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

The Satanic Verses and the Demonic Text 275he cannot open his heart for her – and she is drowning with him. This finallybreaks Mirza Saeed’s heart: he opens up, “and they walked to Mecca acrossthe bed of the Arabian Sea.” 78 If there are moments without pervasive ironyand scepticism in The Satanic Verses, this affirmation of love, the need forbelief in a mutual bond, is one of the strongest candidates.Another moment of reconciliation is at the end of Chamcha’s story: hisfather’s death. “He is teaching me how to die, Salahuddin thought. He doesnot avert his eyes, but looks death right in the face. At no point in his dying didChangez Chamchawala speak the name of God.” 79 The narrator has changed‘Saladin’ back into ‘Salahuddin’ which conveys the idea of some – perhaps alittle bit more “original” – of his many “alternative selves” returning intoChamcha’s life after all his experiences. He does not stick to his bowler hatany more, but faces his starting-points, deals with the relationship with hisfamily and two cultures. Changez Chamchawala demonstrates how one cansustain one’s dignity and individuality when living in one’s own, non-Western tradition. “I have no illusions; I know I am not going anywhere afterthis,” Changez says. What is in common in the atheistic dying ofChangez Chamchawala, and in the final surrender of Mirza Saeed, is thatthey are characterised by the affirmation of an individual choice, and rejectionof official religions or answers. The Satanic Verses speaks for the valueof love, but it is human love, not the ideal love of a transcendent God.FICTION THAT VIOLATES THE LIMITS“Why demons, when man himself is a demon?” asks Isaac Bashevis Singer’s“last demon” in Chamcha’s stream of consciousness. He is tempted to add:“And why angels, when man is angelic, too?” The narrator speaks in thiscontext of Chamcha’s “sense of balance, his much-to-be-said-for-andagainstreflex.” The Satanic Verses makes it impossible to separate one oppositefrom the other – high and low, holy and profane, good and evil are inextricablyentangled with each other. Rushdie connects with that thread of theWestern intellectual heritage which has renounced distinct categories orclear-cut dualisms, and instead sympathised with “Eastern” pluralism. It is aChristian heresy to consider Evil and Good as complementary and mutuallyimplicated; William Blake is such a heretic in writing that “Without Contrariesis no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Loveand Hate, are necessary to Human existence. [/] From these contrariesspring what the religious call Good & Evil.” 80 Blake’s poem is one of the two78SV, 507.79 SV, 531. Italics in the original.80“Marriage of Heaven and Hell”; Blake 1982, 94.