The Satanic Verses

enjoyed your mockery. Now you return to dishonour my house, and it seems that once again you succeed in bringing the worst out of the people.’
    Baal said, ‘I’ve finished. Do what you want.’
    So he was sentenced to be beheaded, within the hour, and as soldiers manhandled him out of the tent towards the killingground, he shouted over his shoulder: ‘Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can’t forgive.’
    Mahound replied, ‘Writers and whores. I see no difference here.’

    Once upon a time there was a woman who did not change.
    After the treachery of Abu Simbel handed Jahilia to Mahound on a plate and replaced the idea of the city’s greatness with the reality of Mahound’s, Hind sucked toes, recited the La-ilaha, and then retreated to a high tower of her palace, where news reached her of the destruction of the Al-Lat temple at Taif, and of all the statues of the goddess that were known to exist. She locked herself into her tower room with a collection of ancient books written in scripts which no other human being in Jahilia could decipher; and for two years and two months she remained there, studying her occult texts in secret, asking that a plate of simple food be left outside her door once a day and that her chamberpot be emptied at the same time. For two years and two months she saw no other living being. Then she entered her husband’s bedroom at dawn, dressed in all her finery, with jewels glittering at her wrists, ankles, toes, ears and throat. ‘Wake up,’ she commanded, flinging back his curtains. ‘It’s a day for celebrations.’ He saw that she hadn’t aged by so much as a day since he last saw her; if anything, she looked younger than ever, which gave credence to the rumours which suggested that her witchcraft had persuaded time to run backwards for her within the confines of her tower room. ‘What have we got to celebrate?’ the former Grandee of Jahilia asked, coughing up his usual morning blood. Hind replied: ‘I may not be able to reverse the flow of history, but revenge, at least, is sweet.’
    Within an hour the news arrived that the Prophet, Mahound, had fallen into a fatal sickness, that he lay in Ayesha’s bed with his head thumping as if it had been filled up with demons. Hind continued to make calm preparations for a banquet, sending servants to every corner of the city to invite guests. But of course nobody would come to a party on that day. In the evening Hind sat alonein the great hall of her home, amid the golden plates and crystal glasses of her revenge, eating a simple plate of couscous while surrounded by glistening, steaming, aromatic dishes of every imaginable type. Abu Simbel had refused to join her, calling her eating an obscenity. ‘You ate his uncle’s heart,’ Simbel cried, ‘and now you would eat his.’ She laughed in his face. When the servants began to weep she dismissed them, too, and sat in solitary rejoicing while candles sent strange shadows across her absolute, uncompromising face.
    Gibreel dreamed the death of Mahound:
    For when the head of the Messenger began to ache as never before, he knew the time had come when he would be offered the Choice:
    Since no Prophet may die before he has been shown Paradise, and afterward asked to choose between this world and the next:
    So that as he lay with his head in his beloved Ayesha’s lap, he closed his eyes, and life seemed to depart from him; but after a time he returned:
    And he said unto Ayesha, ‘I have been offered and made my Choice, and I have chosen the kingdom of God.’
    Then she wept, knowing that he was speaking of his death; whereupon his eyes moved past her, and seemed to fix upon another figure in the room, even though when she, Ayesha, turned to look she saw only a lamp there, burning upon its stand:
    ‘Who’s there?’ he called out. ‘Is it Thou, Azraeel?’
    But Ayesha heard a terrible, sweet voice, that was a woman’s, make reply: ‘No, Messenger of Al-Lah, it is not Azraeel.’
    And the lamp blew out; and in the darkness Mahound asked: ‘Is this sickness then thy doing, O Al-Lat?’
    And she said: ‘It is my revenge upon you, and I am satisfied. Let them cut a camel’s hamstrings and set it on your grave.’
    Then she went, and the lamp that had been snuffed out burst once more into a great and gentle light, and the Messenger murmured, ‘Still, I thank Thee, Al-Lat, for this gift.’
    Not long afterwards he died. Ayesha went out into the nextroom, where the