The Satanic Verses

them tried to move towards the pilgrims, who also continued to make efforts to advance. But now the rainstorm redoubled its force, and then doubled it again, falling from the sky in thick slabs through which it was getting difficult to breathe, as though the earth were being engulfed, and the firmament above were reuniting with the firmament below.
    Gibreel, dreaming, found his vision obscured by water.

    The rain stopped, and a watery sun shone down on a Venetian scene of devastation. The roads of Sarang were now canals, along which there journeyed all manner of flotsam. Where only recently scooter-rickshaws, camel-carts and repaired bicycles had gone, there now floated newspapers, flowers, bangles, watermelons, umbrellas, chappals, sunglasses, baskets, excrement, medicine bottles, playing cards, dupattas, pancakes, lamps. The water had an odd, reddish tint that made the sodden populace imagine that the street was flowing with blood. There was no trace of bully-boyminers or of Ayesha Pilgrims. A dog swam across the intersection by the collapsed bicycle barricade, and all around there lay the damp silence of the flood, whose waters lapped at marooned buses, while children stared from the roofs of deliquescent gullies, too shocked to come out and play.
    Then the butterflies returned.
    From nowhere, as if they had been hiding behind the sun; and to celebrate the end of the rain they had all taken the colour of sunlight. The arrival of this immense carpet of light in the sky utterly bewildered the people of Sarang, who were already reeling in the aftermath of the storm; fearing the apocalypse, they hid indoors and closed their shutters. On a nearby hillside, however, Mirza Saeed Akhtar and his party observed the miracle’s return and were filled, all of them, even the zamindar, with a kind of awe.
    Mirza Saeed had driven hell-for-leather, in spite of being half-blinded by the rain which poured through the smashed windscreen, until on a road that led up and around the bend of a hill he came to a halt at the gates of the No. 1 Sarang Coalfield. The pitheads were dimly visible through the rain. ‘Brainbox,’ Mishal Akhtar cursed him weakly. ‘Those bums are waiting for us back there, and you drive us up here to see their pals. Tip-top notion, Saeed. Extra fine.’
    But they had no more trouble from miners. That was the day of the mining disaster that left fifteen thousand pitmen buried alive beneath the Sarangi hill. Saeed, Mishal, the Sarpanch, Osman, Mrs Qureishi, Srinivas and Ayesha stood exhausted and soaked to the skin by the roadside as ambulances, fire-engines, salvage operators and pit bosses arrived in large quantities and left, much later, shaking their heads. The Sarpanch caught his earlobes between thumbs and forefingers. ‘Life is pain,’ he said. ‘Life is pain and loss; it is a coin of no value, worth even less than a kauri or a dam.’
    Osman of the dead bullock, who, like the Sarpanch, had lost a dearly loved companion during the pilgrimage, also wept. Mrs Qureishi attempted to look on the bright side: ‘Main thing is thatwe’re okay,’ but this got no response. Then Ayesha closed her eyes and recited in the sing-song voice of prophecy, ‘It is a judgment upon them for the bad attempt they made.’
    Mirza Saeed was angry. ‘They weren’t at the bloody barricade,’ he shouted. ‘They were working under the goddamned ground.’
    ‘They dug their own graves,’ Ayesha replied.

    This was when they sighted the returning butterflies. Saeed watched the golden cloud in disbelief, as it first gathered and then sent out streams of winged light in every direction. Ayesha wanted to return to the crossroads. Saeed objected: ‘It’s flooded down there. Our only chance is to drive down the opposite side of this hill and come out the other side of town.’ But Ayesha and Mishal had already started back; the prophetess was supporting the other, ashen woman, holding her around the waist.
    ‘Mishal, for God’s sake,’ Mirza Saeed called after his wife. ‘For the love of God. What will I do with the motor-car?’
    But she went on down the hill, towards the flood, leaning heavily on Ayesha the seer, without looking round.
    This was how Mirza Saeed Akhtar came to abandon his beloved Mercedes-Benz station wagon near the entrance to the drowned mines of Sarang, and join in the foot-pilgrimage to the Arabian Sea.
    The seven bedraggled travellers stood thigh-deep in water at the intersection of the street of