The Satanic Verses

on white sheets on the floor of the room in which, once upon a time, Saladin and Zeeny had visited the ogre, Changez; women sat with them to mourn, many of them reciting the qalmah over and over, with the help of counting beads. Salahuddin was irritated by this; but lacked the will to tell them to stop. – Then the mullah came, and sewed Changez’s winding-sheet, and it was time to wash the body; and even though there were many men present, and there was no need for him to help, Salahuddin insisted.
If he could look his death in the eye, then I can do it, too. –
And when his father was being washed, his body rolled this way and that at the mullah’s command, the flesh bruised and slabby, the appendix scar long and brown, Salahuddin recalled the only other time in his life when he’d seen his physically demure father naked: he’d been nine years old, blundering into a bathroom where Changez was taking a shower, and the sight of his father’s penis was a shock he’d never forgotten. That thick squat organ, like a club. O the power of it; and the insignificance of his own … ‘His eyes won’t close,’ the mullah complained. ‘You should have done it before.’ He was a stocky, pragmatic fellow, this mullah with his moustacheless beard. He treated the dead body as a commonplace thing, needing washing the way a car does, or a window, or a dish. ‘You are from London? Proper London? – I was there many years. I wasdoorman at Claridge’s Hotel.’
Oh? Really? How interesting
. The man wanted to make small-talk! Salahuddin was appalled.
That’s my father, don’t you understand
? ‘These garments,’ the mullah asked, indicating Changez’s last kurta-pajama outfit, the one which the hospital staff had cut open to get at his chest. ‘You have need of them?’
No, no. Take them. Please
. ‘You are very kind.’ Small pieces of black cloth were being stuffed into Changez’s mouth and under his eyelids. ‘This cloth has been to Mecca,’ the mullah said.
Get it out
! ‘I don’t understand. It is holy fabric.’
You heard me: out, out
. ‘May God have mercy on your soul.’
    And:
    The bier, strewn with flowers, like an outsize baby’s cot.
    The body, wrapped in white, with sandalwood shavings, for fragrance, scattered all about it.
    More flowers, and a green silken covering with Quranic verses embroidered upon it in gold.
    The ambulance, with the bier resting in it, awaiting the widows’ permission to depart.
    The last farewells of women.
    The graveyard. Male mourners rushing to lift the bier on their shoulders trample Salahuddin’s foot, ripping off a segment of the nail on his big toe.
    Among the mourners, an estranged old friend of Changez’s, here in spite of double pneumonia; – and another old gentleman, weeping copiously, who will die himself the very next day; – and all sorts, the walking records of a dead man’s life.
    The grave. Salahuddin climbs down into it, stands at the head end, the gravedigger at the foot. Changez Chamchawala is lowered down.
The weight of my father’s head, lying in my hand. I laid it down; to rest
.
    The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.

    Waiting for him when he returned from the graveyard: a copper-and-brass lamp, his renewed inheritance. He went into Changez’sstudy and closed the door. There were his old slippers by the bed: he had become, as he’d foretold, ‘a pair of emptied shoes’. The bedclothes still bore the imprint of his father’s body; the room was full of sickly perfume: sandalwood, camphor, cloves. He took the lamp from its shelf and sat at Changez’s desk. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he rubbed briskly: once, twice, thrice.
    The lights all went on at once.
    Zeenat Vakil entered the room.
    ‘O God, I’m sorry, maybe you wanted them off, but with the blinds closed it was just so sad.’ Waving her arms, speaking loudly in her beautiful croak of a voice, her hair woven, for once, into a waist-length ponytail, here she was, his very own djinn. ‘I feel so bad I didn’t come before, I was just trying to hurt you, what a time to choose, so bloody self-indulgent, yaar, it’s good to see you, you poor orphaned goose.’
    She was the same as ever, immersed in life up to her neck, combining occasional art lectures at the university with her medical practice and her political activities. ‘I was at the goddamn hospital when you came, you know? I was right there, but I didn’t know about your dad