The Satanic Verses

connected with the local Labour Party and was accused by the sitting MP of scheming to take his place when reselection came around.
    When was Mishal Sufyan’s eighteenth birthday? – Not for a few weeks yet. And where was her sister, her roommate, sidekick, shadow, echo and foil? Where was the potential chaperone? She was: out.
    But to continue:
    The news from
Ciné-Blitz
was that a new, London-based film production outfit headed by the whiz-kid tycoon Billy Battuta, whose interest in cinema was well known, had entered into an association with the reputable, independent Indian producer Mr S. S. Sisodia for the purpose of producing a comeback vehicle for the legendary Gibreel, now exclusively revealed to have escaped the jaws of death for a second time. ‘It is true I was booked on theplane under the name of Najmuddin,’ the star was quoted as saying. ‘I know that when the investigating sleuths identified this as my incognito – in fact, my real name – it caused great grief back home, and for this I do sincerely apologize to my fans. You see, the truth is, that grace of God I somehow missed the flight, and as I had wished in any case to go to ground, excuse, please, no pun intended, I permitted the fiction of my demise to stand uncorrected and took a later flight. Such luck: truly, an angel must have been watching over me.’ After a time of reflection, however, he had concluded that it was wrong to deprive his public, in this unsportsmanlike and hurtful way, of the true data and also his presence on the screen. ‘Therefore I have accepted this project with full commitment and joy.’ The film was to be – what else – a theological, but of a new type. It would be set in an imaginary and fabulous city made of sand, and would recount the story of the encounter between a prophet and an archangel; also the temptation of the prophet, and his choice of the path of purity and not that of base compromise. ‘It is a film,’ the producer, Sisodia, informed
Ciné-Blitz
, ‘about how newness enters the world.’ – But would it not be seen as blasphemous, a crime against … – ‘Certainly not,’ Billy Battuta insisted. ‘Fiction is fiction; facts are facts. Our purpose is not to make some farrago like that movie
The Message
in which, whenever Prophet Muhammad (on whose name be peace!) was heard to speak, you saw only the head of his camel, moving its mouth.
That –
excuse me for pointing out – had no class. We are making a high-taste, quality picture. A moral tale: like – what do you call them? – fables.’
    ‘Like a dream,’ Mr Sisodia said.
    When the news was brought to Chamcha’s attic later that day by Anahita and Mishal Sufyan, he flew into the vilest rage either of them had ever witnessed, a fury under whose fearful influence his voice rose so high that it seemed to tear, as if his throat had grown knives and ripped his cries to shreds; his pestilential breath all but blasted them from the room, and with arms raised high and goat-legs dancing he looked, at last, like the very devil whose image he had become. ‘Liar,’ he shrieked at the absent Gibreel.‘Traitor, deserter, scum. Missed the plane, did you? – Then whose head, in my own lap, with my own hands …? – who received caresses, spoke of nightmares, and fell at last singing from the sky?’
    ‘There, there,’ pleaded terrified Mishal. ‘Calm down. You’ll have Mum up here in a minute.’
    Saladin subsided, a pathetic goaty heap once again, no threat to anyone. ‘It’s not true,’ he wailed. ‘What happened, happened to us both.’
    ‘Course it did,’ Anahita encouraged him. ‘Nobody believes those movie magazines, anyway. They’ll say anything, them.’
    Sisters backed out of the room, holding their breath, leaving Chamcha to his misery, failing to observe something quite remarkable. For which they must not be blamed; Chamcha’s antics were sufficient to have distracted the keenest eyes. It should also, in fairness, be stated that Saladin failed to notice the change himself.
    What happened? This: during Chamcha’s brief but violent outburst against Gibreel, the horns on his head (which, one may as well point out, had grown several inches while he languished in the attic of the Shaandaar B and B) definitely, unmistakably, – by about three-quarters of an inch, –
diminished
.
    In the interest of the strictest accuracy, one should add that, lower down his transformed body, – inside borrowed pantaloons (delicacy