Read Online The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie - Free Book Online Page B

possibility of actual,
jaw-breaking fisticuffs. Changez wrote back by return of post; a brief letter,
four lines of archaic abuse, cad rotter bounder scoundrel varlet whoreson
rogue. "Kindly consider all family connections irreparably sundered,"
it concluded. "Consequences your responsibility."
               
After a year of silence, Saladin received a further communication, a letter of
forgiveness that was in all particulars harder to take than the earlier,
excommunicatory thunderbolt. "When you become a father, O my son,"
Changez Chamchawala confided, "then shall you know those moments―ah!
Too sweet!―when, for love, one dandies the bonny babe upon one's knee;
whereupon, without warning or provocation, the blessed creature―may I be
frank?―it wets one. Perhaps for a moment one feels the gorge
rising, a tide of anger swells within the blood―but then it dies away, as
quickly as it came. For do we not, as adults, understand that the little one is
not to blame? He knows not what he does."
               
Deeply offended at being compared to a urinating baby, Saladin maintained what
he hoped was a dignified silence. By the time of his graduation he had acquired
a British passport, because he had arrived in the country just before the laws
tightened up, so he was able to inform Changez in a brief note that he intended
to settle down in London and look for work as an actor. Changez Chamchawala's
reply came by express mail. "Might as well be a confounded gigolo. It's my
belief some devil has got into you and turned your wits. You who have been
given so much: do you not feel you owe anything to anyone? To your country? To
the memory of your dear mother? To your own mind? Will you spend your life
jiggling and preening under bright lights, kissing blonde women under the gaze
of strangers who have paid to watch your shame? You are no son of mine, but a ghoul ,
a hoosh , a demon up from hell. An actor! Answer me this: what am I to
tell my friends?"
               
And beneath a signature, the pathetic, petulant postscript. "Now that you
have your own bad djinni, do not think you will inherit the magic lamp."
               
* * * * *
               
After that, Changez Chamchawala wrote to his son at irregular intervals, and in
every letter he returned to the theme of demons and possession: "A man
untrue to himself becomes a two-legged lie, and such beasts are Shaitan's best
work," he wrote, and also, in more sentimental vein: "I have your
soul kept safe, my son, here in this walnut-tree. The devil has only your body.
When you are free of him, return and claim your immortal spirit. It flourishes
in the garden."
               
The handwriting in these letters altered over the years, changing from the
florid confidence that had made it instantly identifiable and becoming
narrower, undecorated, purified. Eventually the letters stopped, but Saladin
heard from other sources that his father's preoccupation with the supernatural
had continued to deepen, until finally he had become a recluse, perhaps in
order to escape this world in which demons could steal his own son's body, a
world unsafe for a man of true religious faith.
               
His father's transformation disconcerted Saladin, even at such a great
distance. His parents had been Muslims in the lackadaisical, light manner of
Bombayites; Changez Chamchawala had seemed far more godlike to his infant son
than any Allah. That this father, this profane deity (albeit now discredited),
had dropped to his knees in his old age and started bowing towards Mecca was
hard for his godless son to accept.
               
"I blame that witch," he told himself, falling for rhetorical
purposes into the same language of spells and goblins that his father had
commenced to employ. "That Nasreen Two. Is it I who have been the subject
of devilment, am I the one possessed? It's not my handwriting