The Satanic Verses (17 page)

‘Do as you’re told,’ are Abu Simbel’s last words to him. ‘You have no choice.’

The Grandee lolls in his bedroom while concubines attend to his needs. Coconut-oil for his thinning hair, wine for his palate, tongues for his delight.
The boy was right. Why do I fear Mahound
? He begins, idly, to count the concubines, gives up at fifteen with a
flap of his hand.
The boy. Hind will go on seeing him, obviously; what chance does he have against her will
? It is a weakness in him, he knows, that he sees too much, tolerates too much. He has his appetites, why should she not have hers? As long as she is discreet; and as long as he knows. He must know; knowledge is his narcotic, his addiction. He cannot tolerate what he does not know and for that reason, if for no other, Mahound is his enemy, Mahound with his raggle-taggle gang, the boy was right to laugh. He, the Grandee, laughs less easily. Like his opponent he is a cautious man, he walks on the balls of his feet. He remembers the big one, the slave, Bilal: how his master asked him, outside the Lat temple, to enumerate the gods. ‘One,’ he answered in that huge musical voice. Blasphemy, punishable by death. They stretched him out in the fairground with a boulder on his chest.
How many did you say
? One, he repeated, one. A second boulder was added to the first.
One one one
. Mahound paid his owner a large price and set him free.

No, Abu Simbel reflects, the boy Baal was wrong, these men are worth our time. Why do I fear Mahound? For that: one one one, his terrifying singularity. Whereas I am always divided, always two or three or fifteen. I can even see his point of view; he is as wealthy and successful as any of us, as any of the councillors, but because he lacks the right sort of family connections, we haven’t offered him a place amongst our group. Excluded by his orphaning from the mercantile elite, he feels he has been cheated, he has not had his due. He always was an ambitious fellow. Ambitious, but also solitary. You don’t rise to the top by climbing up a hill all by yourself. Unless, maybe, you meet an angel there … yes, that’s it. I see what he’s up to. He wouldn’t understand me, though.
What kind of 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. We are a good pair, ice and fire. Her family shield, the fabled red lion, the many-toothed manticore. Let her play with her satirist; between us it was never sex. I’ll finish him when she’s finished with. Here’s a great lie, thinks the
Grandee of Jahilia drifting into sleep: the pen is mightier than the sword.

The fortunes of the city of Jahilia were built on the supremacy of sand over water. In the old days it had been thought safer to transport goods across the desert than over the seas, where monsoons could strike at any time. In those days before meteorology such matters were impossible to predict. For this reason the caravanserais prospered. The produce of the world came up from Zafar to Sheba, and thence to Jahilia and the oasis of Yathrib and on to Midian where Moses lived; thence to Aqabah and Egypt. From Jahilia other trails began: to the east and north-east, towards Mesopotamia and the great Persian empire. To Petra and to Palmyra, where once Solomon loved the Queen of Sheba. Those were fatted days. But now the fleets plying the waters around the peninsula have grown hardier, their crews more skilful, their navigational instruments more accurate. The camel trains are losing business to the boats. Desert-ship and sea-ship, the old rivalry, sees a tilt in the balance of power. Jahilia’s rulers fret, but there is little they can do. Sometimes Abu Simbel suspects that only the pilgrimage stands between the city and its ruin. The council searches the world for statues of alien gods, to attract new pilgrims to the city of sand; but in this, too, they have competitors. Down in Sheba a great temple has been built, a shrine to rival the House of the Black Stone. Many pilgrims have been tempted south, and the numbers at the Jahilia fairgrounds are falling.

At the recommendation of Abu Simbel, the rulers of Jahilia have added to their religious practices the tempting spices of profanity. The city has become famous for its licentiousness, as a gambling den, a whorehouse, a place of bawdy songs and wild, loud music. On one occasion some members of the tribe of Shark went too far in their greed for pilgrim money. The gatekeepers at the House began demanding bribes from weary voyagers; four of them, piqued at receiving no more than a pittance, pushed two
travellers to their deaths down the great, steep flight of stairs. This practice backfired, discouraging return visits … Today, female pilgrims are often kidnapped for ransom, or sold into concubinage. Gangs of young Sharks patrol the city, keeping their own kind of law. It is said that Abu Simbel meets secretly with the gang-leaders and organizes them all. This is the world into which Mahound has brought his message: one one one. Amid such multiplicity, it sounds like a dangerous word.

The Grandee sits up and at once concubines approach to resume their oilings and smoothings. He waves them away, claps his hands. The eunuch enters. ‘Send a messenger to the house of the kahin Mahound,’ Abu Simbel commands.
We will set him a little test. A fair contest: three against one
.

Water-carrier immigrant slave: Mahound’s three disciples are washing at the well of Zamzam. In the sand-city, their obsession with water makes them freakish. Ablutions, always ablutions, the legs up to the knees, the arms down to the elbows, the head down to the neck. Dry-torsoed, wet-limbed and damp-headed, what eccentrics they look! Splish, splosh, washing and praying. On their knees, pushing arms, legs, heads back into the ubiquitous sand, and then beginning again the cycle of water and prayer. These are easy targets for Baal’s pen. Their water-loving is a treason of a sort; the people of Jahilia accept the omnipotence of sand. It lodges between their fingers and toes, cakes their lashes and hair, clogs their pores. They open themselves to the desert: come, sand, wash us in aridity. That is the Jahilian way from the highest citizen to the lowest of the low. They are people of silicon, and water-lovers have come among them.

Baal circles them from a safe distance – Bilal is not a man to trifle with – and yells gibes. ‘If Mahound’s ideas were worth anything, do you think they’d only be popular with trash like you?’ Salman restrains Bilal: ‘We should be honoured that the mighty Baal has chosen to attack us,’ he smiles, and Bilal relaxes, subsides.
Khalid the water-carrier is jumpy, and when he sees the heavy figure of Mahound’s uncle Hamza approaching he runs towards him anxiously. Hamza at sixty is still the city’s most renowned fighter and lion-hunter. Though the truth is less glorious than the eulogies: Hamza has many times been defeated in combat, saved by friends or lucky chances, rescued from lions’ jaws. He has the money to keep such items out of the news. And age, and survival, bestow a sort of validation upon a martial legend. Bilal and Salman, forgetting Baal, follow Khalid. All three are nervous, young.

He’s still not home, Hamza reports. And Khalid, worried: But it’s been hours, what is that bastard doing to him, torture, thumbscrews, whips? Salman, once again, is the calmest: That isn’t Simbel’s style, he says, it’s something sneaky, depend upon it. And Bilal bellows loyally: Sneaky or not, I have faith in him, in the Prophet. He won’t break. Hamza offers only a gentle rebuke: Oh, Bilal, how many times must he tell you? Keep your faith for God. The Messenger is only a man. The tension bursts out of Khalid: he squares up to old Hamza, demands, Are you saying that the Messenger is weak? You may be his uncle … Hamza clouts the water-carrier on the side of the head. Don’t let him see your fear, he says, not even when you’re scared half to death.

The four of them are washing once more when Mahound arrives; they cluster around him, whowhatwhy. Hamza stands back. ‘Nephew, this is no damn good,’ he snaps in his soldier’s bark. ‘When you come down from Coney there’s a brightness on you. Today it’s something dark.’

Mahound sits on the edge of the well and grins. ‘I’ve been offered a deal.’
By Abu Simbel
? Khalid shouts.
Unthinkable. Refuse
. Faithful Bilal admonishes him: Do not lecture the Messenger. Of course, he has refused. Salman the Persian asks: What sort of deal. Mahound smiles again. ‘At least one of you wants to know.’

‘It’s a small matter,’ he begins again. ‘A grain of sand. Abu Simbel asks Allah to grant him one little favour.’ Hamza sees the exhaustion in him. As if he had been wrestling with a demon.
The water-carrier is shouting: ‘Nothing! Not a jot!’ Hamza shuts him up.

‘If our great God could find it in his heart to concede – he used that word,
concede –
that three, only three of the three hundred and sixty idols in the house are worthy of worship …’

‘There is no god but God!’ Bilal shouts. And his fellows join in: ‘Ya Allah!’ Mahound looks angry. ‘Will the faithful hear the Messenger?’ They fall silent, scuffing their feet in the dust.

‘He asks for Allah’s approval of Lat, Uzza and Manat. In return, he gives his guarantee that we will be tolerated, even officially recognized; as a mark of which, I am to be elected to the council of Jahilia. That’s the offer.’

Salman the Persian says: ‘It’s a trap. If you go up Coney and come down with such a Message, he’ll ask, how could you make Gibreel provide just the right revelation? He’ll be able to call you a charlatan, a fake.’ Mahound shakes his head. ‘You know, Salman, that I have learned how to
listen
. This
listening
is not of the ordinary kind; it’s also a kind of asking. Often, when Gibreel comes, it’s as if he knows what’s in my heart. It feels to me, most times, as if he comes from within my heart: from within my deepest places, from my soul.’

‘Or it’s a different trap,’ Salman persists. ‘How long have we been reciting the creed you brought us? There is no god but God. What are we if we abandon it now? This weakens us, renders us absurd. We cease to be dangerous. Nobody will ever take us seriously again.’

Mahound laughs, genuinely amused. ‘Maybe you haven’t been here long enough,’ he says kindly. ‘Haven’t you noticed? The people do not take us seriously. Never more than fifty in the audience when I speak, and half of those are tourists. Don’t you read the lampoons that Baal pins up all over town?’ He recites:

‘They mock us everywhere, and you call us dangerous,’ he cried.

Now Hamza looks worried. ‘You never worried about their opinions before. Why now? Why after speaking to Simbel?’

Mahound shakes his head. ‘Sometimes I think I must make it easier for the people to believe.’

An uneasy silence covers the disciples; they exchange looks, shift their weight. Mahound cries out again. ‘You all know what has been happening. Our failure to win converts. The people will not give up their gods. They will not, not.’ He stands up, strides away from them, washes by himself on the far side of the Zamzam well, kneels to pray.