Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

The Satanic Verses and the Demonic Text 271held my tongue.)” 63 The narrator implies having either full responsibility orknowledge of the narrated events. Elsewhere, however, the narrator denieshaving full authorial control over the process:And there is a Gibreel who walks down the streets of London, trying tounderstand the will of God. […](I’m giving him no instructions. I, too, am interested in his choices – inthe result of his wrestling match. Character vs destiny: a free-style bout.Two falls, two submissions or a knockout will decide.) 64Instead of an interventionist God, this narrating personage is claimingto be a detached observer in an experiment involving the momentous philosophicaldilemma about free will (‘destiny’ and ‘character’ are two ways ofreferring to the determinism in man’s actions). 65 In a manner consistentwith the novel’s principle of transgression and heterogeneity, this proclamationof separateness between the narrator and the characters does not hold.Gibreel Farishta is described as seeing God; in a hilarious act of blasphemousself-irony, this apparition carries some not-so-flattering likeness tothe author, Salman Rushdie.He saw, sitting on the bed, a man of about the same age as himself, of mediumheight, fairly heavily built, with salt-and-pepper beard cropped closeto the line of the jaw. What struck him most was that the apparition wasbalding, seemed to suffer from dandruff and wore glasses. This was notthe Almighty he had expected. ‘Who are you?’ he asked with interest. […]‘Ooparvala,’ the apparition answered. ‘The Fellow Upstairs.’‘How do I know you’re not the other One,’ Gibreel asked craftily,‘Neechayvala, the Guy from Underneath?’[…] ‘We are not obliged to explain Our nature to you,’ the dressingdowncontinued. ‘Whether We be multiform, plural, representing the union-by-hybridizationof such opposites as Oopar and Neechay, or whetherWe be pure, stark, extreme, will not be resolved here.’ 66The irony of the situation has multiple levels. From a perspective internalto the fiction, this God of The Satanic Verses acts in discordance with hisown words. “The rules of Creation are pretty clear: you set things up, youmake them thus and so, and then you let them roll.” And a bit later: “I saton Alleluia Cone’s bed and spoke to the superstar, Gibreel. Ooparvala orNeechayvala, he wanted to know, and I didn’t enlighten him [...].” 67 The narratorappears as too tempted by the role of the Maker, of the author-God, toresist fooling with his fictional characters’ lives; he actually throws Gibreel63 SV, 256.64SV, 457.65 About the strong deterministic tradition in religion, folklore and literature, see Carl-Martin Edsman, “Divine and Demonic Necessity in the Oresteia” and the other articlescollected in Ringgren 1967.66 SV, 318-19. The “divine” names are here given in Hindustani.67SV, 408-9.