The Satanic Verses

speaks for the angry crowd. ‘You old fool. How many citizens can fit inside a single house, even this one? You’ve done a deal to save your own neck. Let them rip you up and feed you to the ants.’
    Still the Grandee is mild. ‘Mahound also promises that all who are found at home, behind closed doors, will be safe. If you will not come into my home then go to your own; and wait.’
    A third time his wife attempts to turn the crowd against him; this is a balcony scene of hatred instead of love. There can be no compromise with Mahound, she shouts, he is not to be trusted, the people must repudiate Abu Simbel and prepare to fight to the last man, the last woman. She herself is prepared to fight beside them and die for the freedom of Jahilia. ‘Will you merely lie down before this false prophet, this Dajjal? Can honour be expected of a man who is preparing to storm the city of his birth? Can compromise be hoped for from the uncompromising, pity from the pitiless? We are the mighty of Jahilia, and our goddesses, glorious in battle, will prevail.’ She commands them to fight in the name of Al-Lat. But the people begin to leave.
    Husband and wife stand on their balcony, and the people see them plain. For so long the city has used these two as its mirrors; and because, of late, Jahilians have preferred Hind’s images to the greying Grandee, they are suffering, now, from profound shock. A people that has remained convinced of its greatness and invulnerability, that has chosen to believe such a myth in the face of all the evidence, is a people in the grip of a kind of sleep, or madness. Now the Grandee has awakened them from that sleep; they stand disoriented, rubbing their eyes, unable to believe at first – if we are so mighty, how then have we fallen so fast, so utterly? – and then belief comes, and shows them how their confidence has been built on clouds, on the passion of Hind’s proclamations and on very little else. They abandon her, and with her, hope. Plunging into despair, the people of Jahilia go home to lock their doors.
    She screams at them, pleads, loosens her hair. ‘Come to the House of the Black Stone! Come and make sacrifice to Lat!’ But they have gone. And Hind and the Grandee are alone on their balcony, while throughout Jahilia a great silence falls, a great stillness begins, and Hind leans against the wall of her palace and closes her eyes.
    It is the end. The Grandee murmurs softly: ‘Not many of us have as much reason to be scared of Mahound as you. If you eat a man’s favourite uncle’s innards, raw, without so much as salt orgarlic, don’t be surprised if he treats you, in turn, like meat.’ Then he leaves her, and goes down into the streets from which even the dogs have vanished, to unlock the city gates.

    Gibreel dreamed a temple:
    By the open gates of Jahilia stood the temple of Uzza. And Mahound spake unto Khalid who had been a carrier of water before, and now bore greater weights: ‘Go thou and cleanse the place.’ So Khalid with a force of men descended upon the temple, for Mahound was loth to enter the city while such abominations stood at its gates.
    When the guardian of the temple, who was of the tribe of Shark, saw the approach of Khalid with a great host of warriors, he took up his sword and went to the idol of the goddess. After making his final prayers he hung his sword about her neck, saying, ‘If thou be truly a goddess, Uzza, defend thyself and thy servant against the coming of Mahound.’ Then Khalid entered the temple, and when the goddess did not move the guardian said, ‘Now verily do I know that the God of Mahound is the true God, and this stone but a stone.’ Then Khalid broke the temple and the idol and returned to Mahound in his tent. And the Prophet asked: ‘What didst thou see?’ Khalid spread his arms. ‘Nothing,’ said he. ‘Then thou hast not destroyed her,’ the Prophet cried. ‘Go again, and complete thy work.’ So Khalid returned to the fallen temple, and there an enormous woman, all black but for her long scarlet tongue, came running at him, naked from head to foot, her black hair flowing to her ankles from her head. Nearing him, she halted, and recited in her terrible voice of sulphur and hellfire: ‘Have you heard of Lat, and Manat, and Uzza, the Third, the Other? They are the Exalted Birds …’ But Khalid interrupted her, saying, ‘Uzza, those are the Devil’s verses, and you the Devil’s daughter, a creature not to be