Bombay Talkies, the Word and the World: Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses Author(s): Michael M. J.

Fischer and Mehdi Abedi Source: Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 5, No. 2 (May, 1990), pp. 107-159 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656453 . Accessed: 09/09/2011 09:36
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Bombay Talkies, the Word and the World: Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses
Michael M. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi Departmentof Anthropology Rice University

They Shoot Novelists Don't They?' The migrantsensibility . . . I believe to be one of the centralthemes of this century of displaced persons .... And for the plural, hybrid metropolitanresults of such imaginings, the cinema may well be the ideal location. -Salman Rushdie (1985:53) All those who henceforthmay intend to write such a book or turn it into a film, or display it in movie theaters,or publish it-all of them will now have to contendwith the dangerof deathfrom Muslims. -President Ali Khameinei,Fridayprayers,3 March 19892 Salman Rushdie is in hiding, but in the Muslim world he is everywhere. In the old section of Dhaka, in Bangladesh,he may be seen on postersstuckto molderingwalls, with a noose aroundhis neck. A recent marchthere, provokedand politicized by Islamic fundamentalists,was led, I was told, with the chant, "Salman Rushdie must leave Dhaka!" The sloganeerswere informedthatRushdiewas not in Dhaka, that he is somewhere in England. They were unfazed. "Salman Rushdie must leave England!" they cried, and marchedon. -Mahnaz Ispahani,New Republic, 3 July 1989 Aside from being a brilliantly funny re-visionary novel, Satanic Verses (Rushdie 1988) has become a highly charged social text, a lightning rod or projective screen against which contemporary cultural and social conflicts are drawn, enacted, and elaborated. On the one hand, Satanic Verses is a defining novel for the last two decades of the 20th century: the text itself performs half a dozen critical functions in re-visioning the cultural reorganization, intercultural intereferences (interreferences, interferences) or cross-readings, among sizable migrant populations of both middle- and working-class varieties; and particularly focuses attention on the competing sources of psychic fixation between religion and the movies for Muslims raised in traditional religious environments who now live in secular non-Muslim ones. In addition, by drawing heavily on traditional Islamic lore, the novel forces readers who might want to engage and refute its irreverence
107

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to seriouslyengage and reevaluatethatlore and the basis of traditional belief and authoritystructures.Insofaras thereare such readers,Satanic Verses has the potential for being world-transforming. the other hand, the Rushdie affair that On surrounds text is particularly the fascinatingin the way it generatesdifferentiated audiences:it is an example par excellence of the pluralizedglobal world, of the culturalproduction.As a highly charged postmodernconditionsof contemporary social text thatgets people to further enact the conflicts it describes, it exemplifies the kind of criterionof truththat psychoanalysis, for instance, also relies upon: eliciting furtherelaboration,clarification,working out. The ethnographiceffort to map the differentiatedand shifting audiences that the Rushdie text and social text generateillustratesas well the challenges of multiple audiences for ethnoganthropologyalso faces. raphythatcontemporary Above all, the Rushdie text and social text focus attentionon the problems of translation have become increasinglycentralto the anthropological that project: translationnot merely across languages and culturalbordersbut among interest groupsand discoursescompeting for hegemony within social arenas, be they loRushdie's text and social text (andnumerousother cal, national,or transnational. similartexts) makevivid the point thatin Muslim worldsthe secularintelligentsia and the religious intelligentsiaare engaged in culturalclass-warfare,each using (Fischer 1980, 1982, systematicdiscourses the other only partiallyunderstands 1984; Fischer and Abedi 1990). This culturalclass-warfareoperatesat two nonon homologouslevels simultaneously: the domesticlevel withincountriessuch as Iran, Pakistan, and Egypt for control of the state and of the general collective level to create a space for culconsciousness of the masses; on the international turaldiversity. The power relationsinvolved are complex:the secularintelligentsia is very much on the defensive in the domestic arenasthroughoutthe Islamic world, including in the communalor minorityenclaves inside Westernnations; yet they appearto be allied with the strongerforces on the internationalscene. The complexity, of course, is richerthanthis, andthe issue is how to createmeans of translationand negotiationbetween the contendingideals and self-protective defenses on the various sides, lest the culturalwarfarebecome merely self-destructiveto all. Rushdie's novel is a majorachievement, among other reasons, because it opens up vistas both within its text and in its relationswith the world outside the text that illuminatethe complexities, and at least gesture at the inadequate tools for translation.Humor, when it works, is one of the healthiesttools because it holds in stereoscopicview alternativeperspectives.As CarlosFuentes puts it,3 that is be cannot absent,sincethere no contemporary language can Humor, certainly
utteritself without a sense of the diversificationof that same language. .... Fiction world. .... Our of is not a joke ... [it] is a harbinger a multipolarand multicultural

to and for freedom the multiracial the polycultural on future depends the enlarged and itselfin a worldof shifting, powercenters.[Appigdecaying, emerging express and nanesi Maitland 1989:45-47]

BOMBAY TALKIES 109

Rushdie's Satanic Verses, in sum, simultaneously illustrates and illumiand enact:(1) nationalandglobal nates, thatis, transcribes causes othersto further culturalclass-warfare;(2) the strugglesover restrictedliteracy versus hermeneutical critical skills that have used the Qur'anas a battlefieldfor 13 centuries;(3) anxiety-ladenambiguitiesof an increasinglypluralistworld in which selves, cultures, andlanguageitself areundergoingreassemblythroughmass populationmias grationsat the proletarian well as the middle-classlevels-reassembly in radically multiple, composite, humorous, and deconstructingways, where translation ratherthantraditionis foreverat issue, providingboth desiredand unwanted unendingcritiques and nonabsolutistrevisionaryperspectives;(4) new communication forms and media that constitutethe crucibles in which these new conditions of life are being worked: the novel, the movies, video, radio, television, magazines, advertising,propaganda,and nightmaresgeneratedby the anxieties of constantdemandson translation interaction and with culturalotherswith whom consensualgroundsof agreementcannotbe taken for granted.The thirdof these to (3) is the heartof the novel and includes: (a) contributing the "decolonization of the English language," turningEnglish into an ever more compendiousworld language that encompasses the cadences, rhythms, allusions, and culturalflexibilities of otherlanguages;(b) bringingback an appreciation Persian(-Mughal) of cultural sensibility, intended in part to expand Europeanconsciousness into a largerOld World cosmopolitanism, but also working to highlightthe politics of difference within the Islamic world of Shi'ite versus Sunni interpretations, therebydisturbingthe pieties of all Muslimsthatthe Qur'anis a catalog of simple rules that provides unambiguousguidance for all aspects of life; (c) having fun with the psychologicalandemotionaldynamicsof the chamcha(Urdu, "spoon," "toady") figureas a rangeof intercultural types from the sycophanticservantsof colonialism to the immigrantNew Man/Womanin the (post)modernworld who must operate in and out of multiple cultures;(d) providinghilariouslyvital and humanizingportraitsof several classes of "hystorical" immigrantsspilling into Britainfromthe Indiansubcontinent,intendedto dispel raciststereotypes;(e) and togetherwith Rushdie's previous novels, gaily attackingnationalistpretensions, ideologies, corruptinginstitutionsof power (state, family, religion, the media), narrativesof the British Raj and its successor states (India, Pakistan, Iran, Britain), and focusing especially on that uneasy overlay of England and the PersoIndo-Islamicworld that is to be found in working-classEngland(Bradford,Birmingham, Leicester, Southall, the East End), OxbridgeEngland (Rushdie himself), the Anglifiedupper-classareasof Bombay(Malabar Hill), Karachi,Lahore, or Islamabad,and above all in the movies. Satanic Verses standsin two sociologically distinctcurrentsof writing, correspondingto the two arenasof culturalclass-warfare.On the one hand, it stands withinthe streamof modernistwritingthatattemptsto find a home within Islamic countriesfor modernsensibilities, the traditionin Iranof Sadeq Hedayat,Bozorg Alavi, Jamalzadeh,Gholam Hosain Sa'edi, Sadeq Chubak, Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Simin Daneshvar;in Egypt of Taha Husain, Tawfiq al-Hakim, Naqib Mahfuz, Nadwa al-Sadaawi;and many others in North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopo-

110 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

tamia (see Fischer 1984). On the other hand, Satanic Verses stands within the streamof the postmoderncomic novel, the traditionof JamesJoyce, GabrielGarcia Marquez,ThomasPynchon, and GunterGrass(with roots going back to TristramShandy,Don Quixote, and Gulliver's Travels)that has done so much to reenvision the contemporary world and revaluethe narratives the past. Although of Rushdie is the first majorpostmoderncomic novelist for the Muslim world, he does not standalone even here in Middle Easternand South Asian writing. He is partof a gatheringstreamof writing and filmmakingby Jamil Dehlavi, Amitav Ghosh, Elias Khoury, Hanif Kureishi, Parviz Kimiavi, RustamMistry, Bharati Mukherjee,Mira Nair, Anton Shammas, Bapsy Sidwa, Sara Suleri, Adam Zameenzad, and the "Decentrist" poets of Beirut (Ghada al-Samman, Hana alShaikh,Emily Nasrallah,Laila Usairan,Daisy al-Amir, CalireGebeyli, and Etel Adnan;see Cooke 1987). Few of these latter, except Dehlavi and Rushdie, are concernedwith Muslim belief structures.But all are concernedwith the psychic that transformations living in or with the moder West has wroughtfor those of background-themes centralto Satanic VersesmorethanIslamper non-European se. Thanks to the death threat issued against Rushdie by the late Ayatullah Khomeini, Satanic Verses has become the most heavily publicized novel ever written about Muslims. A black humorjoke among Iranianexiles in America speculates that Khomeini must have signed a 50-50% promotioncontractwith Rushdie to secure for the Islamic Republic a share in the proceeds of increased sales due to Khomeini's advertising.The book was publishedin late September 1988, and was given a dismissive review in Tehranwithoutany special notice or concern.Rushdiewas well known:bothMidnight'sChildrenandShamehadbeen translatedinto Persian, the lattereven winning the state prize, awardedby Presiof dentAli Khameinei,for the best translation a novel. Both these previousnovels satire about (mis)uses of Islam. It was only four and onecontain considerable half monthslater, on 14 February1989, thatKhomeiniissued thefatwd declaring Rushdieessentially an apostate, mahdural-dam (one whose blood may be shed of withouttrial, the termused to facilitatethe execution andmurder Bahai's). The It fatwa was disputedin its legal validityby variousMuslimjurisprudents. is significantthat the agitations against the novel began not in Iran, but in two quite differentpolitical arenas:India and England. Let us deal with the political arenasfirst, then the Islamic objections, so that as we can clearthe groundto actuallyreadthe novel. "Let's remember,'" Rushdie wrotein October1988 to India'sPrimeMinister,RajivGandhi,afterIndiabanned the novel, "that the book isn't actually about Islam, but about migration,metamorphosis,divided selves, love, death, Londonand Bombay." Beyond the Text that and limcommunity theso-called intelligentsia... It'sunbelievable whatpains we to one sectiongives pleasure the other ... Yes, Mr. Rushdie, area religious barbaricall call people ... Callus primitive, us fundamentalists, us superstitious
Even more shocking and saddening... is the communicationgap between the Mus-

BOMBAY TALKIES 111 ans, call us what you like, but your book only serves to define what has gone wrong with the Westerncivilisation-it has lost all sense of distinctionbetween the sacred and the profane. . .. Yes, I have not readit, nordo I intendto. I do not have to wade througha filthy drainto know what filth is. -Syed Shahabuddin,IndianM.P. (JanataParty), initiatorof the ban [In Appignanesiand Maitland1989:45-47] The intensity of Muslim reaction can only be understoodin the context of the deep suspicion and alienationprevailingbetween the Asian communityas a whole and its intellectuals . . . the large masses of Asians have long felt that those Asians who or write, make films and television programmes engage in instantpunditryaboutthem do not understandtheir innermosthopes and fears, and that they earn a handsome living and white acclaim by selling tiredstereotypesand biased stories. Many Asians view theirintellectualsas being as racistas the whites. This is broadlyhow the Hindus felt aboutNiradChaudhury'sidiosyncraticwritingson India, the Bangladeshisabout FarrukhDhondy's television play King of the Ghetto and the Muslims about Hanif Kureishi's film My Beautiful Laundretteand recently about Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. -Bhikhu Parekh,Independent,23 February1989 [In Appignanesiand Maitland1989:150] In most Arab countries HananEl Sheik's novels, Nawal El-Saadawi's writings and the poetryof [Muzaffar]El-Nawaband MahmoudDarwishare banned. . . . The Jordaniannovelist ZulickhehAbu-Risheh'sIn the Cell, a novel based on her experience of being marriedto one of the Muslim Brethren,is being attackedfrom the pulpit as the most serious threatto Islam. ... I experiencedsimilarproblemswhen my novel Nisanit was published by Penguin earlier their year. ... A group of men accused SuhairEl-Tell, a Jordanian journalistand novelist, of promiscuityfor using a phallic image. . . . Most of the sixty-six Arab intellectualsblacklistedrecently by a Saudi Islamic group who announcedthe holy jihad on Modernismlive either in London or Paris. -Fadia Faqir, TimesLiterarySupplement,6-12 January1989, p. 11 This is, for me, the saddestirony of all; thatafterworkingfor five years to give voice and fictionalflesh to the immigrantcultureof which I am myself a member,I should see my book burned, largely unread, by the people it's about . . . I tried to write againststereotypes;the zealot protestsserve to confirm, in the Westernmind, all the worst stereotypesof the Muslim world. -Salman Rushdie, Observer, 22 January1989 [In Appignanesiand Maitland1989:75] There are four primary, only loosely interconnected, political arenas ignited by Rushdie's novel: (1) immigrant politics in Britain: Pakistani-led, Saudi-funded Muslim politics, the competition between Saudi and Iranian fundamentalists, but above all a politics that turns upon the difficulties of an immigrant working class actively recruited by England in a time of labor need, but now being squeezed in a time of economic transition; (2) communal politics in India, and the struggles over the decline of Congress Party hegemonic control of the state; (3) anti-Benazir Bhutto politics in Pakistan, where fundamentalists wish to destabilize a government that would prefer to be a secularist, balance wheel against ethnic, sectarian, and religious forces; (4) and in Iran, jockeying between those who would nor-

112 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

malize relations between Iran and the West, and those determined to try to insulate internal Iranian development from the powerful influences of the West. For our purposes here, we need only briefly indicate the shape of these political arenas. Britain Thereis no choice in the matter.Anyone who fails to be offended by Rushdie's book ipso facto ceases to be a Muslim . .. continualblasphemiesagainstthe Christianfaith have totally undermined Any faith which compromisesits internaltemperof milit. itantwrathis destined for the dustbinof history .... Those Muslims who find it intolerableto live in a United Kingdom contaminatedwith the Rushdie virus need to of seriouslyconsiderthe Islamicalternatives emigration(hijrah)to the House of Islam or a declaration holy war (jehad)on the House of Rejection . . with God on one's of side, one is never in the minority.And England, like all else, belongs to God. As for hijrah . . . non-Muslimswould do well to rememberthat the last time there was a hijrah, a unifiedMuslimenterpriseof faith and power spreadwith phenomenalspeed in the fastest permanentconquestof recordedmilitaryhistory. Council of Mosques, -Shabbir Akhtar,Bradford in Guardian,27 February1989 [Reprinted AppignanesiandMaitland1989:239-240] fascinate me, as a The anti-racists'views on children's books/stereotyping/prejudice Most of my wakingchildhoodhourswere spentreading non-EnglishEnglish-speaker. . . .what those books reinforcedwas my stereo-type(since slightly revised) of the arrogant,unimaginative,hypocriticaland exploiting Englishman,rampagingaround the world with a Bible in one hand, a gun in the other and an accounts ledger in his tin trunk.At no age did I receive an imprintof inferiorpeoples dependenton Whites for every sort of salvation;spiritual,material,legal, sartorial. . . . Even very young childrenreadcriticallyor sceptically, if books fail to confirmthe stereotypesalready acquiredfrom home, school, and societies. -Dervla Murphy,Talesfrom Two Cities (1987; emphasis in original) Great Britain, in some ways, is the most important of the political arenas for understanding the novel, since after all, the novel is about Muslim migrants from the Indian subcontinent to London. Still, as with the other political arenas, there is a bit of indirection: the constituency of the protest in Bradford where the book was publicly burned on 14 January 1989 seems to be Pakistanis of rural background (primarily Mirpuris from Azad Kashmir), whereas the novel is primarily about people from urban Bombay. One of the best accounts of the dynamics of the situation in Bradford, written long before Rushdie's book was published, is Dervla Murphy's Tales from Two Cities: Travels of Another Sort (1987). The Dickensian title, and the play upon travel and ethnographic genres, is appropriate to an Irish writer who spent a year living in two inner-city immigrant enclaves of Bradford and Birmingham, and who identifies the troubles of the Mirpuri, Campbellpuri, and Sylheti Pakistanis with the Irish immigrants who underwent not so different experiences in the same cities during the early days of the industrial revolution. Pakistani migrant labor from Mirpur first came to Bradford during World War II, initially as seamen, and then, directed from the port of Leeds nine miles away, to man the munitions factories. The 1947 Partition of India stimulated the

BOMBAY TALKIES 113

growthof a temporarymale migrantlaborforce, and this it remainedthroughthe 1950s; in 1961 there were 3376 male Pakistanisin Bradford, and 81 women. Thousandsof women and childrenarrivedduringthe 18 monthsbefore the 1962 Act Immigration made it more difficultto maintainthe patternof workingin Britain for a few years, then returning home, going back and forth. In 1967 a further stimulusto migrationwas given by the ManglaDam hydroelectricproject, which flooded 250 Mirpurivillages, displacing 10,000 people. In the 1950s and 1960s Englandactively recruitedlabor both in the Caribbeanand in the Indiansubcontinentfor the textile mills andfoundries,for LondonTransport, for the British and Hotel and Restaurant Association. In the 1970s, economic conditions worsened, and Bradfordwas one of the worst hit. Racial tensions increased,and it is a place where unemployedwhites don't mince words abouttheirresentmentsof browns, andunemployedbrownyouths bitterlyturnto religion andpolitics. Nor are fears, hostilities, and stereotypingmerely black-whiteones: InBradford, the Muslims allowed who their Mirpuris deplored looselivingof Gujarati
wives to drive delivery vans .... Blacks deploredPakistaniheroin-dealingand Sikh arrogance.Hindus deplored Muslim faction-fightingand Black laziness. Sikhs deplored the sharp practices of Gujuratimerchants,the drug-peddlingof Blacks, the

Gurdwaras.And so on and on, in apparentlyinfinitepermutations combinations and of misunderstanding, dislike, jealousy, contempt,fear, ignorance,resentment.[Murphy 1987:81;emphasisin original]

ill-treatment women-and thedangerous of of to Mirpuri politics Sikhsattached rival

Still, the PakistaniMuslimsarehard-working, highly disciplined,educationmobile communities.The Irishdid not have, says Murphy,the seeking, upwardly same tight-knitbiraderi(kinshipgroups)and so "no Irish self-servicing network of businesses was at once set up" (1987:71). Statisticsare revealing:at High Hill School, there was only one brown pregnancy, while pregnanciesamong whites were commonplace; in Britain generally "the proportion of unwed mothers among Browns is one per cent as comparedto nine per cent among Whites, and thirteenper cent among Blacks" (1987:69); "a survey of 500 retailbusinesses in Bradford,Southall and Leicester discovered that sixty per cent of Asian traders are graduates,as comparedto nine per cent of White traders"(p. 63); and a third of Britain's hospital doctors are browns. Under conditions of deterioratingopportunity, and deterioratingrelations between ethnic groups, for many young Muslim men, being religiously hardlineis also a way of assertingtheir personal and culturalidentity. Frequently,it is the younger generationthat is more milithantheir fathers. (For a grim accountof Bradford,see Kutantlyfundamentalist reishi [1986].) For nearly two years, in 1984 and 1985, Bradfordwas rocked by disputes over Ray Honeyford, the DrummondMiddle School headmaster,who was appalled at having to allow: "the servingof halal meat, permissionfor Muslim girls to wear track-suitsduringP.E. lessons; separate-sexP.E. and swimminglessons; toleranceof occasionalBrownbreachesof the school attendance law; the adoption of a multi-faith syllabus for P.E.; the evasion of sex instruction" (Murphy

114 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

had 1987:117). Brown breachesof school attendance to do with sending children on visits back to Pakistan,occasions that othereducationalauthoritiessuggested broadenedtheir experiences, and made better students. Honeyford was a dedicated teacherwho himself had come up the hardway from the slums of Manchester, and believed firmly in the old virtues of hardwork and Christianvalues; he was opposed to the faddishintroduction multicultural of curricula,and gradually became associatedwith the SalisburyReview,journalof the New Right Conservative Philosophy Group, whose founder, John Casey (a CambridgeUniversity of don) called for the repatriation brownsand blacks, or at least reducingthem to a legal category of guest-workers,this in 1982 when nearly half of the browns and blacks had been bornin Britain.Casey, Roger Scruton(the editorof the SalisburyReview), and Honeyfordarguedthatthe new immigrantsfrom the Subcontinent, East Africa, and the West Indies were unlike earlierimmigrantsto Britain who were absorbedinto a strongculture;these new immigrantssomehow would threatenthe stability of British culture. After a two-year campaign, Honeyford was forced out, althoughmany Muslim parentswere increasinglyuncomfortable with the political leadershipthat accomplishedthat end. Murphy'saccountof Bradfordpreparesone easily enough for the furorover SalmanRushdie's book. Withinten days of the book's publication,not only had Indiabannedthe book, but IndianMuslim activists had urgedtheircolleagues in Britainto do the same. Offendingpassages were photocopiedand distributedto leading Islamic organizations,embassies, and published in such journals as M. H. Faruqi'sImpactInternational.It was these excerpts that became the text for Muslim protesters, insofar as they botheredwith the text at all. The Union of Muslim Organizationsasked the governmentto ban the book under the Public OrderAct (1986) and the Race RelationsAct (1976). It is claimed that, initially, would have been satisfiedhadPenguin/Vikingor Rushdiebeen willthe protesters ing to insert a disclaimerthat there was no relation between the contents of the novel and Islam. The demandsquickly became, by the end of October 1988: (1) withdrawalof the book from the marketand pulping all extantcopies; (2) public apology; (3) paymentof damages to an Islamic charity. The eventual burningof the book in Bradfordcame after four months of feeling ignored, exacerbatedby the exposureof the fact thatBritain'sblasphemylaws appliedonly to Christianity. Efforts were made to have the blasphemy laws be extended to Islam. But as a solicitor advised, if publicity and attentionwere what they wanted, they might in burnthe book, a shockingbut nonviolentact. As with so many demonstrations this was done in frontof the police station. It had an electrifyingeffect Bradford, aroundthe world. Among the more interestingand disturbingeffects was the furorof debate The LaborPartyseemed to be in the worst disarset off about multiculturalism. ray, with a centuryof socialist secularismabandonedby LaborMPs attempting to representMuslimconstituents,even going so far as to supportthe call to revive and extend Britain'sblasphemylaws. OtherLaborMPs called for a multiculturalism thata numberof brownintellectualsskeweredfor being a way of preserving conservative, separatistenclaves, in orderto strengthenthose who traditionally

BOMBAY TALKIES 115

delivered the ethnic vote to Labor. Homi Bhaba, among others, observed that Laborremainedimperviousto rethinkingsocialism from a minoritypointof view, and that the party seemed only engaged in tactical defensive maneuvers(Statesman, 28 July 1989b, pp. 38-39). In March, a month after the book burning, a Londongrouporganizeditself as "Women againstFundamentalism."One of its PakistaniMuslim spokespersons,HannaSiddiqi, observed: "When the Rushdie affairblew up many women immediatelyidentifiedwith him. In my family there
were lots of fights about how I should live my life. . . . Over the years, my par-

ents have become less orthodox. But my brothers have got more religious" (Guardian, 25 July 1989, p. 17). These women run a counseling service for immigrantwomen whose sons are repeatedlyarrestedby the police, or who themselves are subjectto domestic violence, rape, and incest. To them, fundamentalism is about the control of women, and they opposed sex-segregatedschools as places where girls are isolated and taughtonly to be wives and mothers. of Condemnations Rushdiecome to manyMuslimlips easily, but sometimes other attitudesemerge underneath.An Indonesianrestaurateur quite agitated got at the mentionof Rushdie. He hadreadthe novel andfelt it clearly insultedIslam. He would not kill Rushdiehimself, but he would not care if someone else did. He claimed that Rushdie describes God as a bald-headedman and says Islam condones sodomy. When pressed, he said thatRushdiewas only out to make money is (thoughhe agreedthis was not evil: runninga restaurant also to make money), that Rushdie knew he would create anger, that Rushdie is partof a Jewish conspiracy (his publishersand most of the writerswho sign petitions in his defense are Jewish), and finally (most importantly)that it is a matterof control: parents musttake challenges like this seriously or theirchildren(his own sons) would not take religion seriously. One of his sons came and sat with us afterthe fatherleft. He too began by condemningRushdie, but then did a fascinatingabout-face, recalling with some heat how he had been kicked out of the mosque in northern Sumatrawhen he was 12 for daringto standup and condemnthe imam for telling risquejokes duringthe sermon (khutba),and again being curtly dismissed when he daredchallenge his teacheron a hadithinterpretation. Confrontationssuch as the Honeyford and Rushdie affairs not only clarify divisions within society, they also create new phenomenologicalsubjectivities. There is now a growing Muslim subjectivityin Britainthat is replacing earlier political categories (black, brown, Asian). As one British-bornMuslim intellectual notes, racist graffiti and catcalling has shifted from "you fucking Paki" to "fucking Muslim," and what the racists do not comprehendis that the latter is both less hurtfuland more resistanceprovokingbecause it is where one drawsthe line andmakesa stand. If Rushdiefearsthatfundamentalist book burnings,bombings, death threats,campaignsagainstpublishers,extension of blasphemylaws, having separateschools, etc. will confirmthe worst stereotypesof non-Muslims about Muslims, Muslims out on the streets retortthat the graffiti and catcalling confirmstheir worst fears, that Rushdie's novel has made it legitimate for nonMuslims to openly attackand ridicule their faith. The disagreementmakes it increasinglyclear thatintellectualssuch as Rushdie, HanifKureishi,Homi Bhabha,

116 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

and TariqAli have no standingto speak for the Muslims. This Muslim observer had particularlyharsh observationsabout Tariq Ali, who after twenty years of tryingto createa secularsocialist consciousness among Pakistanis,suddenlydiscovers that he is "ashamed to be a Muslim," and produces a satiricalplay (Ali andBrenton1989) aboutKhomeini'sdeaththreat,done undertight securityat the Royal CourtTheater-on elite turffor largelynon-Muslimaudiences,reinforcing their prejudices, a quite different politics than performingin Bradfordfor the Muslims directly involved in an effort to create bridgesof communication. In sum, the Rushdie affairin Britainis serious politics thathas to do with at least four issues concerningMuslims in which they feel their voices have been systematicallyignored: 1. Education:CatholicsandJews have theirown schools, why not Muslims? As to content, this may be a moot point, since a national curriculumis being made. the 2. The poll tax proposedby PrimeMinisterThatcher: shift fromproperty a head tax not only is regressive, but, given family demographics,will taxes to fall most heavily on immigrantfamilies who crowd to share space and save expenses. control-feminism: 3. Patriarchy-family suddenlypeople who neverwere parfeministhave discoveredthis issue, andwhy do the WomenAgainstFunticularly damentalism mainlyaboutIslam, and not aboutthe beatingsof Hinduwomen talk whose families fail to come up with the absurdlyhigh dowry prices? To the response that abuses in Hindu families are equally of concern, Muslims point out with some justificationthat there is a mood of using comparativeevils among othercommunitiesas a none too subtle false cover for selecting Islam as the most troublesomeof the world religions. (A similarargumentis made by Muslim fundamentalistsin the United States about the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences Fundamentalism Project.) the 4. Multiculturalism: left (Labor)seems to have greatdifficulty in recogthatpeople for whom they wish to speakhave ideas at variancewith secular nizing socialism. The Tories meanwhile are pushing a strong assimilationistline: mulis ticulturalism fine as long as it is practicedin private;people who come to Britain must adaptto British ways. Interestingparallelsare drawnwith the Jews: to the argumentthatJews have managedto put up with a low level of casual anti-Semitism and Muslims must learnto do the same, the response of some Muslim observersis first, thatJews in fact paid a very high price in Germanyfor such willingness; second, that Jews are now accepted as partof the West, and today it is Muslims who are the alien excluded and thatthe next time it will be Muslims and blacks in the ovens (this is not idle fear to anyone who has heardGermanjokes about Turkish workers in Germany, or observed the rise of the New Right in France,England,andeven Belgium);andthird,thatthe frequentliberalline about having fought two world wars to establish the right of freedomof speech sounds

BOMBAY TALKIES 117

disingenuousto Muslims who feel they have no access to the media, and cannot seem to get their issues listened to, much less attendedto. In otherwords, the political arenain Britainis a fascinatingand seriousone, but the relationshipof Rushdie's novel to it has to do with the social relations beyond the text ratherthan with the content of the text. India AlamKhan,Mr.SuleiMr. Youknow,as I know,thatMr.Shahabuddin, Khurshid manSeitandtheiralliesdon'treallycareabout novelone wayor theother.The my vote? realissueis, whois to get theMuslim -Salman Rushdie, letter Gandhi, to October 1988 The political arena in India is even more deadly than that in England. The history of communalviolence has deep historicalroots, exacerbatedsince independence by cynical manipulationof patronagenetworks to control or contest electoral politics, complete with both monetarycorruptionand underworldviolence. When Rushdie's book was published, generalelections were scheduledto be held within the year, and with CongressPartyfortunesfailing, PrimeMinister Rajiv Gandhicould not affordto alienateMuslim voters. Syed Shahabuddin,the the oppositionJanata partyM.P., who spearheaded effortto get the novel banned, publishedan interestingopen letterin the Times of India (13 October 1988), part
eloquent defense of Muslim religiosity ("Call us primitive. . . . Civilization is

nothing but voluntary acceptance of restraints"), part cliched assertion about Western decadence, part aggressive complaint about Rushdie's portrayalof Islamic figures in a novel that Shahabuddin proudlyadmittedhe had not read, and partlawyerly invocation of the constitutionallaws that protectreligious feelings of Indiancitizens. The Indian governmenttook an easy way out: it banned the book on the groundsof public safety, but as partof the Ministryof Finance decision (underSection 11 of the IndianCustomsAct), it explicitly addedthat "the bandid not detractfromthe literaryandartisticmeritof Rushdie'swork."'Twelve persons were killed during anti-Rushdiedemonstrationsin Bombay on 24 February1989 when the police opened fire duringa strugglebetween two factions to assertcontrolover Muslim leadership. Pakistan Pakistanand South Africa followed the Indianexample. In South Africa the tactic worked as well as in India, albeit not before the antiapartheid WeeklyMail was shut down for a month, amid anti-Semiticinsinuationsby the Muslims who objected to the newspaper'sinvitationto Rushdie to speak at a book fair it was sponsoring. In Pakistan, things were considerably messier. Fundamentalists could not forego the opportunity use anti-Rushdiemarchesto threatenthe new to of BenazirBhutto. Bhutto, leaderof Pakistan'sfirstdemocraticgovgovernment ernmentin a decade, was put in the uncomfortableposition of having to ban a

118 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY book, and to order troops to shoot demonstrators who were using the book to challenge liberal democracy. Moreover, she could have had little love for Rushdie who had mercilessly satirized her in Shame. Six persons died in the march on the United States Information Service in Islamabad on 12 February; another died and 100 were injured in demonstrations the next day in Kashmir. These demonstrations were timed to protest the American publication date of the novel: bad enough that Britain had not withdrawn the novel, now America was adding insult to injury by disseminating the novel further. Reactions in other countries were politically more contained. Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Qatar, and the Sudan also banned the book. In the West, publishers and booksellers had to make moral decisions about whether to go forward with publication and distribution, despite bomb threats and boycott threats. Bombs did go off in two bookstores in London, four or five in the United States, two in Italy. A Saudi Arabian imam and his Tunisian assistant imam were assassinated in Brussels for asserting on television that Rushdie should not be killed. Religious figures in Egypt and elsewhere also came out condemning Rushdie, but also condemning Khomeini's call for Rushdie's death. Iran God wantedthe blasphemousbook of TheSatanic Versesto be publishednow, so that would bareits trueface in its long-held the worldof conceit, arroganceand barbarism enmity to Islam ... it is the worlddevourers'effort to annihilateIslam and Muslims; to otherwise, the issue of SalmanRushdiewould not be so important them as to place the entireZionism and arrogancebehindit. -Khomeini, 24 February1989 in [Reprinted Appignanesiand Maitland1989:11] We Muslims shouldbe as wary of the enemy's culturalfrontas we are of the enemy's militaryfront. -Khameinei, Fridayprayers, 17 February1989 [Reprintedin Appignanesiand Maitland1989:87] ... the authorof the book entitledTheSatanic Verses ... as well as those publishers who were aware of its contents, have been sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Muslimsto execute themquickly ... Whoeveris killed on this pathwill be regarded as a martyr,God willing. -Khomeini, 14 February1989 in [Reprinted Appignanesiand Maitland1989:84] After Britain, Iran and its positioning in the international arena are the political settings that are most important to a reading of the novel. There are four distinct elements here: (1) the role of Shi'ism in the world and in the novel, including the competing traditions within Shi'ism of tolerating dissent versus militant, brutal suppression of all dissent; (2) the domestic politics of Iran: the defense of the revolution, and the struggle between restricted literacy, keeping power in the hands of ulama and other elites, versus democratization of literacy and critical

BOMBAY TALKIES 119

thought;(3) the furtherstruggleby the Islamic state and its opponentsto control the new technology of film; and (4) the international politics of Iran, and its successful playing upon the gullibility and ignoranceof Westerners. In termsof politicaldramaand skill, Khomeini,of course, by issuing a fatwa and out-classed the notice achieved by calling for Rushdie's death, out-trumped the Bradfordbook-burning.Technically, Khomeini's fatwa is but an opinion issued in response to questions submittedto him by Muslims in Britain, and is not enforceableunless there is a trial under Islamic due process. In fact, however, Khomeinihas transgressed normalIslamic law here as he has done elsewhere, by directly using the mass media to incite people to kill Rushdie, and by asserting thatno repentanceby Rushdiecould be accepted(repentancecan only be judged by God accordingto usual Muslim interpretation). Implicitly, Khomeinihas thus categorizedRushdieas an apostate,subjectto the deathpenaltywithouttrial. The (1) timingof Khomeini'scall was not arbitrary: it was a way to seize international leadershipfor a cause celebrethatothershadcreatedin otherarenas;(2) it blocked a series of moves by internalfactions to normalizerelationswith the West. The death sentence functioned much like the seizure of the American embassy hostages in November 1979 that helped pass the controversialnew constitutionthat was being opposed by AyatullahShariatmadari others, that helped consoliand date power, and that enforceda breakwith the United States. The day afterKhomeini's fatwa, a cleric, HasanSanei, head of the 15 KhordadFoundation,promised a $1-million bounty to the person who killed Rushdie, and in the next days this amountwas addedto by other contributors. In the West, ignoranceof the internalculturalpolitics of the Muslim world caused many people to accept the definitions of Islam, and of who is a proper Muslim, proposedby the fundamentalists.Within the Muslim world, the voices of progressivesand liberals, and even traditionalconservatives, were muted, intimidatedby the extraordinary clout fundamentalism achieved in the precedhad ing two decades. Westernintellectualseventually defined the issue as one of illegitimate censorship and the right of expression. They did not know enough aboutIslam to pick up the few timid calls by moderatesamong Muslim traditionalists thatRushdiebe at least triedbefore being sentenced(as muftis in Egypt and Saudi Arabiaproposed), that his book be refuted, and that the bountieson Rushdie's head besmirchedIslam. That is, these Muslims were trying to remind the world thatIslam was being violated by Khomeiniin three important ways: assassins werebeing encouragedto kill for money rather thanfor Islam;the due process legal proceduresof Islam were being violated; and most importantly,admission was being made that perhapsthe book could not be refuted because, with one partialexception, all the stories about Islam in it, including that from which the title comes, are drawnfrom the hadith, and thus any effort by Muslims to write a refutationwould require a self-examinationof precisely the sort that the novel itself engages. Moreover, Western intellectuals seemed not to be aware of the long traditionof satire in the Islamic world, including what various gatekeepers regardas blasphemy(see Javadi 1988; Sprachman1981; and Wilson 1988), nor of the moralparableswithin Islampromotingtolerancein dealing with blasphem-

120 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

ers and doubters. Several of the latter have to do with the sixth Shi'ite Imam, ImamSadiq, one of which was invokedby the late Sayyid MahmudTaleqani(the protectorof the Islamic left duringthe 1977-79 revolution)in his speech at the death memorialfor "Ayatullah" MortadaMutahhari: young man came to the A Imam and said, "Halaktu!" ("I am undone"). "Why?" "Because I doubt the existence of God." To this the Imamreplied, "Allah-o-Akbar! This is the beginning of certitudeand faith." Taleqaniused the story as a protestagainst the tendency of the Islamic Republic to deal with the left by execution. Other stories have to do with Imam Sadiq and Ibn Abi al-'Awja. The latterhas become a hero of the left for his free-thinking,and Imam Sadiq, of course, is proudlycited by Shi'ites for his philosophicalacuity and ability to transcendpolitical adversity.4 as Taleqani's sermon at Mutahhari'sdeath memorialis appropriate well to Mutahhari'sown opinions:5 If be Islam he Islam? theyattacked What, asked,should donewiththosewhoattacked in book, openly,he replied,theyshouldbe answered the sameway-book against to intending misleadthe deceitfully, opinion against opinion.Onlyif theyattacked should be dealtwithviolently. But,he said,eventhen,if theattackers believers, they and they shouldbe forgiven.[citedin Appignanesi Maitland sincerelyrepented
1989:95]

The furorover Rushdie's novel and Khomeini's response to it should bring into view for Westernerssocial cleavages thatMuslimshave been strugglingwith for well over a century. One might recall thatin the 1930s at the height of liberal and constitutionalism secularismin the MiddleEast, bothpoliticalandintellectual elites were saying that Islam was keeping Muslim societies backward;by the 1970s no public figuredaredopenly assertsuch a position. The demographicsand political sociology of differentstyles of religiosity have changeddramaticallyin the interveningperiod (Fischer 1982). Two media of communicationhave also undergonerevolutionin the interveningtime: readingand the movies. The readingrevolutionin the Islamic world is, perhaps,not unlike the strugEnglandover whetherthe workingclass (andslaves gles in 18th-and 19th-century in America)shouldbe taughtto readand write. Readingis not merely an empowto eringdevice; it is (andwas understood be) a meansof promotingself-reflection and textualizingthought,andthus providinga disby externalizing,objectifying, tancedmirror,a space for analysis and self-critique.For 19th-century proponents of the spreadof literacyit signifiedthe expansionof bourgeoissociety, controlof passion, enlarged scope for reason. To be sure, there were worries about pulp literature,not unlike mid-20th-centurydebates over television and Hollywood films. Coleridgeexpressedthe fears aboutLesesucht, addictionto reading: I their Foras to the devoteesof the circulating libraries, darenotcompliment passCallit rather sortof beggarly a withthe nameof reading. kill-time, time,or rather but for furnishes itselfnothing lain day-dreaming, whichthe mindof the dreamer of and whilethewholemateriel imagery the zinessanda littlemawkish sensibility; at manufacturedtheprintobscura camera ab dozeis supplied extraby sortof mental of the and fixes, reflects transmits movingphantasms ing office,whichpro tempore

BOMBAY TALKIES 121

one man's delirium, so as to people the barrenness a hundredotherbrainsafflicted of with the same trance or suspension of all common sense and all definite purpose. [Schulte-Sasse 1988; emphasisin original]

This could have been writtenby the ideologues of the Islamic Republic of Iran aboutthe Rushdienovel and in fact was, in fairly similarwords. In the past decades, there has been a struggle between those who would restrict literacy and those who would expandit. With the rapidspreadof literacy, the authorityof the clergy is threatened,and the increase of critical abilities is potentially fostered. Islam is a traditionthatin generalrequiresthe individualto take responsibilityfor his or herown actionsbeforeGod withoutmediation.Counterpositions have often been taken that have assertedthat ordinaryMuslims should follow leaders who know better.Nowherehas this strugglebeen sharper thanin Iran,wherethe strugover the issue of taqlid [followership]have been recurrent.In the earlierpart gles of the centuryand in the 19thcentury,the ideology of taqlidwas used to build up a hierarchicalclerical organizationthat could both oppose monarchyand imperialism, and also repress heterodoxy and free thought. In the past decades, the strugglehas shiftedto one between clerics who wish to retainauthorityover interpretationand judgment, and modem reformers(such as Dr. Ali Shari'ati)who urgedthe young people to read, interpret,and rethinkIslam on theirown without need for clerical authority. If there is a reading revolution slowly emerging in the Islamic world, the revolutionvia movies may be fasterandmorepowerful, particularly more open in social environmentssuch as that of India, but also in Iranwhere the Islamic revolution has been very concernedto control these media (film, television, video), and to exploit them internationally(e.g., the skillful staging of demonstrations around the U.S. embassy for nightly satellite news broadcasts in the United States). Rushdie, interestingly,is never sanguine aboutthe revolutionarypotential of the movies. In the novel Shame, he has a wonderfulscene in which a Muslim cinema owner who refused to accept the idea of Partition,of separationof Muslims and Hindus, insists on showing double-featuresof Hindu "masala" films and westerns for Muslim audiences in which cowboys slaughtercows and eat them. Inevitablythe movie house, aptly called "EmpireTalkies," is torched. The conflagrationis as violent in its microcosmic way as the massacres of the Partition.A scene in Satanic Versesechoes the protestagainstcommunaland religious separatism,with parallelresults:SaladinChamcha'smotherthrowsa dinner party during the Indo-Pakistaniwar, and while her guests scurry for cover duringan airraid, she insists on standingby her buffet and eating;she chokes and dies on a fishbonewith no one aroundto help.6 There are both parallels and some interestingdifferences with film developmentsin the West. Hollywood films, it has been argued,served the functionof providingpeople a way to thinkout the implicationsof new behavioralstyles defined by an affluentcommodity-filledworld, one that allowed (and rewarded)individualsto breakaway from communal, familial, and traditionalstructures(see LarryMay 1983). The Indianfilm industry-the largest in the world-operates

122 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

similarly, dealing in love marriages,cross-castepoor boy gets rich girl, and personal virtuerewarded.Various styles of cinema modify these functions, encourTamil workaging more critical, social, or political reflectionand participation.7 ing-class, social-justice oriented film in South India, for instance, provided the political basis for several state and regional political careers, including most prominentlythatof the late chief ministerof Tamilnadu,M. G. Ramachandran.8 Bombay films drawupon traditional aesthetics-building artaroundthe eight rasas (moods, emotions), and using dramato dispel the arbitrariness the plots of of life and a resolving of characterinto their underlyingoriginarystate. Thus there is a standard circularmovementfrom village to the corruptions urbanlife back of to the village, and from povertyto affluenceto willed poverty(renunciation,ethical development), in which negative feelings (anxiety, fear, pessimism, resignation)are exploredand tamed, dharma(moralvalues) andnivritti(renunciation) win over adharma(greed, hate, suspicion, loneliness) andpravriti (worldliness), andthe need for worldlyinvolvementis put in perspective(see Chakravarty 1987; Mishra 1985). Among the films of the 1950s that took on this shape, Sree 420 ("Mr. 420") was one of the most popularand is a referencepoint for Rushdie's openingscene, suggestingsomethingaboutthe shapeof his novel (froma villagelike outside, into the corruptions Babylondon,and finalreturn India), as well of to as providingsome specifics such as its theme song which Gibreel Fareshtasings as he falls to earth. Rushdiemodels Gibreelon the Indianmovie starsM. G. R., N. T. RamaRao, Raj Kapoor,andAmitabhBachchan.Gibreel'splaying gods on betweenstage screenandeventuallyin real-lifeLondonis modeledon the blurring role and political roles of M. G. R. and RamaRao, chief ministersof Tamilnadu and Kamataka; hilariousscene of Gibreel's hospitalizationand being visited the by IndiraGandhiand "her pilot son" (Rajiv) is modeled on a true event in the careerof AmitabhBachchan.Gibreel's worldwideappealis not unlike thatof Raj Kapoor,whose 1950s movie, Awaara, swept acrossIran,Iraq,Syria, Egypt, Turinto key, andthe Soviet Union, its songs being translated a dozen languages,even spawningan imitationin Iran, the film Charkh-eFalak ("Heaven's Will") with the starsFardinand Bayk Imanverdi.The movie producerSisodia (Whisky-andsoda), who specializes in bringingIndianfilm to the West, is modeled in parton Ismail Merchant. While there are roman a clef elements in Rushdie's book that deepen the amusementfor those in the know, the primaryconcernhere is the interplayof the movie medium and traditionalbelief systems. It is the fourth in a series of renovels which togetherprovidea comic universeof scenes, figures,emomarkable tional moods, and perceptualangles on history, geography, and social conflict thatresonatefrom one novel to the next. There is a corpushere thatought not to be dismembered.But before turningto this corpus, we need to clear the ground on the natureof the borrowingsfrom the Islamictradition.While some Muslims, mainly those who have not read the novel, chargeRushdie with blasphemy, and theirdistortionsof events or descriptionsin the novel are examples of how rumor and decontextualizedexcerptingcan pervertreality, otherMuslims acknowledge thatRushdieis all too knowledgeableaboutIslam, thathe is essentially a traitor, exploiting real knowledge for nefariouspurposes.

BOMBAY TALKIES 123

The point of thus identifyingthe Qur'anicsources of Rushdie's novel is not to prove his fidelity to Islamic traditions-that is conceded by many Muslim critics-but to provide an accountof the richnessof traditionalgrounding,the other side of the strugglebetween the movies and traditional religion for the heartsand souls of men and women, boys and girls. Qur'anic Sources and A-maze-ments
Only for you, childrenof doctrineand learning, have we writtenthis work. Examine this book, ponder the meaning we have dispersed in various places and gathered again;what we have concealed in one place we have disclosed in another,thatit may be understoodby your wisdom. -Heinrich Cornelius Agrippavon Nettesheim, De occulta philosophia, epigram to UmbertoEco's Foucault's Pendulum(1989) Hazl (satire)is education;take it seriously And do not be deceived by its outerform. -Jalaluddin Rumi, Masnavi (cited in Javadi 1988:16) Two sets of chapters are interbraided to form the structure of Satanic Verses: five chapters deal directly with the traumas of being an immigrant in Britain in

the 1980s; four interstitialchaptersdeal with the nightmaresof Gibreel Farishta ("the Angel Gabriel"), a Bombay film actor, who is one of the two lead characters in the novel. These nightmares, like videotapes that always pick up where

they last stopped,enmeshthe actorin the strugglesof early Islam:he findshimself in the role of the ArchangelGabriel,overwhelmedby the needinessof the Prophet for furtherrevelationsto relieve the unbearable psychological pressuresof being caughtbetween the demandsof Islam and those of his pagankinsmenand townsmen (not unlike the psychological pressuresof an immigrantcaught between his childhood Islamic trainingand the sensibilities of a secular Britain-there is not only analogy but also "leakage" between the two sets of chapters). The most strikingthing about the four nightmarechapterson a first superficial readingis theirlack of inventiveness:they stick too close to Islamic tradition for comfort. This is the rationale for certain progressive Muslims to damn the book out of an opportunisticsolidaritywith their more fundamentalist brothers: irreverent not the transformative defidelity, they argue, producesonly mockery, of really creative literature.At issue here, of course, is familiarizing-revisioning the entireparodicand satirictraditionin the Islamicworld, includingwhat various gatekeepersregardas blasphemy, which this argumentwould repress. More importantly,this argumentalso repressesthe moral parabletraditionwithin Islam, promotingtolerancein dealing with blasphemersand doubters. Several of these parableshave to do with the sixth Shi'ite Imam, Imamal-Sadiq, includingthe one that was invoked by the late Sayyid MahmudTaleqani (the protectorof the Islamic left duringthe course of the 1977-79 revolution)in his speech at the death memorialfor "Ayatullah" MortadaMutahhari,recountedabove. But the more specific counterarguments the chargesof blasphemyare that to these chaptersare psychologically realistic, and that they ground themselves in

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the psychological structures explicitly mentionedin the Qur'anand elaboratedin the hadith. The novel is about immigrantsand the struggle in their interiorpsychological discourses between influences that come from the movies and those thatcome from traditional religion. Childhoodreligiosity often repeatsitself obsessively; the lack of inventivenessin the novel aboutIslam is trueto the subjects being depicted. This is not an area of easy creativity for immigrants,who feel their identityinsufficientlyvalued by the wider society, and who furtherfeel the interiorgroundsof their identity being underminedby the new lives they must lead. The point is demonstratednowhere more clearly than in the authoritarian angerof otherwisequite pragmaticMuslims in Englandto burnthe book, kill the author,and unleash dormantBritish blasphemylaws againstthe hard-wongains of freedom of expression. That there are quite specific sociological reasons for Muslim defensiveness and anger in an increasinglyracist Britain, especially in towns such as Bradford,is somethingthatis acknowledgedin the novel, andportrayedat some length in scenes set in the East End of London. Therearesix, or rather threelinkedpairsof, primary complaintsby Muslims: the title story and (2) the Salman Farsi story; (3) the use of the name "Ma(1) hound" and (4) the calling of Ibrahima "bastard" for sending Hagar into the desert; (5) the brothel scene and (6) the three uses of the name of Ayesha (the youngest wife of the Prophet)to refer to a whore in Mecca, to refer to Empress Farahof Iran, and to refer to a Pakistani(or in the novel an Indian)charismatic village girl who leads her blindly faithfulfollowers to theirdeaths. Of these, only the brothel scene might be said to be a Rushdie invention, but even it is only inventive in its outer form: its psychology is registeredexplicitly in the Qur'an, andthe kernelof Rushdie'sinventionis presentin Shi'ite uses of the nameAyesha to rhyme with "fahisha" ("whore"), groundedin a frequentlyused moral parable about chaste behavior of women that Ayesha transgressed,and that is the for context (sabab al-nuzuil) the revelation of Sura al-Nur ("The Light") on female modesty, the so-called ifkincident. Similarly,in the othertwo linkedpairsthe pointingout of moralfailings of prophets,who in some versions of dogma are supposedto be models of (inhuman)perfection (3, 4);9 and the anxieties about the text of the Qur'annot containinganythingman-made,anythingnot revealed by God (1, 2)-there is nothing in the novel that is not explicitly groundedin the hadith literature.Other parodic features have not attractedire: the parodies of Khomeiniand the Prophet'smiCrdj journey, the parodiesof the opening of Sura al-Najm("The Star," sura53, in which the title storyoccurs)andof the throwing down of SatanandAdamfromParadisein the brilliantopeningscene of the novel. Let us examine the complaints. Satanic Verses:the Gharaniq Story (53:19-23, 22:52-55) The title alludesto a famous storyin the hadithliterature: Muhammad,under extremepressurefrom opponentsin Mecca, had a revelationthat Lat, Uzza, and of Manat,the most important the 360 goddesses of the Ka'ba, might be accepted into the Islamic belief structureas archangelslike Gabriel. Almost immediately,

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he had regrets about such compromise. A second relevation abrogatedthe first, turningits suggestions into parody. Muslims debatethis story underthe name algharaniq ("high flying birds," "exalted females," "angels"),1? referringto a pre-Islamicchant that echoes uncannilyin the Qur'an. In pre-Islamictimes, the the Qur'aishused to circumambulate Ka'ba chanting, wa al-Lat al-'Uzza WaManat al-thalithat al-'ukhra
Fa innahunna gharaniqal-'ula al

LatandUzza Andanother, third,Manat the

They are the high flying birds (al-ghardnrq)

Minha al-shafa'atu turtaja

for Maytheyintercede us

So reportsHisham ibn Muhammadal-Kalbi (d. 204) in his al-Asnam("Book of Idols"). Listen to the echo in Sfiraal-Najm("The Star," 53:19-23): HaveyouseenLatand'Uzza? Andanother, third,Manat? the
[They are high-flying birds (ghardnfq), their intercession (shafa'at) is to be hoped for.] l What!For you, the male, and for Him, the female ('untha)? Behold such would indeed be an unfairdivision (qismatundizd). They are nothingbut names which you have devised, You and your forebears without authority, for which God has sent no guidance (huda).

and has Theyfollowsurmise desirealthough guidance cometo themfromGod. Orshallmanhavewhatever fancies? he To Godbelongs worldandthehereafter. this

The words in brackets are not part of the Qur'anic text: these are the "satanic verses" that Satancaused Muhammad a momentto think was partof the revfor elation, and that subsequentlywere abrogatedby the following lines, dripping with sarcasm. The whole passage comes immediatelyafter referencesto the Qur'an itself ("By the star when it plunges . .. this is naughtbut a revelationtaughthim by one terriblein power"), and to the Prophet'snight journey (mi'raj) on his high flying winged horse, Buraq,12 to observe the punishmentsand rewardsof heaven and hell. That is, the sfiraopens with the threemodes of communicationbetween the heavens and the world: the descent of the divine, the ascent of the human/ Prophet,and the back and forthmediatingof angels. The passage, moreover, resonates with many other passages in the Qur'an. It is another example of the fun house a-maze-ments analyzed in chapter 2 (Fischer and Abedi 1990), full of echoes and mirrorings,onomatopoetic word selections, meaningfulinflections and intonations,that have intrigued,puzzled, and delightedexegetes for centuries. "They are nothingbut names you have dePhrasesand warningsabout those who claim (false) intercessors,either by misreadingthe signs of natureand of the outcomes of humantrials in the world, or
vised . . . for which God has sent no authority" occurs also in 7:71 and 12:40.

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by deliberatelytamperingwith the Qur'an,occur in 6:94, 7:53, 30:13, 39:43, and especially 10:18.13"Daughtersof God," and "for you the male, and for Him the female" also echo and re-echo throughoutthe Qur'an. References to correctly readingthe signs (dydt)of God are too numerousin the Qur'anto list. The point is thatlines andpassagesof the Qur'ando not standalone but areto be interpreted, clarified, and confirmedwith the knowledge of other passages, elsewhere in the Qur'an. The sarcasmof "for you the male, andfor Him, the female" firstof all refers to the Arabprivileging of the male. The goddesses of the Ka'ba were called the "daughtersof God," and this phrase reverberatesthroughthe Qur'an (53:19, 16:57; "your sons and God's daughters":37:149, 37:153, 52:39; "those who do not believe in the hereaftergive angels female names": 53:45; "are angels female?": 37:150, 43:19; "[those who] praynot except to female beings, they pray not except to a rebel Satan":4:117). The sarcasmcuts multipleways: shouldGod be assigned daughters(by men) while Arabs prefer sons? Does God prefer sons as do Arabs?Is not God above such petty discrimination? sarcasmis directed The at Christiansas well: does God have a son (Jesus)?(The Qur'anaccuses Jews of God has a son, andthe Arab makingOzer [Ezra?]a "son of God.") The Christian God has daughters? The sarcasmis underscored the word .dzd, a word hardto by pronounce,considered ugly, unpoetic, selected here as a word of derision, and regiven prominenceas the rhyme word at the end of the line. (Contemporary pressed feminist irony is added by the circumstancethat the third rhyme word, hudd ["guidance"], is nowadaysa populargirl's name in the Arabworld.) There is perhapsanotheranomaly: the third line ("they are nothing but names yourselves have named ... for which God has sent no authority [sultan] ... no guid-

ance [hudd]") is extremely long relative to both the two precedingand the two following lines. Some modem scholars (e.g., Mehdi Bazargan)argue that this anomalyis a telltale sign of it being a lateraddition, a laterrevelation. That dizd occurs only once in the Qur'an, and is thus not a normalQur'anicterm, is further evidence for some thatthis passage may be a lateraddition.(Exegetes, of course, point out that there are a numberof words in the Qur'an that occur only once. Interestingly,a numberof these are Persian.)14 is Of otherpassagesthatresonatewith these lines, the most important in Sura al-Hajj(22:52-55). These are Medinanverses, that is, revealed some ten years after the Meccan verses of 53:19-20. They underscorethe rejection of Satan's suggestion, and they respondto Muhammad'sconcern that he might be misled. to The story is that Gabrielwould periodicallyask Muhammad recite the Qur'an back to him, and in so reciting Sura al-Najm, Gabrielstoppedhim at the Satanic insertion, saying, "I did not bring thatto you." Listen to the psychology of Gato briel's (God's) reassurance Muhammad: thee[Muhammad] or NeverdidWesendanymessenger (nabi)before (rasul) prophet into Satan threw a butwhenhe formed desire(tamanna, (alqa)something umniya), whatSatan but his umniya casts,andGodcon("desire,""recitation"), Godannuls and firms signs/verses His (ayat),forGodis full of knowledge wisdom,andHe may

BOMBAY TALKIES 127 castsa trialforthosein whosehearts sickness,andthosewhose is makewhatSatan hearts hard.[22:52-55] are This is an extraordinary passage, suggesting precisely the desires of Muhammad underpressurethatRushdieattemptsto portrayin realisticdetail. Desire, wishful thinking, is a key problem in the Qur'an:Jews in the Qur'an are often called knowers only of amani, the pluralof umniya, that is, people who learn nothing fromscripture theirown "wishful thinking" ("desires") (2:78, 2:111, 4:123, but 57:14). Ummiyun,however, is an epithet not only for Jews; Muhammadis also called ummi.The line between wishful thinkingand righteousdesire becomes an ethical puzzle, a test for the true Muslim, as it was for Muhammad,an interior struggle. (As Rushdieputs it in the novel, invokingthe inimitablesyntaxof Indian English, Gibreelrecognizing both desires contestingin himself: "it was me both times, baba, me first and second also me.") For some exegetes, the word alqa here indicates Satan's careless, chaotic, unsystematicthrowing about, that predetermines(is partof the essence of) Evil's failure in the struggleagainstthe divine Good (a very Zoroastrian conception). The abrogationof Satan's suggestion is very clear. In Sura al-Najm itself, the verses following say: Howmanyan angelthereis in theheavens whoseintercession availsnaught, except thereof; angelswithfemalenames.Theyhavenotanyknowledge theyfollowonly and availsnaught truth. surmise, surmise [53:26-28] against The story that Muhammadcould have used the Satanic suggestion is rejectedby almost all exegetes, but the fact that the story persists as a subject of exegetes' discussions is testimonyto the reality of the temptationboth for Muhammadand for laterMuslims in their own struggleswith such "Babylons" as London, New York, Paris, or Hamburg.This is nothing inventedby Rushdie. The story appearsin the early Sira (biographyof Muhammad) Ibn Is-haq by (A.H. 85-152), in Tabari'sTdarkh ("History"), in Jalal-ud-DinSuyuti and Jalalud-Din Mahalli's Tafsiral-Jaldlayn ("Qur'an Commentary the two Jalals"), by in several different versions in Suyuti's Lubab, and in other source books. The firsttraditional questionfor evaluatingthe statusof these storieswould be to query theirisndd. Theirchainsof narrators includesuch important reliablefiguresas Ibn 'Abbas, Sa'id ibn Jubayr, Dahhak, Muhammadibn Ka'b, and Muhammadibn ibn Qays;therearemultiplechains going back to CAbdullah 'Abbas and to several of the tdbi'in (second-generationMuslims), and (according to Tabarsi in his Majma'al-Baydn)from them to the Prophet.Accordingto some exegetes, all the narrationchains (isnad) are defective in one way or another:they are broken (munqatic),weak (da'lf), or missing a link (mursal). However, many exegetes such as IbnHajardo not rule out the possibilitythatthe storyhas some foundation: afterall, they argue, the fact thatthere are many versions and chains of narration (kathratal-turuq) indicates that there may be some validity. The late Allama Sayyed MuhammadHusain Tabataba'i,in his al-Mizdn(vol. 14:396-397), also
if God gives leave. . . . Those who do not believe in the world to come name the

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cites the numerouschains of isnad, and the opinionof variousscholars, including Ibn Hajar,that the story is sahlh (correct, valid), and finds he cannotreject it on such formal grounds, but does so instead on doctrinalgrounds. Most of the extendeddebate, thus, turnson otherreasons thanthe evaluationof the isnad. Least impressive are doctrinalarguments:the Qur'an is the word of God, and Muhammad a trustworthy is prophetwho has neitheraddedto nor subtracted from the divine revelations. Muhammadis not merely trustworthy(amln), but thus he could not have mistakenthe devil for Gabriel;nor as infallible (ma'suim): a messenger of uncompromisingresistance against polytheism, could he have made such a significantconcession, and even had he done so on his own accord, God would have destroyedhim (e.g., 10:16, 44-46). Thereare, of course, counterdoctrinallines of argumentthat stress that Muhammad,although a prophet, was a mere mortaland could make mistakesin recitation,of which this is an example (thus argues'Abu-Ali Jubba'i, for instance). Much more interestingare the speculationsby various exegetes to explain how such verses might have come to be in the Qur'an. Baghawi, in his Tafsir, suggests that Satan threw his suggestion not into the mouth of Muhammad,but into the ears of the polytheists, who imaginedit had come from Muhammad(and somehow got copied down in enough people's mus-hafsand memoriesto laterbe in incorporated the text) (cited in Ibn Kathir1981:vol. 2, p. 550). An alternative, moremanipulative,variantis the speculationthathypocrites(munafiqin) inspired by Satanthrew in these verses, makingothers imagine it was partof the Qur'an. Shaykhal-Tusi, in his al-Tibyan(vol. 7:292-293), reportsfromMujahidthe psychological speculationthatwhenevertherewas a delay in the flow of relevations, Muhammadwould begin to become anxious and desire more revelation, an opportunitywhich Satan would exploit by interjectingsomething, and which God would subsequentlyabrogate. Yet anotherpossibility is suggested by Tabarsi: insertedthese verses for the sake of argument,intendedto be maybe Muhammad orally heardas silly reductio ad absurdumsuggestions. "Are they prettybirds? Is one to prayto birds for intercession?" Tabarsi,in his Majma'al-Bayan (vol. 7, pp. 90-92), summarizeseight possibilities to explain these verses: (1) psychological speculations-the word umrecited niya can mean both "recitation" and "wish"; perhapswhen Muhammad with verses of their own, which God the Qur'anthe polytheists would interrupt had or subsequentlyabrogated; Muhammad wishes thatSatanexploited, tryingto as he had Adam and Eve, but which God again did not allow to misguide him, pass; (2) textualevaluation-the isnad is weak, and the story is not to be trusted; (3) doctrinalevaluation-the fallibility attributedto the Prophetin the story is itself evidence of its fabricatednature,since the Prophetwas infallible;(4) ironic these verses as hijdj(for the sake of reading-Muhammad interjected interpretive theirabsurdity; lexical ambiguity-ghardnlq was (5) argument)therebyshowing intendedto refer to angels, but the polytheists mistook it to refer metaphorically be to their gods, and thus the verse was abrogatedlest misunderstanding perpetuated; (6) anotherpsychological possibility-as Muhammadrecited relying on the flow of the sound of the verses, not paying much attentionto the words, Satan

BOMBAY TALKIES 129

caused him to recite the pre-Islamic poetry which sounds very similar to the Qur'aniccadence;or alternatively(7) the verse was intendedto mentionthe three goddesses andcondemnthem, but Satanmodifiedthe inflectionwith which it was said so that it seemed to convey the opposite meaning;in any case, (8) the literal meaning of the verse asking intercessionis contradictedby the rest of the sura, and so there is little basis to give credenceto the idea thatMuhammadattempted to compromisewith the polytheists. There is yet a ninth possibility given in the Qur'an itself, the notion that Muhammad,like all Muslims, was put througha trial so that he/Muslims might experience the devices by which the signs of God may be recognized (10:22). 15 Finally there has been some debate on the grounds of historical (im)possibilities. MuhammadJawad Balaghi, in the introductionto his Ala' alRahmdn,says the whole nexus of alleged contexts of revelationlinking the two sets of verses is historicallysuspect (Subhani1979:364). After all, Suraal-Najm, where the verses of gharaniqare said to have been, is a Meccan sura, from the early periodof Muhammad'sprophethood,while Suraal-Hajjis a Medinansura, revealed some ten years later. To argue for a connectionbetween the two would be to arguethatthe verses of gharaniqwere in the Qur'anfor a decadebefore they were abrogated!On the other hand, the Europeanscholar William Muir (1878) suggests that a groupof the Muslims who fled from the oppressionof Muslims in Mecca to Habasha (Ethiopia) returnedsome three months later. Had they not heardof some compromisebetween Muhammad his opponents, there would and have been no reason for them to return. (JafarSubhani 11979:362-363] has respondedto Muir, saying thatthey could have been deceived by false rumors,and in any case the dispute over tribal gods was not the only reason for the tension between Muhammadand the leadersof Mecca.) The text remains ambiguous:it provides supportboth to those who wish to deny the Satanic verse episode ever happened, and to those who wish to affirm that it did happen. The verses of Suraal-Najm(53:21-23), if they were later additions/revelations,might have been immediate correctionsof (53:19-20), but they might also be temporallymuch later, even ten years later, in the same period as Sura al-Hajj(22:52-55). (Were the abrogatingverses only revealed ten years after the original event, that would mean that for ten years Muslims had been asking Lat, Manat, and Uzza for intercession!No one seriously alleges this, but it would be the resultof taking literallythe claim that 22:52-55 is the abrogating verse for the al-gharaniq incident.) The point in all this is, first, that the debate is fully developed in traditional Muslim scholarship,and that speculationsof the sort engaged in by Rushdie are not his invention;and second, thatalthoughthe Qur'aninveighs againstpoets and spinnersof idle tales (lahw al-hadith) which distractone from the path of God, and thus arguablymight be opposed to all novels and other fictional genres, the Qur'anand the hadithliteratureare themselves full of richly didactic stories: the Qur'ancalls itself the best of all stories (12:3), the most truthfulof stories (3:64). The sabab al-nuzulof the verse condemningidle tales is said to be condemnation of specifically of Nadhr ibn Harith, a narrator the Rustamand Esfandiarstories

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(the epic tales of ancientIran)and the Kalileh and Demneh stories (the fables of ancient India). Nine times the Qur'an rejects those who call the stories in the (tales of the ancients), asdtfr being the Arabic pluraliQur'anasdtir al-awwalTn zation of the Greekhistoria (inquiry, information,narrative,history). Rushdie's speculationsin his novel, in other words, insofar as they are sincere efforts to thinkthroughthe psychology of both the early days of Islam, and more directly the psychology of Muslim migrantsliving in the West, are no differentthan the debatesin the long historyof Islamic scholarship,which often too have drawnon humor,parables,analogies, and otherdevices of entertainment. TheTwoSalmans:SalmanFarsi and SalmanRushdie The concern about the "Satanic Verses" is not merely about whether the incidentat Mecca happened;the concern is the allegationthat some, or even all, of the Qur'anmight not be divine revelation, thatthe Qur'anis incomplete, contains materialthat was not supposedto be there, or has been in some other way tamperedwith (as Muslims claim is the case with the extantTorahand Gospels). The chargeagainstRushdie is thatthe tone or way he invokes the gharaniqincident, the Salman Farsi story, and the calling of the Prophetby the anti-Muslim slur "Mahound" constitutes a pattern of undermining the authority of the of Qur'anictext. The counterargument, course, is that the Qur'an itself places Muslims an obligation of dealing with uncertainty: Uncertaintyis characupon teristicboth for man's knowledge of the world ("They say, 'Why has a sign not been sent down upon him fromhis Lord?'Say to them: 'The Unseen belongs only to God' " (10:21); hence the play with mutashabihand muhkam,tafsir and tawil analyzed in Fischer and Abedi [1990, chapt. 2]), and for the moral universe in which manis placed as in a test or a trial(10:22). The storyof SalmanFarsi("Salman the Persian") is an Iraniannationalist,anti-Arabone, and Rushdie merely retells it in vivid fashion. Iranianslike to say that as dogma admits, Muhammad was illiterate,and moreoverhe was from a traditionthatknew little of scriptures. How could such a person compose a Qur'an?It must have been the Zoroastrian priest, Salman, one of the first converts to Muhammad'sleadershipand one of of the transcribers the Qur'an,who helpedthe illiterateprophetcompose the scripture. In Rushdie's version, Salman is a figure of desire: he desperatelywants to believe in the Prophet, and tests the Prophetin the hope that belief can be affirmed. Salman, thus, is psychologically a Muslim figure who like so many emigrantsin the West (above all the other Salman, SalmanRushdie)wants to establish the truthvalue of Islam andget rid of the naivetes, false pieties, andpolitically in motivatedperversionsthatmakemany versionsof Islamunsustainable the conworld. Salmanin the novel tests the Prophetby changinga little word temporary here and there, hoping the Prophetwill notice, but the Prophetdoes not, until rathermajor changes are made, at which point the wrath of the Prophetis unleashed. (This part of the tale is taken from Tabari's account of Muhammad's scribe, 'Abdullahibn Sa'd, who lost his faith after the Prophetfailed to notice a here is of the secularMusThe figuration deliberatemistakein his transcription.)

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lim, SalmanRushdie, adaptingthe Islamic message to the contemporaryworld, and at some point becoming subject to the repressive wrath of fundamentalist brethrenwhose sense of Islam is violated. This is all too realistic and obvious, long before Khomeini issued a literal death threat. And it is in this context that the name "Mahound" must be seen. MahoundversusMuhammad: TurningInsults into Strength "Mahound" was a medieval Christianterm of abuse for the Prophetof Islam. Rushdie adopts this name "to turn insults into strength" (1988:93), rather like the defiantwearingof yellow starsto resist anti-Semites.Muslim critics find this explanationdisingenuous,but whatthey fail to acknowledgeis firstof all that Rushdie problematizesthis strategy in the Brickall Street scenes, when he has JumpyJoshi and Mishal Sufiyanproposethe same strategyagainstfascists. Joshi attemptsto write poetry that takes the speeches of Enoch Powell and turnsPowell's racistrhetoricagainstthe fascists, and Mishal attemptsto explain the posters and sweatshirtswith the goat-devil logo as a similar gesture of defiance against the rampantracism of Thatcher'sEngland. The tactic is recognized to be lame and ineffective in stoppingracism, but important buildingup the prideand will in to resist among Muslims. It could be argued,moreover,thatRushdie's use of the term Mahoundis a dramaticallyeffective tactic to draw Westernattentionto the ways in which Western linguistic usages unthinkinglyinsult and degrade Muslims: after all, how many Westernersstill refer to Islam as Muhammadanism, a linguistic usage that is in its implicationsno betterthan "Mahound." Secondly, Rushdie uses the distinctionbetween Mahoundand Muhammad to focus attentionon moraland immoralappropriations Islam. Mahoundis the of name of the Muhammadof Khomeini, Zia-ul-Haq,and others, who in the name of Islam (mis)use the power of the state in morallyquestionableways. The novel sets itself not only against misuses in state coercion, but also against the repressions and distortionsof socializationthat Rushdie and so many others, in all religious traditions,have seen as problematic.There is a good Muslim in the novel who lives up to the name Muhammad,and whose primaryvirtue is explicitly described as not being a fanatic. That person is MuhammadSufyan, the owner of the ShandaarCafe, the supplier of food, a place to gather, and succor for the beleaguereddenizens of Brickall Street. Historically, Abu Sufyan and his wife Hindare interestingfiguresthatdeepen the resonancesof Rushdie'scrafting.Abu in Sufyan, althoughone of the opponentsof Muhammad the Battles of Uhud and Badr, fled when Muhammadreturnedto Mecca victoriously, and immediately soughtforgivenessthroughthe Prophet'suncle, Abbas. Not only was he forgiven, and not only did he convert, but his son, Mu'awwiyya, was made a scribe of revelation, his house was made a sanctuarywhere people could seek refuge (like the Shandaar Cafe), and his daughter(UmmaHabiba)marriedthe Prophet.Moreover, Abu Sufyan is one of the firstShi'ites, since he was the firstto come to Ali and offer to raise an army to restoreAli to his rightfulplace as the successor to Muhammad.Abu Sufyan's wife, however, is famous as a symbol of female vio-

132 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

lence and brutalityin vengeance for her menfolk. She lost her father, a son, a brother,and an uncle in the early battles against the Muslims, and swore not to sleep with Abu Sufyan until they were avenged. At the Battle of Uhud, the Muslim forces were crushed, and the womenfolk with Hind made garlandsout of the noses and ears of the enemy; Hind is said to have rippedout the liver of Hamza, an uncle of the Prophet,chewed it up and spat it out. She is thus known as "Hind the liver-eater," and her son and grandson,Mu'awwiyya and Yezid, are cursed by Shi'ites with the epithet "son of the liver-eater." But she, too, converted. It is said, moreover, thatthe Prophetwas so enragedat the desecrationof Hamza's corpse that he swore to kill large numbersof those involved, at which point he received a revelationthatmandatedvengeance be limited to equivalence:one life for one life. Rushdie's Hind is also a hard, but not evil, woman, unsympathetic to the plight of Chamcha, and this fits with the Hind of early Muslim history. These were people caughtin the messy realityof nastypoliticalbattles,just as are the owners of the cafe on BrickallStreet. Mu'awwiyyalaterbecame the founder of the Umayyid dynasty and thus has a bad reputationamong Shi'ites; there are even some wild Shi'ite accusationsthatAbbasandAbu Sufyanconcocteda secret alliance that would keep the caliphate in the hands of their descendants (the Umayyids and the Abbasids)ratherthan allowing it to go to the rightfulpossesseems secure, as sors: Ali and his descendants.But Abu Sufyan's own reputation a sincere convert to Islam, and as the owner of a house deemed by the Prophet worthyof being a sanctuary. TheBastardIbrahim:Basic Moral Questions a Muslim critics claim to see in Rushdie's chiding of Abraham/Ibrahim continuationof the disrespecttowardprophetsthat they see in Rushdie's use of the name Mahound.When Rushdiechides Ibrahimfor having abandonedHagarand morality(a fathershould not Ishma'il, he not only mildly invokes contemporary abandonconsort and child to the desert), but he questionswhethercontemporary Muslim pilgrimsknow why they congregateat the hajj. Do they in fact celebrate the survivalof Hagar?Thatis, do they consciously reenactthe dual relianceupon reasonas well as on faith in God when they runback and forth as she did? Or do they deemphasizethe parableof Hagar,and focus more on the maqdm(footprint) of Ibrahim,the place where he stood when he came to visit his son and grandson, wrathshould or where he stood when he rebuiltthe Ka'ba. Thatfundamentalists' be stirredup by Rushdie'spointingout a feministcritiqueof male chauvinismcan discredit. only be to Rushdie's credit and to fundamentalists' TheBrothelScene: TheIfkIncident(24:11-21) In the fifth or sixth year of the Islamic era, on the returnfrom an expedition to the Banu Mustaliq, Ayesha, the youngest and most beloved wife of the Prophet,failed to reenterher closed palanquinat one of the rest stops, and was left behind. She was found by Safwan who escortedher back to the caravan.Allegations were raisedaboutthe compromisingposition she had allowed herself to

BOMBAY TALKIES 133

be placed in. Muhammadhad a revelation that cleared her of wrongdoing, and furtherproposed punishmentsfor those who spreadrumorsand talk idly about chastewomen. Revelationsalso imposed social conditionsof concealmentfor the wives of the Prophet, and even that after the Prophet's death no man would be allowed to marryhis widows. Imam Ali, however, would not allow the issue to die, and he and Ayesha remained at odds. Imam Ali, and after him Muslim preachers,used the story to warn women against allowing any situationto arise in which even the appearanceor possibility of misdeeds could arise. Shi'ites in have seen Ayesha as a model of female transgression,ratherthan as a particular model of a good Muslimwoman (FatimaandZeinabarethe models of good Muslim women); and Shi'ites often rhyme Ayesha's name with the word for whore, fahisha. No Shi'ite names his daughterAyesha. Sunni women who live in a predominantlyShi'ite Iranand who are given the name Ayesha usually have another name which they use in public. Thereis a controversialscene in Rushdie'snovel. It is a scene thatis set after the victoriousreturnof the Prophetto Mecca, when he is imposing the rules and taboos of the new religion. Rules, rules, rules, bringresistanceand avoidance. In the brothels, people talk about the black marketin pork, prayersin secret to the old gods, and especially they mutterthat while ordinaryMuslims are limited to four wives, the Prophethas thirteen. The resentmentabout the Prophet'swives and the special status accordedthem, markedby their special seclusion, lead to salaciousjealousy. A customerin one of the whorehousesgets excited at the idea of havingthe youngestwhore in the brothelplay the youngestwife of the Prophet. The othereleven whores decide thatthe same psychology may delight other customers, and they each choose the role of one of the Prophet'swives. (The madame, like Khadijeh,is not fully partof the game.) In a cute side intuition,Rushdie has the whores all marryBaal, the defeated poet that Abu Simbel had hired to vilify the Muslims, who is being hidden by the madame in the labyrinthof the whorehouse.For the whores, it is the dreammarriagethey would never have, and Baal is encouragedto act out the role of the Prophet. Baal becomes a drinking partnerwith Salman Farsi, who has by now also been forced into hiding, and Salman narratesthe ifk story about Ayesha's indiscretion.Baal writes verses to each of his twelve wives, and as they become public, it also becomes public that they have the names of the Prophet'swives. Baal is found and taken for beheading. He cries out, "Whores and writers, Mahound.We are the people you can't forgive." Mahoundreplies, "Writersand whores, I see no difference." The entire scene works in terms of psychological realism, and analogically is a commentaryon Khomeini's Iran. It is, after all, the Qur'an that originally refers to the psychology of jealousy and insinuationabout the Prophet's wives, and tries to impose rules of proprietyboth oi. vomen's behavior and on male tongues. But the scene is also linked to the satireaboutKhomeini, firstwithdrawn to London, and then returnedto Iran, where, as in Mecca centuriesearlier, the whorehousesare to be closed, but are given a shortperiodof grace to phase themselves out of business. The linkage between whores and writersis a comment on the way Khomeiniandotherfundamentalists treatwritersand intellectuals.Rushdie comments,16

134 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY When Muhammadreturnedto Mecca in power, he was very, very tolerant. And I think, if I remembercorrectly, only five or six people were executed .... And of those five or six people, two were writers,andtwo were actresseswho had performed in satiricaltexts. Now there you have an image that I thoughtwas worth exploring. [Appignanesiand Maitland1989:29]

Ayesha-Fahisha
Three Ayeshas occur in Rushdie's novel: the whore in the Meccan videotape nightmare discussed above; the Empress Farah Pahlavi; and an epileptic village girl, clad in butterflies (beautiful raiments, spiritual transformation), who leads gullible villagers on a pilgrimage to Mecca on foot into the Arabian Sea where they drown blissfully in a mirage of absolute faith (many of the images work as elaborate visual puns). (The last is based on a famous incident in Pakistan (Ahmad 1986); it also seems to be an homage to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who has a similar figure covered in butterflies; and the village Titlipur ["Butterfly Village"] is a reference to the song "Titli Udi" from the Hindi film Suraj.) The latter two occur in a chapter called "Ayesha," an interlude before the Muslims return victorious to Mecca, the interlude before Khomeini returns victorious to Iran in 1979 from his exile in Iraq and Paris. The chapter is in two parts, one about the Imam in exile (introduced by an evocative reminder that this is a nightmare: "now the dream rushes him up the outer wall"), and the other about blind faith solutions to problems in India. The parody of Khomeini is a tour de force, including among other things the Imam's radio broadcaster, Bilal (the name of the first muezzin), figured as an American convert (Bilal, the Ethiopian convert; the image of Malcolm X that the Islamic Republic tried to use to urge American blacks to rise against the Great Satan; the spokesman in Paris at his side, Ibrahim Yazd, from Houston, America; but primarily, "the voice of American confidence, a weapon of the West turned against its makers") who begins the daily broadcast with ritual abuse of the Empress, with lists of her crimes, murders,bribes, sexual relationswith lizards, and so on .... "Death to the tyrannyof the EmpressAyesha, of calendars,of America, of time. ... Burnthe books and trustthe Book; shredthe papersand hear the Word, as it was revealedby the Angel Gibreelto the Messenger and Mahoundand explicatedby your interpreter Imam." [1988:210] The reference to the calendars is of course to the new Pahlavi calendar that the Shah attempted to introduce in the late 1970s, which would have made the present, the year 2500 odd, celebrating so many years of "continuous monarchy," an extravagance that infuriated most Iranians, not only Muslims. The sexual innuendo and the use of curses is true to the rhetoric of the revolution which delighted in the language of "exposing" the Shah and his regime. We can now turn back to the novel, both to the chapters on Muslim migrants struggling to create a place for themselves in Thatcher's Britain, and to the chapters on Gibreel Farishta's nightmares in which he stars as the archangel Gabriel struggling with the Prophet in the oasis town of Jahilia, a desert town of sand and its derivatives: glass (mirrors) and silicon (chips, the electronic age). Jahilia is the

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name for the age of ignorance before Islam, and in fundamentalist rhetoric it applies as well to the current age of decadence, of deafness to Islam. The image of the town of sand, whose enemy is water, of course, is not merely true to a desert oasis with its adobe buildings, a trade center whose economy was under threat from the shifting of trade from caravans to boats, but Rushdie also has the ruler named Abu Simbel, the name of the Egyptian temple whose site was drowned under the waters of Aswan High Dam, that is, by modem technology. Muslims as the enemies of the city of idolatry and false commodity religion are crystallized in the image of them constantly engaged in ablutions with water. Abu Simbel's Queen is that other great threat, Hind, India, land of female goddesses par excellence: from Kali to Indira Gandhi, exalted females, 360 idols and more, polymorphous perversity and fecundity run riot.

Reading the Novel: Hijacked Souls

We had suspectedfor a long time that the man Gabrielwas capable of miracles, because for many years he had talked too much about angels for someone who had no wings, so thatwhen the miracleof the printingpressesoccurredwe noddedour heads knowingly, but of course the foreknowledgeof his sorcerydid not release us from its power, and under the spell of that nostalgic witchcraftwe arose from our wooden benches and gardenswings and ran without once drawingbreathto the place where the dementedprintingpresses were breedingbooks fasterthanfruitflies,andthe books leaptinto ourhandswithoutoureven havingto stretchout our arms,the flood of books spilled out of the printroom and knockeddown the firstarrivalsat the streets and the sidewalks and rose lap high in the ground-floorrooms of all the houses for miles around,so thatthere was no one who could escape from that story, if you were blind or shut your eyes it did you no good because there were always voices readingaloud within earshot, we had all been ravishedlike willing virgins by that tale, which had the qualityof convincingeach readerthatit was his personalautobiography; then and the book filled up ourcountryandheadedout to sea, andwe understoodin the insanity of our possession that the phenomenonwould not cease until the entire surfaceof the globe had been covered, until seas, mountains,underground railwaysand desertshad been completelyclogged up by the endless copies emergingfromthe bewitchedprinting press, with the exception, as Melquidadesthe gypsy told us, of a single northern countrycalled Britainwhose inhabitantshad long ago become immune to the book disease, no matterhow virulentthe strain. -Salman Rushdie, "Angel Gabriel," (1982b:3) Review of GabrielGarciaMarquez'sChronicleof a Death Foretold The opening scene introduces all the major themes of the book, as well as symbols that will be unpacked or created throughout. It is one of four hijacking scenes that tease with historical allusions, but primarily serve to introduce the lead characters, Gibreel Farishta ("Angel Gabriel") and Saladin Chamcha, as psychological studies of the South Asian Muslim immigrant, and obviously as both Salman Rushdie (the Gibreel, gibbering movie reel, writer like Angel Gabriel Marquez; a schizoid personality going crazy by insisting on maintaining the continuity of his selfhood; and the Chamcha, England-besotted alien, with an Oxbridge accent, composed of discontinuous parts). Air India Flight 420 (reference to the popular film "Mr. 420"),17 a jumbo jet named "Bostan" (a name of one

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of the four gardensof Paradise),is blown up by Sikh terrorists by a Canadianled accentedwoman (shadesof the Air Indiaflight blown up fromCanadaen routeto in Englandby Sikh terrorists revenge for the Indiangovernment's1984 Operation Bluestarinvasion of the Golden Temple in Amritsarand killing of separatistSikh leaderSant Jarail Singh Bhindranwale).The two main characters,the only survivors, floatdown to earth,Chamchahead-firstlike a new bornin three-piecesuit and bowler hat, singing Christmascarols and "Rule Britannia," while Gibreel Farista holds himself perversely upright, singing funny songs, pitting levity againstgravity. Thejumbojet is "a seed pod giving up its spores, an egg yielding its mysteries," a space of mutation; "mutation? Yessir, but not random . . . made possible by the century . . . made the century possible," a me-

tamorphosingdescent from Everest (mystical peak) of catastrophe,"down and along the hole thatwent to Wonderland," "debris of the soul, brokenmemories, sloughed off selves, severed mother-tongues,violated privacies, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, forgotten meanings of hollow booming words land, belonging, home." The fall from Paradise,as Daniel Defoe put it in his History of the Devil, which serves as Rushdie's epigram (1988:1), turned fallen angel (andman) into a vagabondwithoutfixed place. The issue for the 20th centuryand the theme of the book is "how does newness come into the world? How does it survive, extreme and dangerousas it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayalsof its secret naturemust it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminatingangel, the guillotine?" "Just two brown men, falling hard,nothingso new aboutthat . .. those bastardsdown therewon't know what hit them." The explosion occurs above the city named "Mahogonny, Babylon, into Alphaville, London"; it is a wateryreincarnation the "English sleeve" (the somersaultdown, a spectralfigureof Rekka Channel).As the two lead characters Merchanton her flying carpet curses Gibreel with the name Al-Lat, the icewoman. Some symbols: Everest (like Sinai and Mr. Qaf); the ice-woman (fair-skin, the Englishbeloveds of the Indianmen, Alleluia Cone andPamelaLovelace), AlLat the female rival of Allah from the Qur'anicstory of attemptsto repress the idols of Mecca; Mecca the city of sand, terrifiedof water. If the opening scene introduces the problems of newness come into the world, the otherthreehijackingscenes introducethe themesof dreamsand reality afterthe movies, repetitionsanddisplacements(mechanical,structural, patterned and psychological), deja vu similacra, nightmare,real unreality.The scene that aroundthe hijackerswith completesthe opening section of the book is constructed the plane on the groundat the Zamzam(the well at Mecca) oasis, the young Sikh terrorists struttingat the doorway, playing to the satellitetelevision newscastjust the way they have seen it done on television;and the beautifulCanadian-accented woman terroristwith grenadesand dynamitesticks stuck between her thighs and breasts, who means business. It is a nightmare:for Chamcha, a deja vu that he had alreadydreamt:he had alreadydreamtof the woman terrorist,Tavleen, and her Canadianaccent (who terrorizeswho, West the East, or East the West?); a repetition("what did they want, nothingnew," "if you live in the twentiethcen-

BOMBAY TALKIES 137

tury, you don't find it hardto see yourself in those more desperatewho seek to shape it to their will," "the three men hijackerswere too narcissistic to want blood, they were here to be on tv"); for Gibreel desperateto fight off sleep and his ongoing nightmareof being the archangel(it always picks up where it left off like a video, as if it is real and we are the dream), it is a time to joke aboutreincarnation,as if the hijackingwere a second gestation creatingfifty siblings born at once (like midnight's children). There are historical details, metonymic remindersof the grimly comic absurdityof reality:Tavleen shoots Jalandari first, a Sikh who has cut his hairand given up his turban(violence is sharpestagainstthe traitors);Chamchais afflicted with a seatmate who is an American creationist scientist who has been out to convert India. Finally, Tavleen ordersthem to take off, and over Europe she pulls the pin, thereby opening the stories within the frame story. Two intermediatescenes explore the interiorityof the two main characters: there's the scene inside the plane, on the way from Bombay, just before the hijacking occurs, where Chamchais asleep and is wakened by the stewardessand finds his English mask has slipped and the Indian-Englishlilt and syntax of his youth squeaks out, embarrassinghim. And there is the scene that explains the origins of Gibreel's guilt-drivennightmarethat is the source of the Muslim thematics of the novel. Chamchaand Gibreelare a pair, the one an illusionist on the Bombay film stage who has lost his faith, and has eaten pork, for which guilt he is afflicted by never-endingnightmares;the other, a would-be Englishmanwho pursuesthat other 20th-centurycareer, doing voice-overs for radio commercials but never showing his dark face on television, imitating myriads of characters both humanand commodities. Both are twice born, go throughhospital transformations: "Tobe bornagain,"Gibreel Farishta to Saladin said Chamcha much later,"firstyou haveto die. Me, I onlyhalf-expired, I didit on twooccasions, but and hospital plane, so it addsup,it counts.Andnow,Spoono friend, hereI stand before in Proper my you a is London, Vilayet,regenerated,newmanwitha newlife. Spoono, thisnota bloody finething?"[1988:31] Gibreel the Bombay actor is effortlessly turnedinto a denizen of England, only having to cope with his own psychic crisis; he loses his halitosis and gains a halo; the exotic celebrity. But Chamchais transformed the explosion into a devilby figure with foul breath, the perfect alien, and only after his hospitalizationand recovery does he lose his horns and bad breath. At the very end, their positions reverseagain:Gibreel, the archangeldies, leaving EnglandandBombayto Chamcha. It is the fall metaphorcome full circle (Adam and Satan both fall from heaven; in the modernworld, man survives amid the "death of God"); the discontinuousself survivesin a triumphof postmodernism,while the continuousself is destroyedby its religious megalomaniathatoverwhelms it. Gibreel is introduced first. He was born in Poona (long before it was Rajneesh's lair) as Ismail (the sacrifice) Najmuddin("star of the faith"),18 and was put to work as a tiffin runnerin Bombay, that fantasticoccupationin which

138 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

millions of hot lunches from home are delivered to offices all over town. Here Gibreellearnedthe skill thatwould allow him to do 11 movies simultaneously(a truefeatureof Bombayfilmmaking),remembering roles by the complex codes the of tiffin running.At age 13, he was orphaned(his father, also a tiffin runner,ran out of his skin, pushing himself in rivalrywith his son for the love of their wife/ mother;she was hit by a bus), and was adoptedby an uncle who hopedthata child would diverthis wife's obsessive babying and controllinghim. This uncle taught him to think aboutreincarnation,which togetherwith his mother'sstories about the Prophethelped preprogram later nightmares.He landed a job in the film his industrywith the film magnateD. W. Rama, and became a star in theologicals (playing Ganesh, Hanuman,Krishna, the Buddha)until one day, mysteriously, he began to hemorrhage.Even IndiraGandhiand her pilot son came to the hospital to pay theirrespects, figuring(with the logic of Indianpolitics) that "if God had unleased such an act of retribution against his most celebratedincarnation, what did he have in store for the rest of the country?"Duringhis illness, Gibreel prayedto God, but nothinghappened;he became angry,then emptywith despair, then finally prayedthat God not exist, at which point he began to miraculously recover. Released from the hospital, he rushed immediately to the Taj Hotel where he stuffed himself with English pork to prove the death of God ("pork sausages from Wiltshireand the cured York hams and the rashersof bacon from with the gammon steaks of his unbelief and the pig's trottersof godknowswhere; secularism"), and there met and had an orgiastic three-dayaffair with a woman mountainclimberof near white hair, and skin translucent mountainice, Alleas luia Cone. Then suddenlyon his 40th birthday,the stardisappears,leaving behind only a note in his EverestVilla penthouse(on the exclusive MalabarHill), which he haddecoratedin the motif of a bedouintentby a Frenchdesignerrecommended by the Shah after he had done such a good job at Persepolis. (The allusion is to the 2,500-year celebrationof continuousmonarchythatthe Shahhadcateredfrom Parisin 1971, muchto the outrageof his subjects.)The note encourageshis downstairsneighborto jump out the window with her children:her spiritfloatingon a carpetsurvives to curse him as he floats down from the hijackedplane. He had been en route to find his love, Alleluia Cone. Meanwhile, the same 15 years that Gibreelhad spent in the Bombay movie industry,SaladinChamchahad spentin England.(Like Saleem and Shiva in Midnight's Children,they aremetaphorical changelings:one rich, one poor, one more Hinduized,one Muslim, one too refined, one too plebian.) Saladin, too, is given a childhood psychology: son of a fertilizermanufacturer ("empire of dung"), a fierce and stem (ChangezChamchawalla) of Chanakaya,the monk who disciple taughtthat one should practicecarryingwaterthrougha crowd to learnto live in the world without being part of it. When the boy finds a wallet of money, the fathertakes it away; years later the fathertakes the son to London, returnsthe wallet andmakeshim spendthe money on theirfood andlodging, while the father sits in the hotel room fasting. At one point the lad is embarrassed carryingfast food chicken stuffedin his shirtup the elevator. Rage at his fatherwould turnhim into a secularman (Rushdie 1988:43). The fatherleaves, andthe son is in a board-

BOMBAY TALKIES 139

ing school where he is presented with a kipper for breakfast, the archetypeof painful learningof the immigrant.No one is willing to show him how to eat it, but he is not allowed to leave until he finishes it; it takes 90 minutes of painful mouthfulsof tiny bones. ("The eaten kipperwas his firstvictory, the firststep in his conquest of England. William the Conqueror,it is said, began by eating a mouthful of English sand" [1988:44].) On his first return home, his mother chokes to death on fishbones duringthe Indo-Pakistan war: while everyone else coweredunderthe tableduringthe air-raid,she stood in hernewsprintsarimunching on party food "to show that Hindus-Muslimscan love as well as hate" a (1988:46). Archetypically,the fatherremarries womanwith the same name, and fatherand son quarrel.The novel takes place as Saladinreturnshome once more to tryto make some sortof peace with his father("what Saladinhadcome to India for: forgiveness. But whetherto give or receive, he wasn't able to say"), but the visit goes badly, and he accuses Indiansof a lack of moralrefinement,incapable of a sense of tragedy, using an Indianversion of a Sartreparableto display differences in moralattitude. He also visits an old friend, Zeeny Vakil, with whom he goes to bed within 48 hours of returningto India, but faints even before making love "because the messages reachinghis brainwere in such seriousdisagreement"(1988:51). She's an M.D. (works with the homeless, and went to Bhopal the "moment the news broke of the invisible American cloud that ate people's eyes and lungs," [1988:52]) and art critic (opposed to myths of authenticity,revels in the eclecticism of Indianculture), and tries to reclaim him for India, particularlyafter he tells her abouthis life as an unseen man of a thousandvoices, and abouthis costar Mimi Mamoulian(the Jewish-Armenian).She takes him to heated political discussions, drives him aroundin a "beaten-upHindustan,a car built for a servant thanthe front," andspoutstearsthe color culture,the back seat betterupholstered and consistency of buffalo milk; as a teenager she had already boasted a Mary Quanthairstyle.Zeeny is "a siren temptinghim back to his old self. But it was a dead self, a shadow, a ghost," (1988:58). Zeeny is posed as a contrast,one who revels in eclectic hybridism, while Chamchahas the dis-ease of wanting to be someone else, an Englishman.In the end he must returnto England, and to his English wife, Pamela Lovelace. City of Apparitions, Night of All Souls: The Cast In a brilliantlytitled five-scene chapter,RushdieportraysLondonas a landscape of psychological mutations.The title is "London" spelled out as in a nursery rhyme, letterby letter, "ell," "ow," "en," "dee," "ow," "en," so that it looks like "Halloween Divine" ("Elloween Deeowen"), a Holi world. Just in case one missed it the first time, a follow-up chapteris called, "A City Visible but Unseen." This pair of chapterspresentsthe English wives/lovers of the two main charactersnot only as sirens of Indian males' desires, but as themselves tragi-comic,mutant,changlingsjust like the two lead characters: Rushdie's point aboutAsian immigrantslaying claim to a historyof Huguenot,Jewish, Irish, and

140 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

other immigrant/minority experiences is richly redeemed. Other charactersare addedto the cast who also help make the point that, psychologically, everyone is wrappedup in dreamsof being other/elsewhere.The most surrealof these is 88year-old Rosa Diamond, widow of an Argentinian,near whose house Chamcha and Gibreel land: she is the figure of the elusive "real England," the philosopher's stone, the mystical "rose stone" (of Grimus, Rushdie's first novel), not only herself lost in reveries of the past, but imposing these reveries on others. First of all, she sees the two figures floatingdown and immediatelybecomes the vehicle of Rushdie's conceit, iteratedin several places, that this is anotherinvasion like that of William the Conqueror,except that "whereas the Normanfleet came sailing openly, these shades were sneaky"; imagininghordesof them, she yells at them to come out into the police floodlights. Second, she frequentlyslips into reveries of her life in Argentinaand the violent honor feuds of that colonial society, which reveries imprisonand involve Gibreel so that he viscerally feels the pain of the dagger thrustsof the duel in her memory ("violent pain in his Rosa Diamondis a colonial navel, a pulling pain"). Third, and most importantly, of analogueto the primarydream-imprisoning Gibreel by Islam: "He was being held prisonerandmanipulated the force of Rosa's will just as the Angel Gibreel by was obligatedto speak by the need of Mahound." PamelaLovelace is SaladinChamcha'sEnglish wife, a "voice composed of tweeds, headscarves, summerpudding, hockey-sticks, thatchedhouses, saddle soap, house-parties,nuns, family pews, and large dogs." She works on a community relationscouncil, and in her social service and social radicalismtries to overturnall that her backgroundrepresentsfor Saladin. They are thus opposites and theirs is "a marriageof crossed-purposes,each of them rushingtowardsthe very thing from which the other was in flight." Saladin "was a real Saladin. A manwith a holy landto conquer,his England"(1988:175), yet he too could dress up as "everybody's goddam cartoonof the mysteriesof the East," "reeking of patchouli,wearinga white kurta," "no shame, he was readyto be anythingthey wantedto buy," wantinglove, he was the actor'sactor:"In the theatereverybody gets kissed and everybody is darling. The actor's life offers the simulacrumof love." Saladinneeded someone to believe in his remakinghimself as an Englishman;only afterhe had pursuedPamelafor two years and marriedher did he discover that she had no self-confidence, and would periodicallylock herself in the bedroom. Her parents"had committedsuicide togetherwhen she hadjust begun over theirheads in gamblingdebts, leaving her with the aristocratic to menstruate,
bellow of a voice that marked her out as a golden girl . . . whereas in fact . . . she had no confidence at all" (1988:50).

Gibreel's English "significantother" is a similarlycomplicatedmirror.Alleluia Cone is the daughterof a Polish Jewish emigre, wartimeprison camp survivor, and art historian,who anglicized his name from Cohen, and tried to conform to an English gentry pattern.He would read no Polish literature,saying it had been pollutedby history: " 'I am English now,' he would say proudlyin his as accent."'He would celebrateChristmas an "English rite," thickEastEuropean but spoil it Scrooge fashion, pretendingto be ChairmanMao who killed Father

BOMBAY TALKIES 141

Christmas.When Alleluia was 14, andhe over 70, he committedsuicide. (Shades of Primo Levi: "Why does a survivorof the camps live 40 years and then complete the job?") She reactedby returningto "Cohen, the synagogue, Chanukka, and Bloom's": "no more imitation of life." She becomes a mountainclimber (Cone), scaler of Mt. Everest, and subsequentlyappearsin ads for outdoorproducts. Why did she climb Everest? "To escape from good and evil," she says in Nietzscheanfashion. She has a sister, equally traumatized their father'sdeath by but in differentways. Their motherassimilates Gibreel's mutteringswhile he is asleep to dybuks (demons of East EuropeanJewish folklore). And the identification of immigrantsis made complete by a vendor saying to Alleluia, that after 23 years (the spanof the Prophet'smission) he was being drivenout by "Pakis," and Alleluia has a bizarrevision of elephants(pachys), hordes of invadingpachyderms: "What's a pachy?" she asks, and is told, "a brown Jew." To Gibreel, she is a vision of the ice-woman(climberof Everest, Alleluia Cone;ice-clearskin; frigid;visionary secularsign of the supernatural).19 They have a stormyrelationin which he has jealous rages, and she throws him out. ship, Mimi Mamoulian, the Jewish-Armenianactress, is Saladin Chamcha's female complementon "The Alien's Show": she too is a thousandvoices, with a face not to be shown. Eventuallyshe takes up with Billy Batutta,playboy Pakistani, who with the stutteringproducerSisodia (Whiskyand Soda), wants to produce Hindi films in Englandand have starslike Gibreelcavortat BradfordTown Hall. Batuttaengages in variousbusiness schemes (Batutta'sTravels, namedafter the 14th-centuryworld traveler, Ibn Batutta, is transformedinto a supertanker fleet), of which the wildest scam is the day he takes Mimi to a New York furrier and picks out an expensive mink coat for her. It is Fridayafternoon,and he asks if they will take a $40,000 check. They do. He goes next door and sells the coat for $30,000 cash. The second store tells the first, which calls the police, and Billy is arrestedfor passing a bad check. Monday morning when the banks open, it turnsout he has enough to cover the check in the bank, and threatensto sue the store for millions for false arrest and damage to his reputation;they settle for $250,000. When Saladintries to warnMimi aboutBilly, she retorts:
modernistcritiquesof the West .... And as an intelligentwoman, able to do fifteen minutes on Stoicism and more on Japanese cinema ... I am fully aware of Billy

I'manintelligent female.I haveread with Wake,andamconversant postFinnegan's

Don'tteachme about boy'sreputation. [1988:261] exploitation.

City of Apparitions, Night of All Souls: The Plot The story line is built aroundimmigrantsbeing treatedas mutants. While Gibreelis co-optedinto Rosa Diamond'snostalgia, a bit actorin the colonial past, a benign entertainer (she dresses him in jodhpursand smokingjacket), Chamcha, the would-be Englishmanturnsinto/is treatedas a goat-devil and is hauled off in a paddywagon, ending up in a hospitalfull of similarmutants.The paddywagon andhospitalscenes togetherwith the laterClub Hot Wax andriot scene in the East End of London, the home of generations of immigrants/mutants, provide the

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comic heartof the novel: both British xenophobiaand immigrantinsecurityare wildly parodied.The mutationsare inextricablyexternallyand internallygenerated. In the paddy wagon, Saladin grows hooves, horns, and a huge phallus, he develops bad breath, and defecates small pellets. The police beat him and make
him eat the pellets. "What puzzled Chamcha was . . . that his metamorphosis . . . was being treated . . . as if ... banal." The beating is such that he ends

a up in the hospital, where the wardsare full of transforms: manticore(tiger head with three rows of teeth), a woman water buffalo, Nigerian businessmen with tails, Senegalese holiday makersturnedinto serpents,Glass Berthawith a skin of glass, partialplants and insects. Saladinlearnsthat some of the inmatesare planning to break out, and they want him to join them: "The point is . . . some of us

aren'tgoing to standfor it. We're going to breakout of here before they turnus into anythingworse." "But how do they do it? Chamchawantedto know. They
describe us . . . and we succumb to the pictures they construct" (1988:168). The

inmatesbreakout and Saladintries to go home, where his erstwhile best friend, Jamshid"JumpyJoshi" is in bed with Pamela.Terrifiedby the vision of the goat, they runback upstairs,Pamelawailing, "It isn't true, my husbandexploded. No
survivors . . . beastly dead." Saladin had tried to telephone earlier, having a

flash of an English story about a man thoughtdead who when he returnsto find and his wife remarried,takes a toy as a remembrance leaves; and the Indianversion of the story in which it is his best friendwho has marriedhis wife and upon seeing this, the husbanddecides he too must have remarried,and leaves to search for his otherwife. JumpyJoshi seeks help from MuhammadSufyan, who runs a cafe nearby. How to turn Saladin back? They ruminatethat once upon a time, in the case of into an ass (Lucius Apuleius) a kiss was required,"but old times metamorphosis for old fogies." Over the objections of MuhammadSufyan's wife, Hind, who sees Saladin as the devil incarnate,they install Saladin in the attic of the cafe, gatheringplace for the locals of BrickallStreet. BrickallStreetitself is portrayed with epic batthe as a mythologicalbattleground, set for a moder Mahabharata, tles between new Kurusand Pandavas.It is the scene of old battles between the Socialist WorkersParty and the fascist National Front, but now there are fewer pitched battles, more vicious petty harassmentunder Thatcherism:skinhead whites who spit in the food of Asians; a Sikh ex-justice of the peace struckmute for seven years by a racial attack;an accountantwho each night obsessively enand his gages in a ritualof rearranging sitting room furniture pretendingto be the a conductorof a single deckerbus on its way to Bangladesh,20 black activist accused of being a serial murderer.Meanwhile, word of the goat-devil in the attack begins to leak into the dreamsof the locals. "They all dreamedhim rising up in the streetlike the Apocalypse, burningthe town like toast." A thousandand one dreams: "the non-colored dream of sulphurousenemy crushing their perfectly restored residences" while blacks and browns "found themselves cheering." Suddenlysweatshirts,posters, buttons, and rubberdevil horns began to appear, andpeople wore them as marksof defiance.

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Saladin's angergrows in the attic. At firsthe is angryat Sufyan's daughters, Mishal and Anahita, reacting against their kindness ("I'm not your kind, I've spent half my life trying to get away from you") and against their delight in the way people are taking up his cause in the streets ("Go away, this isn't what I wanted"). He calls Hal Vance, the creatorof the Aliens Show, and tries to get his job back ("I have a contract. . . . Don't be silly"), but is told that Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher,"Mrs. Torture . . . Maggie the Bitch . . . wants to invent a whole goddam new middle class, people without background,without history" and there's no job for people like him. Seeing in the fanzine Cine Blitz (Blitz is a Bombay weekly) that Gibreel is making a movie comeback and will make films in Londonwith Sisodia and Billy Batutta,Saladinbecomes really angry, and this anger begins to shrink his horns. As Chamcha's anger grows, he emerges from the attic, eight feet tall, nostrilsspewing yellow and black smoke, luminousred eyes, and a sizable erection. He is takento the ClubHot Wax, where one dances amid wax figuresof migrantsof the past (Mary Secole, a black Florence Nightingale; Abdul Karim, munshi to Queen Victoria; an African Prince; etc.), and where duringthe evening a villain (Mosely, Powell, avatarsof Simon Legree) is melted in a microwaveto the chantof "Meltdown, burn,bur, burn." Chamchawreakshavoc thinkingof Gibreel, then is put to sleep. In the morning his spent angerhas turnedhim back into his humanform. The denouementof the Elloween Deeoween chaptersis called "The Angel Azreel," Azreel the exterminatingangel. It is composed of three short scenes. Chamchaawakes in the Club Hot Wax transformed back into his formerself, he returnsto Pamela but realizes he no longer is in love, and moves into the lower rooms of the house, leaving the upper rooms to Pamela and Jumpy Joshi. He watches the paradeof mutantson television, and goes to a meeting in defense of Dr. Uhuru Simba, the black activist accused of being a serial murderer.In the second scene, Batuttaand Sisodia throw a party at the SheppertonFilm Studio: the decor is a grand set of Dicken's London. Chamchaattendsand sees his beloved Londonat the feet of his rival, Gibreel. Gibreelmeanwhileis trulyunstable, taking drugs to suppress his paranoidschizophrenia.During the party he goes manic, declaiming, "Preparefor the vengeanceof the Lord, for I shall soon summon my lieutenant,Azreel." Gibreeland Alleluia take Chamchato theircountry house in Scotland, but their differences become more obvious. They play the game of their ten favorite movies: Chamchaquotes Nabokov and lists ten cosmopolitan movies; Gibreel likes low-brow Indian films. They part, and while drunkwhites harassAsians in Sufyan's cafe, Chamchadrives Gibreel wild with anonymousphonecalls abouthis wife. Gibreelbuys the trumpetAzreel fromJohn Maslama, a loony Guyanian who claims to be a follower of EmperorAkbar's universalisticreligion, and who recognizes Gibreel as the Messiah.21In the third scene, after the death of Dr. UhuruSimba in police custody, the serial murders startup again, generatingattackson blacks until Sikh youths catch a white Enone of the murders.This then triggers riots, and the unglishman perpetrating leashingof the cops, and the television cameraswhich convey the scene unfavorably towardthe Asians. Gibreel becomes an Azreel figure blowing away pimps

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of teenage prostituteswho bear the names of the wives of the Prophet;blowing away council housing, burningthe Sufyan cafe and the Brickall communityrelations building. In the mayhem, Pamelaand JumpyJoshi die. The riot scene, tragicand apocalyptic,echoes the riots of Sammyand Rosey Got Laid, Hanif Kureishi's film aboutPakistaniimmigrantsin ThirdWorld Britain. But Rushdie's scene following out the mythic world of Brickall's Mahabharata,andthe greatdevil scene of Saladincoming down fromthe attic, eight feet the tall, spewing smoke from his nostrils, transforms world into archetypesworthy of a Spielbergextravaganza. Theological Flashbacks While much of the four interstitialchaptersof Gibreel's nightmareof being the Archangelhas alreadybeen discussed above under"Qur'anicSources and Amaze-ments," a few comments may be in orderhere in the context of the novel itself. Rushdiebegins with the basic moralquestionof Islamic philosophy:what is the role of man?One of the centralmyths of Islam is the story of why Satanwas thrownout of heaven:Satanrefusedto bow to Adam because he styled himself a strict monotheist. He was thrown out of heaven for his pride and his fanatical literalism.Muslimslike to point out thathumanbeings are superiorto angels both because angels have no passion, so thereis no moralstruggleto overcome desire, and because angels, being pure reason, possess little doubt, so again no moral struggleand achievementare possible. The humanfoibles of prideand arrogance in one's own reason are often spoken of as shaitani, and little boys who possess these foibles in abundanceare often tolerantlycalled shaitan for their willful naughtiness.Rushdiethematizesthis by having Gibreelsee himself frequentlyas "Shaitancast fromthe sky," andeven Chamchaas a goat-devil. Gibreel'sdreams often begin with falling: falling past his motherwho calls him shaitan for having put Muslim meat compartmentsinto Hindu non-veg tiffin carriers;falling as "shaitancast from the sky" past his daughtersLat, Manat, and Uzza, who laugh at the struggles that lie ahead for the Prophet(anotherrole forced on Gibreel in the nightmare);and falling as that half-awaredreamthat one is asleep, that can lead to panic of not being in control ("Got bugs in the brain;full mad, a looney tune and a gone baboon"), a fear of being half mad thatthe Prophethimself must have occasionallyworriedaboutas he made his way up Mt. Araratat age 44 (Mt. Cone in Rushdie;Gibreel is just past 40 too). Doubt is the humancondition. Rushdiedoes parodyIslam, but much of this parodyis a critiquenot foreign like to fundamentalists Khomeini. Both KhomeiniandRushdiemakefun of ritual for ritual's sake, ablutionsmade endlessly: indeed this is the subject of rich humorousanecdotesby Muslims aboutthemselves. In Rushdie's handsthis subject becomes the image of Mecca as Jahilia(the termfor paganignorance,and for the secular moder world in the lingo of fundamentalists),where water is the great enemy: "In the sand city, their obsession with watermakes them freakish, ablutions, always ablutions." The image generatesa series of elaborations(the watery

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in reincarnation the English Channelfor the two brown men who fall from the Englandas maritimepowerversusIslam as a continentalpower; egg-pod-airliner: Englandas the secularWest, Islam as the religious East). But wateris also a purifying agent, and the lowly task of carryingwater is honored in Rushdie's account in the figureof Khalidthe watercarrier,one of the Prophet'sfirstconverts. Waterhere representsthe virtuesof Islam againstthe ignoranceof the pre-Islamic Mecca ruledby Abu Simbel and Hind. Abu Simbel (Egypt) and Hind (India)both became Islamicized but only Egypt fully so: India maintainedits own strong Hindutraditions,just as Hind in Rushdie's fantasycity swears eternalenmity towardMahound.Hind is also the name of the wife of Brickall Streetcafe owner, MuhammadSufyan: she is the hard businesswoman, who has no sympathyfor SaladinChamcha'splight, seeing him as Satanincarnate,notjust a fallible human shaitan. Is there replicationhere of the softer male, the Muslim, and the harder female, Hindu?Hind, moreover, in Rushdie's fable is the patronof the goddess Al-Lat, and while the primarystory of Al-Lat is a purely Muslim one (and thus the only meaning that half-literateMuslims can see), a complementarymeaning within the symbolic economy of Rushdie's novels is the goddess figure of India in (thinkof Parvarti-Kali Midnight'sChildren,as well as the creative-destructive sense of divinity;also Saleem-Shivaandtheirparallelsandcrossingwith GibreelSaladin). Rushdie makes one furtherjibe here that again is not out of step with Islamic tradition:he calls the Qureishitribe, ruled by Abu Simbel and Hind (the tribeof Muhammad),the "Shark" tribe, punningon theirbeing both sharkbusinessmen and sherk (hereticsof the variety that allow God's divinity to be shared with othergods). The story of Al-Lat's rivalry with Allah is richly worked out in Rushdie's fable: there is much more to it than reductionto the gharaniqstory. First of all, the beautifulswans of sfra 53:19-20 are changed by Rushdie into black apparition-like birds. Perhapsthe white skin and hairof the female idols of desire connect with these images of Lat, Manat,andUzza: PamelaLovelace, Alleluia Cone, and Ayesha the prophetessof the Indianvillage are all so described;and all turn out to be false gods. But in any case, the story of Al-Lat is internalto Gibreel's nightmarethat he is being forced to play the roles both of the archangelGabriel and of the Prophet.Professionalactorthathe is, he thinksthroughthe imageryin terms of camerashots. The scene imagining the aftermathof the first revelation carnival, the fes(allowing compromise)is set on the last night of a masquerade tival of Ibrahim.Abu Simbel recites Islamic prayersas if a convert, as had been agreedthroughthe compromiseformula;but behindthe scenes his men are out to kill the Muslims. The assassins wear masksof manticores(scarletlions with three rows of teeth, blue eyes, voices like a mix of trumpetsand flutes, and nails like corkscrews, shades of the manticoreSaladinfinds in the hospital). The Muslims are worse than unprepared: Khalidthe water carrier,Bilal (the black first muezzin), and Salman Farsi (the scribe) had gotten drunkin despair at the Prophet's compromise(this would have been before the revelationsthatcompletely forbade drinking),and it is only throughthe heroismof Hamza(uncle of the Prophet)that the manticoresarerouted:he kills two (bothbrothersof Hind), andtwo othersrun

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away. Meanwhilethe Prophetwakes up in Hind's bed; she claims she had found him in the streetdrunk,but he slowly remembersfaintingat the sight of his drunk disciples. They spar: "You are sand, I am water, water washes away sand." "The desert soaks up water." In a brief interlude,Gibreel manages to rouse himself from this distressing dream("dreams cause all the problems, movies too") and fights off sleep, "but he's only human and falls down the rabbithole and there he is in Wonderland again up the mountainand the businessmanis waking"). Gibreel and the busiwrestle, but the latterforces the voice, the Voice, to pour over nessman-Prophet him, while jinn, afreet, and the three winged creatures(Lat, Uzza, and Manat) watch. The Prophetnow returnsto Mecca to expunge the foul verses. His disciples conclude thatthe episode was a didactic lesson: "You broughtus the devil, yes thatsoundslike me" (comparesura22:52-55). The Muslimsnow have to slip out of Mecca/Jahiliato save themselves from the revenge of Hind. But poor Gibreel cannotget away from Lat, Uzza, and Manatso easily: his dreamscontinue. Thereis then the two-partchapter,"Ayesha": the interludebefore the Muslims returnvictorious(displacedto the interludebeforeKhomeinireturnsto Iran), andthe resultsof blind faith in village India.The Imamin exile section (displaced from Paristo London)is done with the trenchant of a Daumier:"unsleeping, pen
staring into the future," "exile is a dream of glorious return . . . vision of revolution, Elba not St. Helena . . . an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back . . . frozen in time"; "enemy of images. When he moved in the

are picturesslid noiselessly from the walls"; "some representations allowed to remain:conventionalimages of homeland(Desh, Urdufor one's ruralhomeland), and a portraitof the Empress Ayesha: they plot each other's deaths"; another pictureof EmpressAyesha in the bedroomdrinkingblood; "the curtainsare kept closed so thatno foreignercan creep in"; "guardsdisguised as women in shrouds and silvery beaks stroll the KensingtonStreets"; Bilal X (shades of Malcolm X), a convert and formersinger, shacked up with a redheadwho turnedout to be a formerlover of the Savak chief-one needs to be vigilant in this world; his son Khalid(AhmadKhomeini)bringshim glasses of water(Khalidthe watercarrier), waterfilteredby an Americanmachine;he wrote a famous monographon water on (i.e., his Risalah Towzfhal-MasdCil: all the rules of purity, and otherduties). Bilal is at the radio transmitter, turningWesterntechnology against itself, as he begins with the ritualabuseof the Empress(see above). Beyond EmpressAyeshafahisha the enemy is history herself (female), history is an intoxicant(figure of desire), and after the revolution clocks will be banned. All this is deliciously funny, and it is strikingthatno Muslims seem to have been in the least perturbed by the vilificationof Khomeini, despite the fact that Khomeiniearly in the revolution made it a crime to vilify him or the revolution. Then thereis the wonderfulimage of the flight of Khomeiniback to Iranand the final course of the revolutionin February1979. It begins as a parodyof Muhammad'snightjourney (mi'raj) on Buraq,the mystical flying horse. The Imam conjuresup Gibreel, ordershim to fly him back to "Jerusalem," slings his beard over his shoulder, hoists up his skirts and climbs onto Gibreel's back. As they

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approachthe city [of Tehran]they see the palace on the slopes of the perfectly conical mountain(Mt. Cone), and below in the city, the avenues are filled with demonstrators. Guns shoot down the people, mothersurging their childrenon to be martyrs.The palace burstslike an egg andthe winged apparition Latbreaks Al out of Ayesha's shell. The Imam forces Gibreel to fight her till she falls. The Imamthen, grown monstrous,lies with his mouthopen at the gates of the palace and the people marchin. Victory of waterover wine. Gibreel's nightmarethen turnsto India, to Mishal, a village zamindar'swife prayingfor a child, and an epileptic girl, Ayesha, covered in butterflies.The butterfliesare familiarsof a holy saint, Bibiji, whose grave once curedthe impotent. Ayesha sells dolls, but loses her touch; her hair turns white at age 19, her skin becomes luminous (the same happenedto Pamela Lovelace and Alleluia Cone), andthe Archangelcame to her (she who lies with an archangelis lost to men) and told her that Mishal has cancer and they must walk to Mecca to kiss the black stone. The chapter, "The Partingof the ArabianSea," follows this sad procession, as people die, defect, areravishedby flood andothercalamities. They arrive at the ArabianSea and march in: the sea closes over them, a few turnback, and a few bodies are recoveredand revived. The survivorsall claim to have seen the sea partand the promise of miraclefulfilled. The key chapterof the four is the "Returnto Jahilia" (Mecca) afterthe hijra, for it containsthe threeintuitionsaboutSalmanFarsiwantingto believe, and testing the Prophet, only to have his belief shattered;about how the imposition of rules, rules, rules, brings resistanceand avoidance (black marketin pork, secret prayingto the old gods, mutteringsabout the special license the Prophethas to marryso many wives; and aboutthe resentmentthat is psychologically vented in the brothelsatire. The stories, as noted above, are all in the hadithliterature; what Rushdiehas done is to turnthem into powerfulpsychologicalfigurations,realistic analoguesfor contemporary psychic pressuresamong those caughtbetween fundamentalistreligion and secularlife "in the movies." The final chapterof the book is a modem apocalyptic, and it is Chamcha who survives, not Gibreelwhose storyhas dominatedthroughout: note the chapter headings are all devoted to Gibreel. Chamchahas returnedto Bombay to see his dying father. Gibreel has made a series of films with Sisodia but they have not done well: "The Partingof the ArabianSea" with Ayesha played by Pimple Billimoria, a film aboutMahound,and the Ramayanaredone with the old heroes as evil and the villain as hero. The last seemed like a deliberateprovocationof the sectarians,done by Gibreelknowing it cannotsucceed. (This, of course, is a comment on Rushdie himself, but is otherwise a slip: there is a Jain version of the Ramayanathat does precisely this inversion.) In the end, Gibreel kills Sisodia, Alleluia, and himself. Chamchais left saying: let the bulldozerscome, if the old refusedto die, the new could not be born. It is the Fall come full circle:the archangel Satan and Adam both are thrownout of Paradise:only Adam survives in today's worldof the deathof God, placing on manthe full responsibilityfor (moral) creation. It is Nietzschean modernismrestatedin Muslim idiom. Perhapsa strongerending might be found, stuff for anothernovel, in which maybe a Zeeny Vakil-like figurein the West might star, not as a chamcha, but as

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a multicultural pioneer, with other issues than repression and resentment, with movies and the media thematized not just as dreams and displacements and fantasy work, but as creative/positive political forces (Max Headroom style?). But as a first portrayal of Muslim immigrants in Britain, this novel blazes a far distance.

Literature to Think With

The novel is the privileged arenawhere languages in conflict can meet, bringingtogether in tension and dialogue, not only opposing characters,but also differenthistoricalages, social levels, civilization and otherdawningrealitiesof humanlife. -Carlos Fuentes, Guardian,24 February1989 [Reprintedin Appignanesiand Maitland1989:245] So where do we turn, we who see the limits of liberalismand fear the absolutistdemands of fundamentalism?This is ironically the central problem in The Satanic Verses. . . . TheSatanic Versesis a post-colonialworkthatattemptsthe onerousduty of unravellingthis culturaltranslation. -Homi Bhaba,New Statesman,3 March(1989a:34-35) Rushdie's work performs six critical functions: 1. It attempts to block racist and narrative stereotypes, first by providing a powerful sense of the vital, humor-filled, anxious, creative imagination and in-

teriorityof several classes of ex-colonials and immigrants("I must say I'm very takenwith the idea of being a Mughal. It lends a certaintone. And it permitsme to think of myself in Britainnot merely as a first-generation immigrant,but as a fellow ex-imperialist"),22and therebyblocking stereotypescreatedfrom typifications, includingthe "sufferingvictim" frameimposedby "politically correct"
liberals and radicals, or the uneducated frame (be it technologically inept, or democratic values and respect for Western rules of the game) imposed by well-meaning conservatives or resentful reactionaries. Postmodern literature, such as Rushdie's, breaks with a series of traditional tropes about the past, about the Third World, and about nationalism. It first of all breaks with the tropes of nostalgia for past community, seeing both past and present as deeply conflict-ridden and ideologically outrageous. Such postmoder literature attempts to reconnect in Gestalt-switching ways the ruins of the past, contemporary politics and technologies, and the emergent interreligious, intercommunal, interideological world of cultural intereferences (interreferences, interferences). There can be a political edge to such projects: re-describingthe world is the necessary first step towardschanging it. And particularly at times when the state takes reality into its own hands and sets aboutdistorting it, alteringthe past to fit its presentneeds, then the makingof the alternativerealities of art, includingthe novel of memory, becomes politicized. [Rushdie 1983c:78] While Muslim fundamentalists are necessarily unhappy with rejections of their project to see the world as an emergent Muslim oeconome, Rushdie's work

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is equally disruptiveto the romanticviews of Britainheld by most Englishmen andAmericans("the Britisharedeludedaboutthemselvesandtheirsociety. They still for the most partthink it the fairest, most just, most decent society ever created" [1983c:81]). Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, FarokhDhondy, the artistRasheed Araeem, and others have begun portrayingthe harsherundersidesof Thatcherite England:racist, economically pressed, class-riven, and violent.23Rushdie, howthe ever, goes beyond Kureishiand Dhondy's accountsby transcending workingclass genres and tropes they have applied to the newly intercultural,immigrant worldof the 1980s Britain.One of the centralandmost powerfulscenes in Satanic Verses is the riot scene in the East End. It is continuouswith not only the motivating scene for Rushdie's preceding novel, Shame,24but also with Kureishi's films, My Beautiful Laundrette,and Sammyand Rosie Got Laid. Yet, Rushdie lays claim, as does BharatiMukherjeein America, to the wider literarytradition of migration,displacement,minoritystatus: Indian writers England accessto a second in have fromtheir own tradition, apart quite racial It and of of history. is thecultural political history thephenomenon migration, life We claim,asourancesdisplacement, in a minority group. canquitelegitimately the tors,the Huguenots, Irish,the Jews;the pastto whichwe belongis an English of Britain. Marx as muchourliterary are Swift,Conrad, past,thehistory immigrant forebears Tagore RamMohan as or 1983c:82] Roy. [Rushdie This is workedinto the textureof Satanic Verses not only in a generalphilosophical way, but throughthe women to whom Rushdie's charactersare marriedor dedicatedher firstcollection pairedin work settings. In a similarvein, Mukherjee of shortstories on life in North America to the inspirationof BernardMalamud. 2. Revisioning history, alternativenarrative perspectives. Rushdie's novels gaily pull apartnationalistpretensions,ideological veils, corruptdisciplinaryinstitutions(the state, the police, the media, etc.) of both Third and First World authoritystructures.The Congress Partystate of IndiraGandhi, especially under the EmergencyAct of the 1970s, the Sindhi/Punjabi state of PakistanunderZulfikarAli Bhutto and GeneralZia-ul-Haq, BritainunderMargaretThatcher,and Islam underthe shadowof Khomeiniare all equally subjectedto merciless attack. But the novels are all far richerthanpolitical attacks:they revision history in unforgettable ways. Rushdie's magisterial second novel, Midnight's Children, breaks with the Raj and GandhianIndependencestruggle epic frames of most 20th-centuryIndian, Anglo-Indian,and BritishwritingaboutIndia. It does so by a stunningrevaluation the independencemovementin which the latteris all but of narrative rushesfrom Amritsar1919 to Agra 1942 withoutcomment, ignored(the observes one reader [Brennan 1987]; and it remembersnot necessarily the key moments of the anticolonialistmovement, complains another),25 displacing the law, order,andprogresspaeansof those heroic epic narratives attendingto the by and the unruly vitality underneath. bungling, the compradorauthoritarianism, The narrativeconsiders the fate of the Indian generation born in 1949, seen througha magical network ("parliament") of those born at the midnight stroke

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of independence,each of whom have specialpowers. This generationhas suffered ratherthan being liberated. The liberationtrope is that of an older generation's the story. The bungling/suffering,however, is not a dirge of pessimism;26 novel "teems" with possibilities of renewal and rebirthas well. A complementary narrative device, used again, more fully in the novel about Pakistan,is a linking of generational perspectivewith family history:history as sets of stories of rivalries with theirown axes to grind. The parallels and conflicts told by fallible narrators here with GunterGrass and Gabriel Garcia Marquezare obvious. In any case, how falsely civic-bookish do standardhistories of India and Pakistan seem by comparison,and how flat and unrealmost sociologies of Britain. 3. Decolonizing the English language,expandingits richnessand flexibility, infusing it with new rhythms,new histories, new angles:
The British . . . also left us this dominion of spoons. And the English language . . . is taintedby history as a result. Somethingof the unwashedodour of the

like The around cadences. language, muchelse in thenewlyinits chamcha lingers in remade otherimagesif thoseof us societies,needsto be decolonized, dependent culture to be morethanartistic are outsideAnglo-Saxon who use it frompositions UncleToms.[Rushdie 1982a]

One may say thatJamesJoyce began this taskanddid it in Finnegan's Wakemore richly, certainly more intensively. But Joyce is unreadableexcept to the few, whereasRushdieis availableto a wider audience, and in any case Rushdiemore centrally involves the mid and late 20th-century Subcontinent and Muslim worlds, both of which are spilling theirpopulationsinto the West, as Irelandand the marginsof Europedid a centuryearlier.How static, sanitized, and unrealistic seem most science fiction projectionsof futuresociety by comparison!As Rushdie points out, he is heir to a traditionof such play with IndianEnglish beginning with G. V. Desani's All About H. Hatterr, which turnedbabu English against itself, and Raja Rao's experimentswith the rhythmsand movementof both vernacularand Sanskritlinguistic patterns.27 And, of course, such play nowadaysis not limitedto the Englishfromthe Subcontinent: Africa, the Caribbean,and elseresources. their where are also contributing the4. Expandingcosmopolitan sensibilities. An interestingundercurrent maticin Rushdie's work is a redemptionof a cosmopolitanPersiansensibility("I must say I'm very takenwith the idea of being a Mughal"), againstboth political or Arabicized("pure") Islam and againstEuropeanculturalcolonialism. This is most explicit in Grimusand in Satanic Verses. In the latter, there is the identification (which Rushdie has acknowledgedin interviews)of Salman Rushdie and SalmanFarsi, the Persianscribe to the Prophet,who accordingto Persiannationalist satiricalaccounts was the behind the scenes authorof the Qur'anfor the illiterateArabprophet.In Grimus,the Persianstratumis even more central:"Griof" mus" is an anagram simurg," the mysticalbirdof Persianlegend. The novel, abouta vision quest of an AmericanIndian(a play on Columalthoughostensibly bus's quest and displacementof "Indian" onto the Americas),28is built around

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Attar'smystical poem, The Conferenceof the Birds, as well as images from Firdausi's Shahnameh.It is an invertedDanteanjourney (or Prophet'smi'raj) from Phoenix (a simurg-likebird), Arizona, to the Mediterranean (betwixtNew World and Old, primitive and archaic, Occident and Orient), and there up an islandmountainpurgatoryof cosmopolitanism (Calf Island, that is, both golden calf idolatry,andMt. Qaf of the Qur'an,the sira aboutJudgmentDay), guided by an English pedant named Virgil Jones. The ascent to the peak is to find wisdom, Grimus,the Simurg, like the thirtybirdsof Attarwho eventuallyfindout thatthey are the simurg ("thirty birds"); compare Firdausi's line, "There is no lack of knowledge, but then it is dispersedamongstall the folk." (In Firdausi,the simurg is the mystical protectorof the House of Zal and Rustam, the champions who protectthe integrityof the Iranianempire.) Midnight's Children is an encyclopedic novel, like Finnegan's Wake or Gravity'sRainbow, and it too opens up cosmopolitan vistas for Indiancivilization. Containedwithin it, as Timothy Brennan(1987) deftly points out, is a deliberatepresentationof a whole literarytraditionto an English-speakingreadership-Vedic, Puranic, epic, television, cinema, oral storytelling, and various stages of the Anglo-Indiannovel-as well as a critiqueof all these by parodying their misuses. There are ironic referencesto Raj genre writing-especially to E. M. Forster'sA Passage to India and Paul Scott's Jewel in the Crown-as well as a metacommentary the narrator bothIndianandmodernistWesternfictional on by techniques, therebycritically drawingattentionto the imperialrelationshipsthat aboutthe effects of his own implicatethem both, includingworriesby the narrator fabulations. There are hilarious versions of historical events seen from askew points of view not unlike GunterGrass's technique in The Tin Drum; multiple dialects, includingthe Anglo-English literalisttranslationsof InIndian-English dian languageidioms, the interpolations Urduand Hindi, the alteredspellings of of Indian-English,language as a word game drawing attentionto the polyvocal linguistic strataof English as a world language drawingon multiple horizons of usage; a "teeming" of stories in the loosely connected thousand-and-one nights manner;a "postmodern" news media style of desensitized accountsof catastrophe, war, and violence; and above all, as mentionedabove, a revaluationof the independencemovementfrom heroic to bunglingtones, thematizingas centralthe domestic collaborator,the chamcha. The chamcha is not only a major figure in Rushdie's novels, but also is a stock figure of other Third World literaturesas well.29 5. The chamcha. If the Persian stratum,and cosmopolitanismmore generally, is a centraltheme, a complementarycritical focus is the psychological and emotional dynamics of the chamchanot just as a toady or collaborator,but as a
range of intercultural types. As it is put prophetically in the Satanic Verses: A man who sets out to make himself up is takingon the Creator'srole, accordingto one way of seeing things; he's unnatural,a blasphemer,an abominationof abominations. Fromanotherangle, you could see pathosin him, heroismin his struggle, in his willingness to risk:not all mutantssurvive. Or, considerhim sociopolitically:most migrantslearn, and can become disguises. [Rushdie 1988:49]

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SaladinChamcha,who falls from the airlinerin bowler hat and three-piecesuit, singing Christianhymns and "Rule Britannia," is the ferventwould-be Englishman, sent for schooling to England,estrangedfromhis homelandandfamily, and embarrassedwhen on the plane returningfrom Bombay, the stewardesswakes him and he finds his voice, face, and gesturesslipping back into the cadences of he Indian-English had struggledso hardto overcome:
"Accha, means what? . . So, okay, bibi, big give one whiskysodaonly" . . . He had come awake with a jolt .... How had the past bubbled up, in transmogrified

vowels andvocab?Whatnext?Wouldhe taketo putting coconutoil in his hair? he Would taketo squeezing nostrils his between thumb forefinger, and blowingnoisfortha glutinous silverarcof muck? [1988:34] ily anddrawing His very name is an orgy of transformations: SaladinChamcha,Salad Baba, Sallyspoon, Spoono, Spoono my old Chamch, Salahuddin,son of ChangeezChachawalla. His occupationis an actor, the man of a thousandvoices who on British radiocan imitateany character,but is not allowed to show his face. Gibreel Farishta,the movie star, who plays gods (the elephant-headed Ganesh, the monkey Hanuman, and then became a sex idol when he played Krishna),is also never himself, takingon roles andfindingthey controlhim, fearof ing the slippageof his masks into recurring nightmares being an archangeland of fearinghimself going mad because of transgressions prophet, againstMuslim taboos. As he falls from the aircraft,he strugglesto stay uprightand awake and not slip back into nightmare; sings an impromptu he ghazal, "To be born again,
first you have to die . . . Hoji Hoji . . . first one needs to fly"; and then the hit

song from "Mr. 420": "O my shoes are Japanese,these trousersEnglish, if you please. On my head, red Russian hat;my heart'sIndianfor all that." There are interestingchamchafiguresin Shame andMidnight'sChildrenas well. Omar Khayyam Shakil, for instance, is named after a poet known best he throughan English translation; is an illegitimate child of an unknownfather who may be English, raised by three mothers, educated with his grandfather's from an Englishman,wherehe learnsto manipulate librarypurchased people from a Europeanhypnosis manual. He is said to know no shame, nor comprehendthe emotionsof embarrassment, shyness, modesty, or having a properplace. Thatis, he representsa stratumof colonial society trainedto be withoutconscience.30 In Midnight'sChildren, Saleem's uncle's half-Iranian wife is driven insane by the need to be a chamchato 47 wives of the "numberones" (1980:467), Pakistani leaderswhose fortuneswere built on the miseries of fleeing Hindusduring this Partition; passing detail is blown up to full frame in Shame. More centrally, Saleem Sinai, the narrator,worries about his own culpability for events as the writerof fictions, comparinghis storytellingto the Bombay talkies (illusions that become less coherentthe closer to the screenyou come), andtreatinghis own tale of skepticallyas he hopes one shouldthe lies andideological propaganda the state. As Brennanpoints out, evil lies less in the corrupted elite or the state, thanin the betweenthe megcollaboration betweenthe masses andchamchas,the interaction alomaniaof leaders who confuse their persons with the nation and the gullible

BOMBAY TALKIES 153

masses impatientwith history lessons or skeptical questioning. Rushdie thematizes and metaphorizesthese nationalistillusions as a problemof writing in oral folklore form that at the same time is a literarynovel form, with each character having a magical folkloric functionas well as a novelistic character development function. Saleem Sinai recognizes thathe himself has a class position, and thatto write for all India, he needs the collaborationof plebian commentatorssuch as Padmaand Shiva. Padmais servant/mistress, "lotus" (bornin slime, but able his to reach for higher beauty), crude, gullible, uninterestedin the "lessons of the past"; she and Saleem have a conflictualrelationship,casting doubt on the reliabilityof the stories Saleem tells and the way he tells them or the effectiveness of the telling for personslike her. Shiva is a changelingwith Saleem: Shiva grew up poor, Hindu, sexually potent, rough and elemental, while Saleem grew up rich, Muslim, impotentand sterile. (Brennanprovides a superbreadingof how these figures work as unifying recursive transformsof the Indian myths of Ganesh, Shiva, Brahma, and Parvati, and of the world of Indian politics.) Shiva is the figureof the potent, destructive,rough, and violent political leadersof India, Saleem the figureof the impotentintellectuals,the critics, with theircreativedreamings. Both in their own ways can be chamchas. 6. Finally, Rushdiethematizesthe media of communication,writing, movies, scripture.Grimusdeals with myth, Midnight's Childrenwith plebian forms writtenby a scribe in the fashion of the Ramayana,Shame with oral stories told by elite women, and Satanic Verses with movies and the Qur'anicand hadithliteratureas they reverberatethrough oral storytelling (of Gibreel's mother) and dream. Satanic Verses takes the hadithliteratureof Islam seriously, and by exposing to the outside world what normally is communal discourse, challenges Muslims to develop a critical consciousness that can withstandscrutiny, or, better, thattreatsitself with good-humored humility. Ironically,comparedto Shame, Satanic Verses is a much mellower book. It is a much richer, less parochialone as well. It does not parodythe Qur'anicstyle, as Brennan,for one, thinksShame does. But it, too, builds upon the repressedviolence of guilt, shame, and humiliation-powerful emotions capablenot merely of triggeringriots in the East End, but also of death sentences againstnovelists. The whole corpus of Rushdie's work gives rich food for thoughtfor a large range of problemshaving to do with the process of immigration-its strains, its class differences-and the problems of culturaltransformation milieus where in intellectualsand people are often at odds, not just in their discourses but in the very media they use to express themselves. Notes ShootWriters, Don't They? a collection essays,editedby GeorgeTheiner is of 'They in contributedpiececalled"Casualties Censorship." begins, a 1984,to whichRushdie of It of are .. "Myfirstmemories censorship cinematic ." 2lranTimes,10 March1989, pp. 18, 52. Merelybanning boycotting book, he exor a

plained, does not destroy the text, and may indeed gain for it more readers, so harsher

154 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY methodsmust be found. To my ear a second fear also resonates,as if he were saying, "We hadto do somethingbefore they turnedRushdie'snovel into a movie." It is worthknowing that Khameineioriginally was one of the moderateswho suggested Rushdie might gain clemency with the properapology and withdrawalof the book, but Khomeiniunequivocably quashedany such suggestions. 3Firstappearingin Guardian, 24 February1989, reprintedin Appignanesiand Maitland, eds. (1989:247-248). 4IbnAbi al-'Awja used to heckle duringImam Sadiq's lecturesat the mosque in Medina, calling out "Nonsense!" frequently.Studentswere incensed and wanted to beat him up, but the Imam told them to let Ibn al-CAwja speak. Eventuallythe Imam asked Mofaddal ibn Umarto write a response, the well-knownTawhid-iMufad.dal. One day duringthe hajj in Mecca, Ibn Abi al-'Awja came to the Imamand said, "How long will these oxen [Muslims] continueto plough this desert [barren religion]?" The Imamrespondedby citing the verse prohibiting duringthe hajj. But afterthe hajjseason, the Imam argument disputatious came to Ibn 'Awja and said, "Let me answer with your own style of logic. If there is no God, and everythingis absurd,then Muslim worshiperslose nothingby theirworship;but is if thereis a God and Muhammad his messenger, then woe is to you on JudgmentDay." A thirdfamous story-again very relevantto a revolutionarysituationwhen much is excused on the grounds of crisis-has to do with the first Imam, Ali, during the battle of Jamal:A man came to him and said, "How do we know God exists?" One of Ali's men drew his sword to slay the man, saying now is no time for such debates;you endangerus all by deflectingattentionfrom the battle. But Ali stayed the sword, saying, "On the contrary,we must clarify why we are fighting, else the fightinghas no point." 5Firstcited by Malcolm Yapp in the Independent,22 February1989, reprintedin Appignanesi and Maitland,eds. (1989:95). 6Withinthe novel itself, it is a comic commenton the earlierscene, made famous through reviews and interviews with Rushdie probingthe relationbetween his own life and those in the novel: young Chamchais forced to eat kippersfor breakfastat public school in England. It is 90 minutesof agony: no one shows him how to eat it, and he struggleswith the bones, not allowed to get up before he finishes. He swore to get revenge on England:to show them thathe can conquer. 7Inthe 1950s Sagyagit Ray introducedboth a neo-realist,social conscience-orientedfilm, and also a sense of the analytic, intellectualpossibilities of modernistfilm. 8Fourchief ministersof Tamilnaduhave been actorsor filmmakers,swept to power by fan club organizations.The two best known such political figures are M. G. Ramachandran (d. 1987), who duringhis acting careeralways played heroroles, andcarefullyonly spoke M. lines that defended the down-trodden; N. T. Rama Rao of Karnataka. G. R. and and his D.M.K. partyused films filled with party symbols and colors, disseminatedthrough the electrificationthat made ruralcinemas popular.See Dickey (1988). 9Otherversions of dogma, of course, insist that Muhammadis a fallible humanbeing, a model precisely in the humanmoralstruggleto attainrighteousness:this is the position the Qur'antakes when it speaks in Sura al-Najm, and elsewhere, of God setting trials for his followers. raTheqharadnqare an unidentified,presumablysupernatural, species of bird. The term occurs in pre-Islamicpoetry in several variantforms:ghurnuq,ghirniq, ghurndyq,ghur-

BOMBAY TALKIES 155 dntq; pl., ghardniq, ghardniq, gharaniqa. The respected Arabic dictionary, al-Munjid, compiled by the Jesuit Fr. Louis, describes it as a water bird with wide wings and long legs; and as a secondarymeaning, beautiful, white, youth or young woman. ShaykhAbu Ja'farTusi's al-Tibydn(7:292), citing al-Hasan[al-Basri]gives the meaning also of "angels." Other translationsvariously use "swans," "pretty birds," "high-flying birds," and "exalted females."
l

Tilkal-ghardntqal-culawa inna shafa'ata-hunnala-turtaja.

12"Buraq" is a term of uncertainorigin, possibly connected with barq ("lightening") as in a flash of (divine) inspirationor vision. It would seem iconographicallyto be relatedto the winged horsesof ancientIranand Mesopotamia,or the classical chimera,Pegasus, and centaurfigures. It is a singularimage in Islamic iconography.The closest other figure is the horse of Imam Husain, Dhu al-Janah (literally "winged," i.e., swift), which mystiImamHusain's wife (the daughterof the last Sassanianking of Iran)back cally transported to Iranafter Husain was martyredat Karbala.The notion of tayyal-ard (the ability to be is transported throughspace instantaneously) a common lesser miracle(karamat)in Shi'ite folklore, a power thatmanyulema are said to have possessed, andthatcertainlythe Imams possessed.

3"'Andwhen Our signs are recited to them, clear signs, those who look not to encounter Us say, 'Bring a Qur'another than this, or alter it.' Say to them: 'It is not for me to alter it of my own accord. I follow nothing, except what is revealed to me. Truly I fear, if I should rebel against my Lord, the chastisementof a dreadfulday' . . . who does greater evil thanhe who forges againstGod a lie, or cries lies to His signs? . . . they say, 'These are our intercessorswith God' " (10:16-18). 14For example, maqalid(the Arabicizedpluralof the Persiankelid, "key") for which there exists a perfectly good Arabic word (mafatih); also jiziya, the Sassaniantax adaptedby Islam as a poll tax on minoritiesof the People of the Book.
15"When we let the people taste mercy after hardshiphas visited them, lo, they have a device concerningOur Signs."

1614February1989, "BandungFile," Channel4, reprintedin Appignanesiand Maitland (1989). 7InMidnight'sChildren,Rushdiesays "420" means "fraudand deception" (1980:193). '8Najm("The Star"), sura53, where the "Satanic Verses" are said to have occurred.
9'"Especially in the afternoon heat when the air turned glutinous, the visible world . . . seemed to be sticking up throughthe atmospherelike a profusionof hot icebergs, and he had the idea that everything continued below the surface of the soupy air ... nine-tenths of their reality concealed from his eyes. . . . He grew up believing in

as God, angels, demons, afreet, djinns, as matter-of-factly if they were bullock-carts..." (1988:22). 20Theseare stunningfigurationsof what Murphy,and otherethnographers other immiof from a grantgroups, describes in flat journalistictones: "any group abruptlytransferred remote corer of Asia to a Europeancity will inevitably have quite a high incidence of 'nervousdisorders'and some older Mirpurissuffer from a chronic lack of physical wellto being attributable no specific disease. But until each Brown communityhas produced

156 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY its own professionalhelpersonly limited aid can be given. White social workers,doctors, andpsychiatrists,however kindly and well-equippedwith background knowledge, cannot
have the necessary 'feel' . . ." (Murphy 1987:54).

is 21Maslama the pairto Chamcha'sseatmateon the airplanefrom Bombay, the creationist scientist who had been to India:each is a pervertedimage of the main character,a creationist making nonsense of Chamcha'sdesire to be a modernWesterner,and Maslamaa religious fanatic who cannot tell Gibreel's screen role from his actualperson. Gibreel already had an earlier encounteron the railway with Maslama in which the latter was his seatmate.The creationistturnsup a second time as well late in the novel. 22Thefull irony perhapsrequiresthe precedingline, "I came to this seminarto learn;and view thatIndiais a counamongthe manyinsightsI've gained is ProfessorNarasimbaiah's try made up of Hindus, Jains, Buddhists,Sikhs, Christians,and Mughals." Borges would love the classificationscheme, the subtle but profoundshift in category. 23Fora stunningportraitof the undersideof white British working-classviolence as revealed in football (soccer) games, see Lesley Hazelton(New YorkTimesMagazine, 8 May 1989). 24Inseveral interviewsas well as in the novel's narrator's voice, Rushdiehas recalledboth and the intense shame this generated, an attackon his sister in the London underground, both the repressedviolence that seethes in people subsuch that he could well understand to such attack, and the lamentablecodes of honor that might cause a fatherto kill jected his own beloved daughter. Ali 25Tariq (1981) notes that the massacre at JallianwallaBagh in Amritsarin 1919 was not as significant as the Moplah uprising in Malabarin 1921 or the Naval Mutiny and generalstrikeof 1946. Moreover, TariqAli would have liked more stress on the Partition so thattraumatized much of the middle classes. to 26Reacting criticisms that the novel ends on a pessimistic note, with the consciousness smashed into 600 million fragments, Rushdie replies that he intended a of the narrator stories may end badly (and have done contrastbetween form and content:while particular so historicallyfor India), one need not be pessimistic aboutthe abilitiesof thatcivilization and to constantlyundergotransformations generatenew stories, and it is this lattermood which Rushdieintendsthe exuberanceof the multipleplots and subplotsto exemplify, and the word "teeming" to convey (Rushdie 1982c:19). 27Seealso Dissanayake(1985). the 28Compare line in Satanic Verses "Columbuswas right, maybe; the world's made up of Indies, East, West, North... Only thing is, we're not Indianlike you. You betterget used to us" (1988:54). 29GeorgeLamming's Mr. Slim, Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People, Ngugi wa Thiong'o's accountsof Kenyan chamchas;but see also the essay literatureby FrantzFanon, O. Manoni, A. Mememi, and Ashis Nady (Rushdie 1982a). 30Seefurtherthe accountin Brennan(1987).

BOMBAY TALKIES 157

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