The Satanic Verses

hearts. – Which he, Gibreel, had come to transform.
    Abracadabra!
    Hocus Pocus!
    But where should he begin? – Well, then, the trouble with the English was their:
    Their:
    In a word
, Gibreel solemnly pronounced,
their weather
.
    Gibreel Farishta floating on his cloud formed the opinion that the moral fuzziness of the English was meteorologically induced. ‘When the day is not warmer than the night,’ he reasoned, ‘when the light is not brighter than the dark, when the land is not drier than the sea, then clearly a people will lose the power to make distinctions, and commence to see everything – from political parties to sexual partners to religious beliefs – as much-the-same, nothing-to-choose, give-or-take. What folly! For truth is extreme, it is
so
and not
thus
, it is
him
and not
her
, a partisan matter, not a spectator sport. It is, in brief,
heated
. City,’ he cried, and his voice rolled over the metropolis like thunder, ‘I am going to tropicalize you.’
    Gibreel enumerated the benefits of the proposed metamorphosis of London into a tropical city: increased moral definition, institution of a national siesta, development of vivid and expansive patterns of behaviour among the populace, higher-quality popular music, new birds in the trees (macaws, peacocks, cockatoos), new trees under the birds (coco-palms, tamarind, banyans with hanging beards). Improved street-life, outrageously coloured flowers (magenta, vermilion, neon-green), spider-monkeys in the oaks. A new mass market for domestic air-conditioning units, ceiling fans, anti-mosquito coils and sprays. A coir and copra industry. Increased appeal of London as a centre for conferences, etc.; better cricketers; higher emphasis on ball-control among professional footballers, the traditional and soulless English commitment to ‘high workrate’ having been rendered obsolete by the heat. Religious fervour, political ferment, renewal of interest in the intelligentsia. No more British reserve; hot-water bottles to be banishedforever, replaced in the foetid nights by the making of slow and odorous love. Emergence of new social values: friends to commence dropping in on one another without making appointments, closure of old folks’ homes, emphasis on the extended family. Spicier food; the use of water as well as paper in English toilets; the joy of running fully dressed through the first rains of the monsoon.
    Disadvantages: cholera, typhoid, legionnaires’ disease, cockroaches, dust, noise, a culture of excess.
    Standing upon the horizon, spreading his arms to fill the sky, Gibreel cried: ‘Let it be.’
    Three things happened, fast.
    The first was that, as the unimaginably colossal, elemental forces of the transformational process rushed out of his body (for was he not their
embodiment
?), he was temporarily overcome by a warm, spinning heaviness, a soporific churning (not at all unpleasant) that made him close, just for an instant, his eyes.
    The second was that the moment his eyes were shut the horned and goaty features of Mr Saladin Chamcha appeared, on the screen of his mind, as sharp and well-defined as could be; accompanied, as if it were sub-titled there, by the adversary’s name.
    And the third thing was that Gibreel Farishta opened his eyes to find himself collapsed, once again, on Alleluia Cone’s doorstep, begging her forgiveness, weeping
O God, it happened, it really happened again
.

    She put him to bed; he found himself escaping into sleep, diving headlong into it, away from Proper London and towards Jahilia, because the real terror had crossed the broken boundary wall, and stalked his waking hours.
    ‘A homing instinct: one crazy heading for another,’ Alicja said when her daughter phoned with the news. ‘You must be putting out a signal, some sort of bleeping thing.’ As usual, she hid her concern beneath wisecracks. Finally she came out with it: ‘This time be sensible, Alleluia, okay? This time the asylum.’
    ‘We’ll see, mother. He’s asleep right now.’
    ‘So he isn’t going to wake up?’ Alicja expostulated, then controlled herself. ‘All right, I know, it’s your life. Listen, isn’t this weather something? They say it could last months: “blocked pattern”, I heard on television, rain over Moscow, while here it’s a tropical heatwave. I called Boniek at Stanford and told him: now we have weather in London, too.’



W hen Baal the poet saw a single teardrop the colour of blood emerging from the corner