Rushdie, Salmon - Th.. - hudson's home on the web

<strong>Th</strong>e four of them are washing once more when Mahound arrives; they cluster around him,
whowhatwhy. Hamza stands back. "Nephew, this is no damn good," he snaps in his soldier's bark. "When
you come down from Coney there's a brightness on you. Today it's something dark."
Mahound sits on the edge of the well and grins. "I've been offered a deal." _By Abu Simbel?_ Khalid
shouts. _Unthinkable. Refuse_. Faithful Bilal admonishes him: Do not lecture the Messenger. Of course, he
has refused. Salman the Persian asks: What sort of deal. Mahound smiles again. "At least one of you wants
to know."
"It's a small matter," he begins again. "A grain of sand. Abu Simbel asks Allah to grant him one little
favour." Hamza sees the exhaustion in him. As if he had been wrestling with a demon. <strong>Th</strong>e water--carrier is
shouting: "Nothing! Not a jot!" Hamza shuts him up.
"If our great God could find it in his heart to concede -- he used that word, _concede_ -- that three,
only three of the three hundred and sixty idols in the house are worthy of worship . . ."
"<strong>Th</strong>ere is no god but God!" Bilal shouts. And his fellows join in: "Ya Allah!" Mahound looks angry. "Will
the faithful hear the Messenger?" <strong>Th</strong>ey fall silent, scuffing their feet in the dust.
"He asks for Allah's approval of Lat, Uzza and Manat. In return, he gives his guarantee that we will be
tolerated, even officially recognized; as a mark of which, I am to be elected to the council of Jahilia. <strong>Th</strong>at's
the offer."
Salman the Persian says: "It's a trap. If you go up Coney and come down with such a Message, he'll
ask, how could you make Gibreel provide just the right revelation? He'll be able to call you a charlatan, a
fake." Mahound shakes his head. "You know, Salman, that I have learned how to listen. <strong>Th</strong>is _listening_ is
not of the ordinary kind; it's also a kind of asking. Often, when Gibreel comes, it's as if he knows what's in
my heart. It feels to me, most times, as if he comes from within my heart: from within my deepest places,
from my soul."
"Or it's a different trap," Salman persists. "How long have we been reciting the creed you brought us?
<strong>Th</strong>ere is no god but God. What are we if we abandon it now? <strong>Th</strong>is weakens us, renders us absurd. We cease
to be dangerous. Nobody will ever take us seriously again."
Mahound laughs, genuinely amused. "Maybe you haven't been here long enough," he says kindly.
"Haven't you noticed? <strong>Th</strong>e people do not take us seriously. Never more than fifty in the audience when I
speak, and half of those are tourists. Don't you read the lampoons that Baal pins up all over town?" He
recites:
_Messenger, do please lend a_
_careful ear. Your monophilia_,
_your one one one, ain't for Jahilia_.
_Return to sender_.
"<strong>Th</strong>ey mock us everywhere, and you call us dangerous," he cried.
Now Hamza looks worried. "You never worried about their opinions before. Why now? Why after
speaking to Simbel?"
Mahound shakes his head. "Sometimes I think I must make it easier for the people to believe."
An uneasy silence covers the disciples; they exchange looks, shift their weight. Mahound cries out
again. "You all know what has been happening. Our failure to win converts. <strong>Th</strong>e people will not give up their
gods. <strong>Th</strong>ey will not, not." He stands up, strides away from them, washes by himself on the far side of the
Zamzam well, kneels to pray.
"<strong>Th</strong>e people are sunk in darkness," says Bilal, unhappily. "But they will see. <strong>Th</strong>ey will hear. God is one."
Misery infects the four of them; even Hamza is brought low. Mahound has been shaken, and his followers
quake.
He stands, bows, sighs, comes round to rejoin them. "Listen to me, all of you," he says, putting one
arm around Bilal's shoulders, the other around his uncle's. "Listen: it is an interesting offer."
Unembraced Khalid interrupts bitterly: "It is a _tempting_ deal." <strong>Th</strong>e others look horrified. Hamza
speaks very gently to the water--carrier. "Wasn't it you, Khalid, who wanted to fight me just now because
you wrongly assumed that, when I called the Messenger a man, I was really calling him a weakling? Now
what? Is it my turn to challenge you to a fight?"