The Satanic Verses

contented or the wretchedest man alive.
    It was during one of these playful sessions at the end of a working day, when the girls were alone with their eunuchs and their wine, that Baal heard the youngest talking about her client, the grocer, Musa. ‘That one!’ she said. ‘He’s got a bee in his bonnet about the Prophet’s wives. He’s so annoyed about them that he gets excited just by mentioning their names. He tells me that I personally am the spitting image of Ayesha herself, and she’s His Nibs’s favourite, as all are aware. So there.’
    The fifty-year-old courtesan butted in. ‘Listen, those women in that harem, the men don’t talk about anything else these days. No wonder Mahound secluded them, but it’s only made things worse. People fantasize more about what they can’t see.’
    Especially in this town, Baal thought; above all in our Jahilia of the licentious ways, where until Mahound arrived with his rule book the women dressed brightly, and all the talk was of fucking and money, money and sex, and not just the talk, either.
    He said to the youngest whore: ‘Why don’t you pretend for him?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Musa. If Ayesha gives him such a thrill, why not become his private and personal Ayesha?’
    ‘God,’ the girl said. ‘If they heard you say that they’d boil your balls in butter.’
    How many wives? Twelve, and one old lady, long dead. How many whores behind The Curtain? Twelve again; and, secret onher black-tented throne, the ancient Madam, still defying death. Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy. Baal told the Madam of his idea; she settled matters in her voice of a laryngitic frog. ‘It is very dangerous,’ she pronounced, ‘but it could be damn good for business. We will go carefully; but we will go.’
    The fifteen-year-old whispered something in the grocer’s ear. At once a light began to shine in his eyes. ‘Tell me everything,’ he begged. ‘Your childhood, your favourite toys, Solomon’s-horses and the rest, tell me how you played the tambourine and the Prophet came to watch.’ She told him, and then he asked about her deflowering at the age of twelve, and she told him that, and afterwards he paid double the normal fee, because ‘it’s been the best time of my life’. ‘We’ll have to be careful of heart conditions,’ the Madam said to Baal.

    When the news got around Jahilia that the whores of The Curtain had each assumed the identity of one of Mahound’s wives, the clandestine excitement of the city’s males was intense; yet, so afraid were they of discovery, both because they would surely lose their lives if Mahound or his lieutenants ever found out that they had been involved in such irreverences, and because of their desire that the new service at The Curtain be maintained, that the secret was kept from the authorities. In those days Mahound had returned with his wives to Yathrib, preferring the cool oasis climate of the north to Jahilia’s heat. The city had been left in the care of General Khalid, from whom things were easily concealed. For a time Mahound had considered telling Khalid to have all the brothels of Jahilia closed down, but Abu Simbel had advised him against so precipitate an act. ‘Jahilians are new converts,’ he pointed out. ‘Take things slowly.’ Mahound, most pragmatic of Prophets, had agreed to a period of transition. So, in the Prophet’s absence, the men of Jahilia flocked to The Curtain, which experienced a three hundred per cent increase in business. For obviousreasons it was not politic to form a queue in the street, and so on many days a line of men curled around the innermost courtyard of the brothel, rotating about its centrally positioned Fountain of Love much as pilgrims rotated for other reasons around the ancient Black Stone. All customers of The Curtain were issued with masks, and Baal, watching the circling masked figures from a high balcony, was satisfied. There were more ways than one of refusing to Submit.
    In the months that followed, the staff of The Curtain warmed to the new task. The fifteen-year-old whore ‘Ayesha’ was the most popular with the paying public, just as her namesake was with Mahound, and like the Ayesha who was living chastely in her apartment in the harem quarters of the great mosque at Yathrib, this Jahilian Ayesha began to be jealous of her preeminent status of Best Beloved. She resented it when any of her ‘sisters’ seemed to be experiencing an increase in visitors,