The Satanic Verses

since Baal had been allowed into her bed); now the writers were used up, discarded, and she was rampant. With sword as well as pen. She was Hind, who had joined the Jahilian army disguised as a man, using sorcery to deflect all spears and swords, seeking out her brothers’ killer through the storm of war. Hind, who butchered the Prophet’s uncle, and ate old Hamza’s liver and his heart.
    Who could resist her? For her eternal youth which was also theirs; for her ferocity which gave them the illusion of being invincible; and for her bulls, which were refusals of time, of history, of age, which sang the city’s undimmed magnificence and defied the garbage and decrepitude of the streets, which insisted on greatness, on leadership, on immortality, on the status of Jahilians as custodians of the divine … for these writings the people forgave her her promiscuity, they turned a blind eye to the stories of Hind being weighed in emeralds on her birthday, they ignored rumours of orgies, they laughed when told of the size of her wardrobe, of the five hundred and eighty-one nightgowns made of gold leaf and the four hundred and twenty pairs of ruby slippers. The citizens of Jahilia dragged themselves through their increasingly dangerous streets, in which murder for small changewas becoming commonplace, in which old women were being raped and ritually slaughtered, in which the riots of the starving were brutally put down by Hind’s personal police force, the Manticorps; and in spite of the evidence of their eyes, stomachs and wallets, they believed what Hind whispered in their ears: Rule, Jahilia, glory of the world.
    Not all of them, of course. Not, for example, Baal. Who looked away from public affairs and wrote poems of unrequited love.
    Munching a white radish, he arrived home, passing beneath a dingy archway in a cracking wall. Here there was a small urinous courtyard littered with feathers, vegetable peelings, blood. There was no sign of human life: only flies, shadows, fear. These days it was necessary to be on one’s guard. A sect of murderous hashashin roamed the city. Affluent persons were advised to approach their homes on the opposite side of the street, to make sure that the house was not being watched; when the coast was clear they would rush for the door and shut it behind them before any lurking criminal could push his way in. Baal did not bother with such precautions. Once he had been affluent, but that was a quarter of a century ago. Now there was no demand for satires – the general fear of Mahound had destroyed the market for insults and wit. And with the decline of the cult of the dead had come a sharp drop in orders for epitaphs and triumphal odes of revenge. Times were hard all around.
    Dreaming of long-lost banquets, Baal climbed an unsteady wooden staircase to his small upstairs room. What did he have to steal? He wasn’t worth the knife. Opening his door, he began to enter, when a push sent him tumbling to bloody his nose against the far wall. ‘Don’t kill me,’ he squealed blindly. ‘O God, don’t murder me, for pity’s sake, O.’
    The other hand closed the door. Baal knew that no matter how loudly he screamed they would remain alone, sealed off from the world in that uncaring room. Nobody would come; he himself, hearing his neighbour shriek, would have pushed his cot against the door.
    The intruder’s hooded cloak concealed his face completely.Baal mopped his bleeding nose, kneeling, shaking uncontrollably. ‘I’ve got no money,’ he implored. ‘I’ve got nothing.’ Now the stranger spoke: ‘If a hungry dog looks for food, he does not look in the doghouse.’ And then, after a pause: ‘Baal. There’s not much left of you. I had hoped for more.’
    Now Baal felt oddly affronted as well as terrified. Was this some kind of demented fan, who would kill him because he no longer lived up to the power of his old work? Still trembling, he attempted self-deprecation. ‘To meet a writer is, usually, to be disappointed,’ he offered. The other ignored this remark. ‘Mahound is coming,’ he said.
    This flat statement filled Baal with the most profound terror. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’ he cried. ‘What does he want? It was a long time ago – a lifetime – more than a lifetime. What does he want? Are you from, are you sent by him?’
    ‘His memory is as long as his face,’ the intruder said, pushing back his hood. ‘No, I am not his messenger. You and I have