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

higher, until they resemble huge walls and start blotting out the sun. <strong>Th</strong>e lizards arc blue as shadows. <strong>Th</strong>en
you are on the peak, Jahilia behind you, the featureless desert ahead. You descend on the desert side, and
about five hundred feet down you reach the cave, which is high enough to stand upright in, and whose floor
is covered in miraculous albino sand. As you climb you hear the desert doves calling your name, and the
rocks greet you, too, in your own language, crying Mahound, Mahound. When you reach the cave you are
tired, you lie down, you fall asleep.
o o o
But when he has rested he enters a different sort of sleep, a sort of not--sleep, the condition that he
calls his _listening_, and he feels a dragging pain in the gut, like something trying to be born, and now
Gibreel, who has been hovering-above-looking-down, feels a confusion, _who am I_, in these moments it
begins to seem that the archangel is actually _inside the Prophet_, I am the dragging in the gut, I am the
angel being extruded from the sleeper's navel, I emerge, Gibreel Farishta, while my other self, Mahound,
lies _listening_, entranced, I am bound to him, navel to navel, by a shining cord of light, not possible to say
which of us is dreaming the other. We flow in both directions along the umbilical cord.
Today, as well as the overwhelming intensity of Mahound, Gibreel feels his despair: his doubts. Also,
that he is in great need, but Gibreel still doesn't know his lines . . . he listens to the
listening-which-is-also-an-asking. Mahound asks: <strong>Th</strong>ey were shown miracles but they didn't believe. <strong>Th</strong>ey
saw you come to me, in full view of the city, and open my breast, they saw you wash my heart in the
waters of Zamzam and replace it inside my body. Many of them saw this, but still they worship stones. And
when you came at night and flew me to Jerusalem and I hovered above the holy city, didn't I return and
describe it exactly as it is, accurate down to the last detail? So that there could be no doubting the miracle,
and still they went to Lat. Haven't I already done my best to make things simple for them? When you
carried me up to the <strong>Th</strong>rone itself, and Allah laid upon the faithful the great burden of forty prayers a day.
On the return journey I met Moses and he said, the burden is too heavy, go back and plead for less. Four
times I went back, four times Moses said, still too many, go back again. But by the fourth time Allah had
reduced the duty to five prayers and I refused to return. I felt ashamed to beg any more. In his bounty he
asks for five instead of forty, and still they love Manat, they want Uzza. What can I do? What shall I recite?
Gibreel remains silent, empty of answers, for Pete's sake, bhai, don't go asking me. Mahound's anguish
is awful. He _asks_: is it possible that they _are_ angels? Lat, Manat, Uzza . . . can I call them angelic?
Gibreel, have you got sisters? Are these the daughters of God? And he castigates himself, O my vanity, I
am an arrogant man, is this weakness, is it just a dream of power? Must I betray myself for a seat on the
council? Is this sensible and wise or is it hollow and self-loving? I don't even know if the Grandee is sincere.
Does he know? Perhaps not even he. I am weak and he's strong, the offer gives him many ways of ruining
me. But I, too, have much to gain. <strong>Th</strong>e souls of the city, of the world, surely they are worth three angels?
Is Allah so unbending that he will not embrace three more to save the human race? -- I don't know
anything. -- Should God be proud or humble, majestic or simple, yielding or un-? _What kind of idea is he?
What kind am I?_
o o o
Halfway into sleep, or halfway back to wakefulness, Gibreel Farishta is often filled with resentment by
the non--appearance, in his persecuting visions, of the One who is supposed to have the answers, _He_
never turns up, the one who kept away when I was dying, when I needed needed him. <strong>Th</strong>e one it's all
about, Allah lshvar God. Absent as ever while we writhe and suffer in his name.
<strong>Th</strong>e Supreme Being keeps away; what keeps returning is this scene, the entranced Prophet, the
extrusion, the cord of light, and then Gibreel in his dual role is both above-looking-down and
below-staring-up. And both of them scared out of their minds by the transcendence of it. Gibreel feels
paralysed by the presence of the Prophet, by his greatness, thinks I can't make a sound I'd seem such a
goddamn fool. Hamza's advice: never show your fear: archangels need such advice as well as
water-carriers. An archangel must look composed, what would the Prophet think if God's Exalted began to
gibber with stage fright?
It happens: revelation. Like this: Mahound, still in his notsicep, becomes rigid, veins bulge in his neck,
he clutches at his centre. No, no, nothing like an epileptic fit, it can't be explained away that easily; what
epileptic fit ever caused day to turn to night, caused clouds to mass overhead, caused the air to thicken
into soup while an angel hung, scared silly, in the sky above the sufferer, held up like a kite on a golden
thread? <strong>Th</strong>e dragging again the dragging and now the miracle starts in his my our guts, he is straining with
all his might at something, forcing something, and Gibreel begins to feel that strength that force, here it is
_at my own jaw_ working it, opening shutting; and the power, starting within Mahound, reaching up to
_my vocal cords_ and the voice comes.
_Not my voice_ I'd never know such words I'm no classy speaker never was never will be but this isn't
my voice it's a Voice.