The Satanic Verses

–
These rioters, perhaps
? comes the challenge.
Aren’t you in danger of glamorizing, of ‘legitimizing’? –
The head shakes, laments the materialism of modern youth. Looting video stores is not what the head has been talking about. –
But what about the old-timers, then? Butch Cassidy, the James brothers, Captain Moonlight, the Kelly gang. They all robbed – did they not? – banks. –
Cut. – Later that night, the camera will return to this shop-window. The television sets will be missing.
    – From the air, the camera watches the entrance to Club Hot Wax. Now the police have finished with wax effigies and are bringing out real human beings. The camera homes in on the arrested persons: a tall albino man; a man in an Armani suit, looking like a dark mirror-image of de Niro; a young girl of – what? – fourteen, fifteen? – a sullen young man of twenty or thereabouts. No names are titled; the camera does not know these faces. Gradually, however, the
facts
emerge. The club DJ, Sewsunker Ram, known as ‘Pinkwalla’, and its proprietor, Mr John Maslama, are to be charged with running a large-scale narcotics operation – crack, brown sugar, hashish, cocaine. The manarrested with them, an employee at Maslama’s nearby ‘Fair Winds’ music store, is the registered owner of a van in which an unspecified quantity of ‘hard drugs’ has been discovered; also numbers of ‘hot’ video recorders. The young girl’s name is Anahita Sufyan; she is under-age, is said to have been drinking heavily, and, it is hinted, having sex with at least one of the three arrested men. She is further reported to have a history of truancy and association with known criminal types: a delinquent, clearly. – An illuminated journalist will offer the nation these titbits many hours after the event, but the news is already running wild in the streets: Pinkwalla! – And the
Wax
: they smashed the place up –
totalled
it! – Now it’s
war
.
    This happens, however – as does a great deal else – in places which the camera cannot see.

    Gibreel:
    moves as if through a dream, because after days of wandering the city without eating or sleeping, with the trumpet named Azraeel tucked safely in a pocket of his greatcoat, he no longer recognizes the distinction between the waking and dreaming states; – he understands now something of what omnipresence must be like, because he is moving through several stories at once, there is a Gibreel who mourns his betrayal by Alleluia Cone, and a Gibreel hovering over the death-bed of a Prophet, and a Gibreel watching in secret over the progress of a pilgrimage to the sea, waiting for the moment at which he will reveal himself, and a Gibreel who feels, more powerfully every day, the will of the adversary, drawing him ever closer, leading him towards their final embrace: the subtle, deceiving adversary, who has taken the face of his friend, of Saladin his truest friend, in order to lull him into lowering his guard. And there is a Gibreel who walks down the streets of London, trying to understand the will of God.
    Is he to be the agent of God’s wrath?
    Or of his love?
    Is he vengeance or forgiveness? Should the fatal trumpet remain in his pocket, or should he take it out and blow?
    (I’m giving him no instructions. I, too, am interested in his choices – in the result of his wrestling match. Character
vs
destiny: a free-style bout. Two fadlls, two submissions or a knockout will decide.)
    Wrestling, through his many stories, he proceeds.
    There are times when he aches for her, Alleluia, her very name an exaltation; but then he remembers the diabolic verses, and turns his thoughts away. The horn in his pocket demands to be blown; but he restrains himself. Now is not the time. Searching for clues –
what is to be done? –
he stalks the city streets.
    Somewhere he sees a television set through an evening window. There is a woman’s head on the screen, a famous ‘presenter’, being interviewed by an equally famous, twinkling Irish ‘host’. – What would be the worst thing you could imagine? – Oh, I think, I’m sure, it would be, oh,
yes
: to be alone on Christmas Eve. You’d really have to face yourself, wouldn’t you, you’d look into a harsh mirror and ask yourself,
is this all there is? –
Gibreel, alone, not knowing the date, walks on. In the mirror, the adversary approaches at the same pace as his own, beckoning, stretching out his arms.
    The city sends him messages. Here, it