistance of the leading
merchants of Mecca to his monotheism, Mohammmed is reported to have
accepted three local deities - al-Lat, al-Uzzah and Manat - as intercessory
beings (or angels - ''daughters of Allah''). This would have been a shrewd
diplomatic concession, at least in the short run, since Mecca depended upon
the income from the pilgrimage trade to the shrines of these deities. 

But Mohammed soon withdrew the verse of acceptance, saying that Satan had placed the words of concession upon his tongue. In the Koran, Mohammed concludes:

''Have you thought on al-Lat and al-Uzzah, and thirdly on Manat? Is He [ Allah ] to have daughters and you sons? This is indeed an unfair distinction!

''They are but names which you and your fathers have invented.''

Mr. Rushdie's revival of this story, the duplicitous Gibreel/Satan
agonizing over his role in the incident, compounded by the story of a
scribe who deliberately placed erroneous words into his transcription of
the Koran, was bound to touch an angry nerve in the world of Islam, where
the Koran (''al-qu'ran'' means ''the recitation'') is believed to be the
word of God, transmitted without error. 

And, to be sure, ''The Satanic Verses'' has sparked bitter controversy among
Muslims in South Africa, where the author was prevented from appearing at a
book fair by arson and death threats against all concerned with the
event. Last fall the importation of the British edition of the book was
banned in India as a precautionary measure against religious leaders using it
to incite their followers to sectarian violence. Recently, the publisher's
New York office has received several bomb threats and many angry letters.

 ==Homi Bhaba on the Satanic verses: Nationality and Language==
 If the experience of the Turkish Gastarbeiter represents the radical
 incommensurability of translation, Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses
 attempts to redefine the boundaries of the Western nation, so that the
 'foreignness of languages' becomes the inescapable cultural condition for the
 enunciation of the mother-tongue. In the 'Rosa Diamond' section of The
 Satanic Verses Rushdie seems to suggest that it is only through the process
 of dissemiNation - of meaning, time, peoples, cultural boundaries and
 historical traditions - that the radical alterity of the national culture
 will create new forms of living and writing: 'The trouble with the Engenglish
 is that their hiss hiss history happened overseas, so they do do don't know
 what it means.'
 
 S. S. Sisodia the soak - known also as Whisky Sisodia - stutters these words
 as part of his litany of 'what's wrong with the English'. The spirit of his
 words fleshes out the argument of this chapter. I have suggested that the
 tavistic national past and its language of archaic belonging marginalize the
 present of the 'modernity' of the national culture, rather like suggesting
 that history happens 'outside' the centre and core. More specifically I have
 argued that appeals to the national past must also be seen as the anterior
 space of signification that 'singularizes' the nation's cultural totality. It
 introduces a form of alterity of address that Rushdie embodies in the double
 narrative figures of Gibreel Farishta/Saladin Chamcha, or Gibreel
 Farishta/Sir Henry Diamond, which suggests that the national narrative is the
 site of an ambivalent identification; a margin of the uncertainty of cultural
 meaning that may become the space for an agonistic minority position. In the
 midst of life's fullness, and through the representation of this fullness,
 the novel gives evidence of the profound perplexity of the living.
 
 Gifted with phantom sight, Rosa Diamond, for whom repetition had become a
 comfort in her antiquity, represents the English Heim or homeland. The
 pageant of 900-year-old history passes through her frail translucent body and
 inscribes itself, in a strange splitting of her language, 'the well-worn
 phrases, unfinished business, grandstand view, made her feel solid,
 unchanging, sempiternal, instead of the creature of cracks and absences she
 knew herself to be.' Constructed from the well-worn pedagogies and pedigrees
 of national unity - her vision of the Battle of Hastings is the anchor of her
 being - and, at the same time, patched and fractured in the incommensurable
 perplexity of the nation's living, Rosa Diamond's green and pleasant garden
 is the spot where Gibreel Farishta lands when he falls out from the belly of
 the Boeing over sodden, southern England.
 
 Gibreel masquerades in the clothes of Rosa's dead husband, Sir Henry Diamond,
 ex-colonial landowner, and through his postcolonial mimicry, exacerbates the
 discursive split between the image of a continuist national history and the
 'cracks and absences' that she knew herself to be. What emerges, at one
 level, is a popular tale of secret, adulterous Argentinian amours, passion in
 the pampas with Martin de la Cruz. What is more significant and in tension
 with the exoticism, is the emergence of a hybrid national narrative that
 turns the nostalgic past into the disruptive 'anterior' and displaces the
 historical present - opens it up to other histories and incommensurable
 narrative subjects. The cut or Split in enunciation emerges with its
 iterative temporality to reinscribe the figure of Rosa Diamond in a new and
 terrifying avatar. Gibreel, the Migrant hybrid in masquerade, as Sir Henry
 Diamond, mimics the collaborative colonial ideologies of patriotism and
 patriarchy, depriving those narratives of their imperial authority. Gibreel's
 returning gaze crosses out the synchronous history of England, the
 essentialist memories of William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings. In
 the middle of an account of her punctual domestic routine with Sir Henry -
 sherry always at six - Rosa Diamond is overtaken by another time and memory
 of narration and through the 'grandstand view' of imperial history you can
 hear its cracks and absences speak with another voice:
 
     Then she began without bothering with once upon a time and whether it was
     all true or false he could see the fierce energy that was going into the
     telling ... this memory jumbled rag-bag of material was in fact the very
     heart of her, her self-portrait.... So that it was not possible to
     distinguish memories from wishes, guilty reconstructions from
     confessional truths, because even on her deathbed Rosa Diamond did not
     know how to look her history in the eye.
 
 And what of Gibreel Farishta? Well, he is the mote in the eye of history, its
 blind spot that will not let the nationalist gaze settle centrally. His
 mimicry of colonial masculinity and mimesis allows the absences of national
 history to speak in the ambivalent, rag-bag narrative. But it is precisely
 this 'narrative sorcery' that established Gibreel's own reentry into
 contemporary England. As the belated postcolonial he marginalizes and
 singularizes the totality of national culture. He is the history that
 happened elsewhere, overseas; his postcolonial, migrant presence does not
 evoke a harmonious patchwork of cultures, but articulates the narrative of
 cultural difference which can never let the national history look at itself
 narcissistically in the eye.
 
 For the liminality of the Western nation is the shadow of its own finitude:
 the colonial space played out in the imaginative geography of the
 metropolitan space; the repetition or return of the postcolonial migrant to
 alienate the holism of history. The postcolonial space is now 'supplementary'
 to the metropolitan centre; it stands in a subaltern, adjunct relation that
 doesn't aggrandize the presence of the West but redraws its frontiers in the
 menacing, agonistic boundary of cultural difference that never quite adds up,
 always less than one nation and double.
 
 From this splitting of time and narrative emerges a strange, empowering
 knowledge for the migrant that is at once schizoid and subversive. In his
 guise as the Archangel Gibreel he sees the bleak history of the metropolis:
 'the angry present of masks and parodies, stifled and twisted by the
 insupportable, unrejected burden of its past, staring into the bleakness of
 its impoverished future'. From Rosa Diamond's decentred narrative 'without
 bothering with once upon a time' Gibreel becomes - however insanely - the
 principle of avenging repetition:
 
     These powerless English! - Did they not think that their history would
     return to haunt them? - 'The native is an oppressed person whose
     permanent dream is to become the persecutor' (Fanon).... He would make
     this land anew. He was the Archangel, Gibreel - And I'm back.
 
 If the lesson of Rosa's narrative is that the national memory is always the
 site of the hybridity of histories and the displacement of narratives, then
 through Gibreel, the avenging migrant, we learn the ambivalence of cultural
 difference: it is the articulation through incommensurability that structures
 all narratives of identification, and all acts of cultural translation.
 
     He was joined to the adversary, their arms locked around one another's
     bodies, mouth to mouth, head to tail.... No more of these England induced
     ambiguities: those Biblical-satanic confusions ... Quran 18:50 there it
     was as plain as the day... How much more practical, down to earth
     comprehensible.... Iblis/Shaitan standing for darkness; Gibreel for the
     light.... 0 most devilish and slippery of cities.... Well then the
     trouble with the English was their, Their - In a word Gibreel solemnly
     pronounces, that most naturalised sign of cultural difference.... The
     trouble with the English was their ... in a word ... their weather.


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at-symbol] gmail.com) 2010 Jan 08