The Satanic Verses

three, only three of the three hundred and sixty idols in the house are worthy of worship …’
    ‘There is no god but God!’ Bilal shouts. And his fellows join in: ‘Ya Allah!’ Mahound looks angry. ‘Will the faithful hear the Messenger?’ They fall silent, scuffing their feet in the dust.
    ‘He asks for Allah’s approval of Lat, Uzza and Manat. In return, he gives his guarantee that we will be tolerated, even officially recognized; as a mark of which, I am to be elected to the council of Jahilia. That’s the offer.’
    Salman the Persian says: ‘It’s a trap. If you go up Coney and come down with such a Message, he’ll ask, how could you make Gibreel provide just the right revelation? He’ll be able to call you a charlatan, a fake.’ Mahound shakes his head. ‘You know, Salman, that I have learned how to
listen
. This
listening
is not of the ordinary kind; it’s also a kind of asking. Often, when Gibreel comes, it’s as if he knows what’s in my heart. It feels to me, most times, as if he comes from within my heart: from within my deepest places, from my soul.’
    ‘Or it’s a different trap,’ Salman persists. ‘How long have we been reciting the creed you brought us? There is no god but God. What are we if we abandon it now? This weakens us, renders us absurd. We cease to be dangerous. Nobody will ever take us seriously again.’
    Mahound laughs, genuinely amused. ‘Maybe you haven’t been here long enough,’ he says kindly. ‘Haven’t you noticed? The people do not take us seriously. Never more than fifty in the audience when I speak, and half of those are tourists. Don’t you read the lampoons that Baal pins up all over town?’ He recites:
    Messenger, do please lend a

careful ear. Your monophilia
,
your one one one, ain’t for Jahilia
.
Return to sender
.

    ‘They mock us everywhere, and you call us dangerous,’ he cried.
    Now Hamza looks worried. ‘You never worried about their opinions before. Why now? Why after speaking to Simbel?’
    Mahound shakes his head. ‘Sometimes I think I must make it easier for the people to believe.’
    An uneasy silence covers the disciples; they exchange looks, shift their weight. Mahound cries out again. ‘You all know what has been happening. Our failure to win converts. The people will not give up their gods. They will not, not.’ He stands up, strides away from them, washes by himself on the far side of the Zamzam well, kneels to pray.
    ‘The people are sunk in darkness,’ says Bilal, unhappily. ‘But they will see. They will hear. God is one.’ Misery infects the four of them; even Hamza is brought low. Mahound has been shaken, and his followers quake.
    He stands, bows, sighs, comes round to rejoin them. ‘Listen to me, all of you,’ he says, putting one arm around Bilal’s shoulders, the other around his uncle’s. ‘Listen: it is an interesting offer.’
    Unembraced Khalid interrupts bitterly: ‘It is a
tempting
deal.’ The others look horrified. Hamza speaks very gently to the water-carrier. ‘Wasn’t it you, Khalid, who wanted to fight me just now because you wrongly assumed that, when I called the Messenger a man, I was really calling him a weakling? Now what? Is it my turn to challenge you to a fight?’
    Mahound begs for peace. ‘If we quarrel, there’s no hope.’ He tries to raise the discussion to the theological level. ‘It is not suggested that Allah accept the three as his equals. Not even Lat. Only that they be given some sort of intermediary, lesser status.’
    ‘Like devils,’ Bilal bursts out.
    ‘No,’ Salman the Persian gets the point. ‘Like archangels. The Grandee’s a clever man.’
    ‘Angels and devils,’ Mahound says. ‘Shaitan and Gibreel. We all, already, accept their existence, halfway between God and man. Abu Simbel asks that we admit just three more to this great company. Just three, and, he indicates, all Jahilia’s souls will be ours.’
    ‘And the House will be cleansed of statues?’ Salman asks.Mahound replies that this was not specified. Salman shakes his head. ‘This is being done to destroy you.’ And Bilal adds: ‘God cannot be four.’ And Khalid, close to tears: ‘Messenger, what are you saying? Lat, Manat, Uzza – they’re all
females
! For pity’s sake! Are we to have goddesses now? Those old cranes, herons, hags?’
    Misery strain fatigue, etched deeply into the Prophet’s face. Which Hamza, like a soldier on a battlefield comforting a wounded friend, cups