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

is wearing white mourning garments and has loosened her black hair, letting it fly about her like a storm, or
trail in the dust, erasing her footsteps so that she seems like an incarnation of the spirit of vengeance itself.
<strong>Th</strong>ey have all fled the city, and Hamza, too, is lying low; but the word is that Abu Simbel has not, as yet,
acceded to his wife's pleas for the blood that washes away blood. He is still calculating the odds in the
matter of Mahound and the goddesses Mahound, against his followers' advice, returns to Jahilia, going
straight to the House of the Black Stone. <strong>Th</strong>e disciples follow him in spite of their fear. A crowd gathers in
the hope of further scandal or dismemberment or some such entertainment. Mahound does not disappoint
them.
He stands in front of the statues of the <strong>Th</strong>ree and announces the abrogation of the verses which
Shaitan whispered in his ear. <strong>Th</strong>ese verses are banished from the true recitation, _al-qur"an_. New verses
are thundered in their place.
"Shall He have daughters and you sons?" Mahound recites. "<strong>Th</strong>at would be a fine division!
"<strong>Th</strong>ese are but names you have dreamed of, you and your fathers. Allah vests no authority in them."
He leaves the dumbfounded House before it occurs to anybody to pick up, or throw, the first stone.
o o o
After the repudiation of the Satanic verses, the Prophet Mahound returns <strong>home</strong> to find a kind of
punishment awaiting him. A kind of vengeance -- whose? Light or dark? Goodguy badguy? -- wrought, as is
not unusual, upon the innocent. <strong>Th</strong>e Prophet's wife, seventy years old, sits by the foot of a stone--latticed
window, sits upright with her back to the wall, dead.
Mahound in the grip of his misery keeps himself to himself, hardly says a word for weeks. <strong>Th</strong>e Grandee
of Jahilia institutes a policy of persecution that advances too slowly for Hind. <strong>Th</strong>e name of the new religion
is _Submission_; now Abu Simbel decrees that its adherents must submit to being sequestered in the most
wretched, hovel-filled quarter of the city; to a curfew; to a ban on employment. And there are many
physical assaults, women spat upon in shops, the manhandling of the faithful by the gangs of young turks
whom the Grandee secretly controls, fire thrown at night through a window to land amongst unwary
sleepers. And, by one of the familiar paradoxes of history, the numbers of the faithful multiply, like a crop
that miraculously flourishes as conditions of soil and climate grow worse and worse.
An offer is received, from the citizens of the oasis--settlement of Yathrib to the north: Yathrib will
shelter those--who-submit, if they wish to leave Jahilia. Hamza is of the opinion that they must go. "You'll
never finish your Message here, nephew, take my word. Hind won't be happy till she's ripped out your
tongue, to say nothing of my balls, excuse me." Mahound, alone and full of echoes in the house of his
bereavement, gives his consent, and the faithful depart to make their plans. Khalid the water-carrier hangs
back and the hollow-eyed Prophet waits for him to speak. Awkwardly, he says: "Messenger, I doubted you.
But you were wiser than we knew. First we said, Mahound will never compromise, and you compromised.
<strong>Th</strong>en we said, Mahound has betrayed us, but you were bringing us a deeper truth. You brought us the Devil
himself, so that we could witness the workings of the Evil One, and his overthrow by the Right. You have
enriched our faith. I am sorry for what I thought."
Mahound moves away from the sunlight falling through the window. "Yes." Bitterness, cynicism. "It was
a wonderful thing I did. Deeper truth. Bringing you the Devil. Yes, that sounds like me."
o o o
From the peak of Mount Cone, Gibreel watches the faithful escaping Jahilia, leaving the city of aridity
for the place of cool palms and water, water, water. In small groups, almost empty-- handed, they move
across the empire of the sun, on this first day of the first year at the new beginning of Time, which has
itself been born again, as the old dies behind them and the new waits ahead. And one day Mahound himself
slips away. When his escape is discovered, Baal composes a valedictory ode:
_What kind of idea_
_does "Submission" seem today?_
_One full of fear_.
_An idea that runs away_.
Mahound has reached his oasis; Gibreel is not so lucky. Often, now, he finds himself alone on the
summit of Mount Cone, washed by the cold, falling stars, and then they fall upon him from the night sky,
the three winged creatures, Lat Uzza Manat, flapping around his head, clawing at his eyes, biting, whipping
him with their hair, their wings. He puts up his hands to protect himself, but their revenge is tireless,
continuing whenever he rests, whenever he drops his guard. He struggles against them, but they are