The Satanic Verses

palaces do not appear unless a thousand and one labourers build them, nor do they disappear unless the same workers knock them down. On this occasion, however, nobody laughed at the clown, because where Ayesha was concerned the villagers were willing to believe anything. They had grown convinced that the snow-haired girl was the true successor to old Bibiji, because had the butterflies not reappeared in the year of her birth, and did they not follow her around like a cloak? Ayesha was the vindication of the long-soured hope engendered by the butterflies’ return, and the evidence that great things were still possible in this life, even for the weakest and poorest in the land.
    ‘The angel has taken her away,’ marvelled the Sarpanch’s wifeKhadija, and Osman burst into tears. ‘But no, it is a wonderful thing,’ old Khadija uncomprehendingly explained. The villagers teased the Sarpanch: ‘How you got to be village headman with such a tactless spouse, beats us.’
    ‘You chose me,’ he dourly replied.
    On the seventh day after her disappearance Ayesha was sighted walking towards the village, naked again and dressed in golden butterflies, her silver hair streaming behind her in the breeze. She went directly to the home of Sarpanch Muhammad Din and asked that the Titlipur panchayat be convened for an immediate emergency meeting. ‘The greatest event in the history of the tree has come upon us,’ she confided. Muhammad Din, unable to refuse her, fixed the time of the meeting for that evening, after dark.
    That night the panchayat members took their places on the usual branch of the tree, while Ayesha the kahin stood before them on the ground. ‘I have flown with the angel into the highest heights,’ she said. ‘Yes, even to the lote-tree of the uttermost end. The archangel, Gibreel: he has brought us a message which is also a command. Everything is required of us, and everything will be given.’
    Nothing in the life of the Sarpanch Muhammad Din had prepared him for the choice he was about to face. ‘What does the angel ask, Ayesha, daughter?’ he asked, fighting to steady his voice.
    ‘It is the angel’s will that all of us, every man, and woman and child in the village, begin at once to prepare for a pilgrimage. We are commanded to walk from this place to Mecca Sharif, to kiss the Black Stone in the Ka’aba at the centre of the Haram Sharif, the sacred mosque. There we must surely go.’
    Now the panchayat’s quintet began to debate heatedly. There were the crops to consider, and the impossibility of abandoning their homes en masse. ‘It is not to be conceived of, child,’ the Sarpanch told her. ‘It is well known that Allah excuses haj and umra to those who are genuinely unable to go for reasons of poverty or health.’ But Ayesha remained silent and the elders continued to argue. Then it was as if her silence infected everyoneelse and for a long moment, in which the question was settled – although by what means nobody ever managed to comprehend – there were no words spoken at all.
    It was Osman the clown who spoke up at last, Osman the convert, for whom his new faith had been no more than a drink of water. ‘It’s almost two hundred miles from here to the sea,’ he cried. ‘There are old ladies here, and babies. However can we go?’
    ‘God will give us the strength,’ Ayesha serenely replied.
    ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you,’ Osman shouted, refusing to give up, ‘that there’s a mighty ocean between us and Mecca Sharif? How will we ever cross? We have no money for the pilgrim boats. Maybe the angel will grow us wings, so we can fly?’
    Many villagers rounded angrily upon the blasphemer Osman. ‘Be quiet now,’ Sarpanch Muhammad Din rebuked him. ‘You haven’t been long in our faith or our village. Keep your trap shut and learn our ways.’
    Osman, however, answered cheekily, ‘So this is how you welcome new settlers. Not as equals, but as people who must do as they are told.’ A knot of red-faced men began to tighten around Osman, but before anything else could happen the kahin Ayesha changed the mood entirely by answering the clown’s questions.
    ‘This, too, the angel has explained,’ she said quietly. ‘We will walk two hundred miles, and when we reach the shores of the sea, we will put our feet into the foam, and the waters will open for us. The waves shall be parted, and we shall walk across the ocean-floor to Mecca.’

    The next morning Mirza Saeed Akhtar awoke