The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie: A review

The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie's notorious 1988 book that garnered him a fatwa from the ayatollahs, has been on my to-be-read list all these years since, but somehow I just never got around to it. Until now. Maybe it's just as well. Perhaps I wouldn't have had the patience for this complicated tale earlier. It is a difficult but ultimately rewarding read.

The book is so famous as to almost not require a description, but it is full of magical realism and of allusions to Islamic texts, not only the Qur'an, of which I have a woeful ignorance. I'm sure that my ignorance led me to a lack of understanding of some of Rushdie's points and yet I felt that his overall theme regarding human, and especially family, relationships was universal and fully accessible to me.

He begins his story with a hijacked airliner that is blown up over the English Channel by the terrorists who hijacked it. We meet Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha as they are tumbling toward the earth from thirty thousand feet up. Miraculously surviving the fall, they land in the Channel and swim to shore, ending up on a beach in front of the home of an irascible elderly woman named Rosa. The woman confronts them on "her" beach and takes them into her home. The unusual activity on the beach has been noticed by neighbors, however, and they have called the police. The boys in blue arrive and take Chamcha, who seems to be metamorphosing into a goat, into custody. Farishta, who has dressed himself in some of Rosa's dead husband's clothes and claims to be an old friend is left behind.

Did I mention that the two are actors? Farishta is the biggest star in India and Chamcha an actor who provides voice-overs for commercials and gives voice to cartoon characters. He is an expatriate who is just returning to England after his first visit back to Bombay in fifteen years. He is estranged from his father who has married a second wife named Nasreen. Saladin's mother, the first wife, now dead, was also named Nasreen. The relationship between Saladin and his father is in some ways the core story of this book, but it is surrounded by stories of Gibreel (Gabriel) the archangel who may or may not be the being with whom Saladin fell to earth or maybe he's just a paranoid schizophrenic; Mahound (Mohammed) and his twelve wives, particularly the favorite Ayesha; a poet named Baal and twelve whores who play the roles for customers in a whorehouse of the Prophet and his wives; a prophetess named Ayesha who, clothed in living butterflies, leads a village on a haj to Mecca that will take them across the Arabian Sea - on dry land because the seas will part for them. And on and on.

It is often hard to separate reality from magical reality here, but I eventually held onto Chamcha as the bright thread that would lead me out of the maze. After he fell to earth and began to change into a goat, he suffered abuse by the police who arrested him and then was in hospital for a while where he continued to change, until he was befriended by a physiotherapist and helped to escape, along with many other inmates/patients, from the hospital. As he met others who were willing to assist him and as he learned to channel his anger and stop being a patsy, he began to lose his goatish characteristics and returned to being fully human again. Unfortunately, being fully human meant that he was occasionally something of a jerk.

Chamcha causes much pain for some innocent people and eventually ends up in a burning restaurant, trapped under a beam, from which he is rescued by Gibreel. Things have seemingly come full circle. After his recovery - including heart bypass surgery - he is called back to India by Nasreem II because his father is dying. I have to say that perhaps my favorite part of the book was his return to India and his reconciliation with the people he had left behind, because it tied up so many of the loose ends of the story and maybe because it seemed most real and devoid of magic.

This is, in many ways, an amazing book. I understand how fundamentalist Islamists can be offended by it. I don't understand how someone professing a religious turn of mind - or anyone, for that matter - can call for a writer to be murdered because of his words. I am offended by many books, e.g., every one that Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly have ever written. But I wouldn't wish them dead or even silence them. They are idiots but at least they serve the purpose of making the rest of us look smarter in comparison. But I digress.

This is the first and only book of Rushdie's that I've read, but it has certainly piqued my interest. I think I'm ready to tackle some of his others now.

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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