The Satanic Verses

happen to her also; she went at Mishal with a kitchen knife and her daughter responded by unleashing a painful series of kicks and jabs, self-defence only, otherwise it would have been matricide for sure. – Hanif regained consciousness and Haji Sufyan looked down on him, moving his hands in small helpless circles by his sides, weeping openly, unable to find consolation in learning, because whereas for most Muslims a journey to Mecca was the great blessing, in his case it had turned out to be the beginning of a curse; – ‘Go,’ he said, ‘Hanif, my friend, get out,’ – but Hanif wasn’t going without having his say,
I’ve kept my mouth shut for too long
, he cried,
you people who call yourself so moral while you make fortunes off the misery of your own race
, whereupon it became clear that Haji Sufyan had never known of the prices being charged by his wife, who had not told him, swearing her daughters to secrecy with terrible and binding oaths, knowing that if he discovered he’d find a way of giving the money back so that they could go on rotting in poverty; – and he, the twinkling familiar spirit of the Shaandaar Café, after that lost all love of life. – And now Mishal arrived in the café, O the shame of a family’s inner life being enacted thus, like a cheap drama, before the eyes of paying customers, – although in point of fact the last tea-drinker was hurrying from the scene as fast as her old legs would carry her. Mishal was carrying bags. ‘I’m leaving, too,’ she announced. ‘Try and stop me. It’s only eleven days.’
    When Hind saw her elder daughter on the verge of walking out of her life forever, she understood the price one pays for harbouring the Prince of Darkness under one’s roof. She begged her husband to see reason, to realize that his good-hearted generosity had brought them into this hell, and that if only that devil, Chamcha, could be removed from the premises, then maybe theycould become once again the happy and industrious family of old. As she finished speaking, however, the house above her head began to rumble and shake, and there was the noise of something coming down the stairs, growling and – or so it seemed – singing, in a voice so vilely hoarse that it was impossible to understand the words.
    It was Mishal who went up to meet him in the end, Mishal with Hanif Johnson holding her hand, while the treacherous Anahita watched from the foot of the stairs. Chamcha had grown to a height of over eight feet, and from his nostrils there emerged smoke of two different colours, yellow from the left, and from the right, black. He was no longer wearing clothes. His bodily hair had grown thick and long, his tail was swishing angrily, his eyes were a pale but luminous red, and he had succeeded in terrifying the entire temporary population of the bed and breakfast establishment to the point of incoherence. Mishal, however, was not too scared to talk. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ she asked him. ‘You think you’d last five minutes out there, looking like you do?’ Chamcha paused, looked himself over, observed the sizeable erection emerging from his loins, and shrugged. ‘I am
considering action,’
he told her, using her own phrase, although in that voice of lava and thunder it didn’t seem to belong to her any more. ‘There is a person I wish to find.’
    ‘Hold your horses,’ Mishal told him. ‘We’ll work something out.’

    What is to be found here, one mile from the Shaandaar, here where the beat meets the street, at Club Hot Wax, formerly the Blak-An-Tan? On this star-crossed and moonless night, let us follow the figures – some strutting, decked out, hot-to-trot, others surreptitious, shadow-hugging, shy – converging from all quarters of the neighbourhood to dive, abruptly, underground, and through this unmarked door. What’s within? Lights, fluids, powders, bodies shaking themselves, singly, in pairs, inthrees, moving towards possibilities. But what, then, are these other figures, obscure in the on-off rainbow brilliance of the
space
, these forms frozen in their attitudes amid the frenzied dancers? What are these that hip-hop and hindi-pop but never move an inch? – ‘You lookin good, Hot Wax posse!’ Our host speaks: ranter, toaster, deejay nonpareil – the prancing Pinkwalla, his suit of lights blushing to the beat. – Truly, he is exceptional, a seven-foot albino, his hair the palest rose, the whites of his eyes likewise, his