The Satanic Verses

features unmistakably Indian, the haughty nose, long thin lips, a face from a
Hamza-nama
cloth. An Indian who has never seen India, East-India-man from the West Indies, white black man. A star.
    Still the motionless figures dance between the shimmying of sisters, the jouncing and bouncing of youth. What are they? – Why, waxworks, nothing more. – Who are they? – History. See, here is Mary Seacole, who did as much in the Crimea as another magic-lamping Lady, but, being dark, could scarce be seen for the flame of Florence’s candle; – and, over there!, one Abdul Karim, aka The Munshi, whom Queen Victoria sought to promote, but who was done down by colour-barring ministers. They’re all here, dancing motionlessly in hot wax: the black clown of Septimius Severus, to the right; to the left, George IV’s barber dancing with the slave, Grace Jones. Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, the African prince who was sold for six feet of cloth, dances according to his ancient fashion with the slave’s son Ignatius Sancho, who became in 1782 the first African writer to be published in England. – The migrants of the past, as much the living dancers’ ancestors as their own flesh and blood, gyrate stilly while Pinkwalla rants toasts raps up on the stage,
Now-mi-feel-indignation-when-dem-talk-immigration-when-dem-make-insinuation-we-no-part-a-de-nation-an-mi-make-proclamation-a-de-true-situation-how-we-make-contribution-since-de-Rome-Occupation
, and from a different part of the crowded room, bathed in evil green light, wax villains cower and grimace: Mosley, Powell, Edward Long, all the local avatars of Legree. And now a murmur begins in the belly of the Club, mounting, becoming a single word, chantedover and over: ‘Meltdown,’ the customers demand. ‘Meltdown, meltdown, melt.’
    Pinkwalla takes his cue from the crowd,
So-it-meltdown-time-when-de-men-of-crime-gonna-get-in-line-for-some-hell-fire-fryin
, after which he turns to the crowd, arms wide, feet with the beat, to ask,
Who’s-it-gonna-be? Who-you-wanna-see
? Names are shouted, compete, coalesce, until the assembled company is united once more, chanting a single word. Pinkwalla claps his hands. Curtains part behind him, allowing female attendants in shiny pink shorts and singlets to wheel out a fearsome cabinet: man-sized, glass-fronted, internally-illuminated – the microwave oven, complete with Hot Seat, known to Club regulars as: Hell’s Kitchen. ‘All
right,’
cries Pinkwalla. ‘Now we really cookin.’
    Attendants move towards the tableau of hate-figures, pounce upon the night’s sacrificial offering, the one most often selected, if truth be told; at least three times a week. Her permawaved coiffure, her pearls, her suit of blue.
Maggie-maggie-maggie
, bays the crowd.
Burn-burn-burn
. The doll, – the
guy, –
is strapped into the Hot Seat. Pinkwalla throws the switch. And O how prettily she melts, from the inside out, crumpling into formlessness. Then she is a puddle, and the crowd sighs its ecstasy:
done
. ‘The fire this time,’ Pinkwalla tells them. Music regains the night.

    When Pinkwalla the deejay saw what was climbing under cover of darkness into the back of his panel van, which his friends Hanif and Mishal had persuaded him to bring round the back of the Shaandaar, the fear of obeah filled his heart; but there was also the contrary exhilaration of realizing that the potent hero of his many dreams was a flesh-and-blood actuality. He stood across the street, shivering under a lamp-post though it wasn’t particularly cold, and stayed there for half an hour while Mishal and Hanif spoke urgently to him,
he needs somewhere to go, we have to think about his future
. Then he shrugged, walked over to the van, and started up the engine. Hanif sat beside him in the cab; Mishal travelled with Saladin, hidden from view.
    It was almost four in the morning when they bedded Chamcha down in the empty, locked-up nightclub. Pinkwalla – his real name, Sewsunker, was never used – had unearthed a couple of sleeping-bags from a back room, and they sufficed. Hanif Johnson, saying goodnight to the fearsome entity of whom his lover Mishal seemed entirely unafraid, tried to talk to him seriously, ‘You’ve got to realize how important you could be for us, there’s more at stake here than your personal needs,’ but mutant Saladin only snorted, yellow and black, and Hanif backed quickly away. When he was alone with the waxworks Chamcha was able to fix his thoughts once