Notes for Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses

Previous Chapter

Chapter V: A City Visible but Unseen

Plot outline for Chapter V

A dream provides details of Saladin's escape from the "hospital." He phones his old work partner, Mimi Mamoulian, only to find that he has lost his job. He briefly encounters the name of Billy Battuta, who will figure prominently in the novel later. His old boss, Hal Valance, explains why his television series has been cancelled. He is enraged to learn that Gibreel is alive, and--far from helping him out in any way--is claiming he missed Flight 420 and seems to be engaged into making his "satanic verses" dreams into a movie. Meanwhile his wife has become pregnant by Jumpy. Everything seems to be conspiring against Saladin; and, battered into submission by fate, he loses his supernatural qualities after a visit to the bizarre Hot Wax nightclub. A subplot involves a series of gruesome murders of old women for which the black militant leader Uhuru Simba is arrested.

The next section returns to the story of Allie Cone, detailing her childhood and young adulthood. Her reunion was Gibreel is passionate, but it will be spoiled by his insane jealousy. Again haunted by Rekha Merchant, a deranged Gibreel tries to confront London in his angelic persona, but he is instead knocked down by the car of film producer S. S. Sisodia, who returns him to Allie and signs him up to make a series of films as the archangel of his dreams. Again he tries to leave Allie, but a riot during a public appearance lands him back again, defeated, at Allie's doorstep. At the end of the chapter we learn that a most uncharacteristic heat wave has broken out in London.

Notes to Chapter V

A City Visible but Unseen

Rushdie says of this chapter title:

it seemed to me at that point that [the London Indian community] really was unseen. It was there and nobody knew it was there. And I was very struck by how often, when one would talk to white English people about what was going on, you could actually take them to these streets and point to these phenomena, and they would somehow still reject this information.

Rushdie: "Interview," p. 68.

Once I'm an owl
A quotation from Apuleius' The Golden Ass, Book III, Chapter 16 in which the main character, trying to persuade a sorceress to transform him into an owl seeks reassurance that he can resume his own shape. He is instead changed into an ass, and can only be changed back into his human form again by praying to the goddess Isis. The text of Book III.

hajis
People who have gone on the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca (Arabic). See above, note on p. 235.

VCR addicts
Rushdie, like many Indians and Pakistanis calls videotapes "VCRs" instead of "videos." Videotapes of Indian films, particularly musicals, are a staple of emigre entertainment.

in Dhaka . . . when Bangladesh was merely an East Wing
Before it seceded in the bloody war of 1971, the territory now known as Bangladesh constituted the isolated East Wing of Pakistan. Its capital is more commonly spelled "Dacca."

Why does Mr. Sufyan refer to himself as an emigrant rather than as an immigrant?

Lucius Apuleius of Madaura
Author of the famous Latin 2nd century satirical classic, The Golden Ass. Apuleius was in fact not from Morocco (Verstraete 328-329). See above, note on p. 243.

satyrs
Proverbially lustful half-men, half goats.

Isis
Originally an Egyptian fertility goddess, she had been transformed in Apuleius' time into the center of a mystery cult and was usually called "Sarapis." The story of Apuleius' transformation by Isis.

begum sahiba
Honored wife/lady (Hindi, Urdu).

Wing Chun
The name of a Chinese Kung Fu style associated with a woman named Yim Wing Chun. It is traditionally considered a woman's form of fighting though it is very popular among men as well.

Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee (1940-1973) was the star of many kung fu movies. Note how cross-cultural this reference is: an Indian immigrant emulating a Chinese hero using the skills taught her by an Indian instructor. Lee himself was an immigrant, having been born in San Francisco, moved to Hong Kong, educated at the University of Washington and moved back to the U.S. His early death stimulated a cult surrounding his memory which is reflected in the girls' pajamas. Bruce Lee Home Page.

the new Madonna
The singer Madonna Louise Veronica Cicone, born 1958.

the Perfumed Garden
A title for Heaven: orig. Gulistan.

Bibhutibhushan Banerji
Distinguished author of the Apu Trilogy, memorably made into films by Satyajit Ray (see below, p. 440).

Tagore
See above, note on. p. 228.

Rig-Veda
One of the oldest Sanskrit Hindu devotional texts. Excerpts: Creation hymn from the Rig Veda. Vedic culture pages.

Quran-Sharif
The Noble Qur'an. See Mecca sharif, above, p. 235.

military accounts of Julius Caesar
Caesar's De Bello Gallico (Gallic Wars) are an account of his own campaigns in what is now France and Germany, and were the beginning text for generations of Latin students.

Revelations of St. John the Divine
The apocalyptic last book of the Christian Bible.

dosas
Lentil crepes (Hindi). Also called "dosais."

uttapams
Thick pancakes of lentil and rice flours containing onions and chilies.

tola
A very small unit of weight: .035 ounces or 180 grams (Hindi).

Yukè
A pun on U.K. (United Kingdom) and some other word?

Gitanjali
A book of Bengali songs by Tagore (see above, p. 228), published in 1914?

Eclogues
Poems idealizing country life, by the Roman 1st century BC poet, Virgil. Translation of the Eclogues.

Othello
Shakespeare's play, named after the Moor who is its leading character. The text of the play.

chaat
Narrowly, a combination of diced fruit and vegetables in a hot and sour dressing, sometimes including meat or shrimp; more broadly, any sort of snack food. Chaat recipes.

gulab jamans
Fried cheese pastry balls soaked in syrup, a classic Indian sweet, more often spelled "gulab jamun."

Jalebis
See above, note on p. 184.

barfi
See above, note on p. 184.

genuine McCoy
The usual expression is "the real McCoy," said of anything genuine and derived from the whiskey smuggled into the U.S. during Prohibition by Captain Bill McCoy.

sharif
See note on London shareef above, p. 156.

haramzadi
Female bastard.

girls killed for dowry
In recent years there has been widespread publicity about cases in which young brides were killed because their families did not deliver large enough doweries. Some Indians consider the phenomenon rare and unduly exaggerated in the press, but others maintain it is a serious problem. Articles from Journal of South Asia Women Studies:
Enrica Garzilli: "Stridhana: To Have and To Have Not".
Himendra B. Thakur: Practical Steps Towards Saving the Lives of 25,000 Potential Victims Of Dowry and Bride-burning in India in the Next Four Years.
Subhadra Chaturvedi: "Whether Inheritance to Women is a Viable Solution of Dowry Problem in India?".

accepted the notion of mutation in extremis
Citing an obscure passage in Charles Darwin's writings which would lead him to agree in at least some cases with his opponent Lamarck (see above, p. 5).

What is the point of Sufyan's musings of Darwin?

Omens, shinings, ghoulies, nightmares on Elm Street
Three of these refer to horror film titles (The Omen[1976], The Shining [1980)] and Nightmare on Elm Street [1984] and its sequels), and "ghoulies" echoes the well-known Scottish prayer, "From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, good Lord deliver us;" though it probably also alludes to the ghoulish zombies in The Night of the Living Dead (1968) or its sequels, Dawn of the Dead (1979) and Day of the Dead, (1985).

Der Steppenwolf
This 1927 novel by Hermann Hesse, first translated into English in 1965 has been a favorite of mystics and bohemians.

unauthorized intra-vaginal inspections
Carried out by immigration officials in Britain, looking for smuggled contraband.

Depo-Provera scandals
In 1973 it was revealed in Congressional hearings that numerous poor African-American women had been injected with the experimental contraceptive Depo-Provera despite the fact that the Food and Drug Administration had not approved its use, citing concerns about possible side-effects, including cancer. The women were not warned that there was any risk. The drug was approved for use in Great Britain and in many poor countries. Its advocates argued that this simple-to-use contraceptive which could be injected once every three months was ideal for controlling the population explosion among poor, uneducated women. This argument was widely viewed as racist.
A critical view of Depo Provera from The Black Panther Newsletter (Winter 1995).
Details about Depo-Provera.
Report on risks.

unauthorized post-partum sterilizations
Instances of sterilizing minority women without their permission immediately after they had given birth are well documented.
Beth Cooper Benajamin: "Sterilization Abuse: A Brief History".
Amanda Macintosh: "Family planning or population control?".

Third World drug-dumping
Medicines considered unsafe in their own countries are exported from the industrialized nations to poorer countries where they are freely sold.

p
Pence, penny, cent.

yakhni
A kind of spicy stew. This page contains recipes for several yakhnis.

the complex unpredictability of tabla improvisations
Performances on the classical Indian drum involve improvisations based on extremely complex rhythms. Introduction to Indian drum rythms, including audio demonstration MIDI format. Another page, with sound in wav format.

Jahannum
The Muslim Hell.

Gehenna
The Jewish Hell.

Muspellheim
The Norse Hell.

juggernauts
Though the word now means any unstoppable monstrous thing, the name has Indian origins, being the cart bearing the image of Lord Jagannath, an incarnation of Krishna, beneath whose wheels fervent worshippers used to throw themselves to be crushed to death. By extension, any large, unstoppable movement or thing. More information on Lord Jagannath.

Hubshees
Blacks.

bloody but unbowed
From William Ernest Henley's "Invictus" (1888):

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud:
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

(lines 5-8).

What sorts of thoughts are troubling Saladin?

masala dosa
Spicy stuffed pancakes made of lentil flour. Recipe for Didir Onion Rava Dosa. See also dosai.

bangers
Traditional British breakfast sausage.

Bangladesh
Seceeded in a bloody war from Pakistan in 1971. See above, p. 243.

as the pips went
In the British telephone system, when one is phoning from a pay phone and the time paid for in advanced a number of warning beeps ("pips") are sounded to alert the user to insert more coins or be cut off.

Battuta's Travels
Ibn Battuta was a Medieval Muslim traveler to Asia and Africa whose wanderings took him much farther afield than Europe's Marco Polo.

love of brown sugar
White men's erotic attraction toward brown-skinned women, seen as exotic.

Yassir Arafat meets the Begins
An unlikely meeting at the time this novel was written: Arafat was leader of the Palestinian Liberation Front, devoted foes of Menachem Begin, former Premier of Israel, intransigently opposed to the Palestinians.

Finnegan's Wake
James Joyce's last novel, written in a densely punning dialect of his own creation, drawing on many mythologies. Joyce's fondness for puns and other wordplay is clearly influential on Rushdie's style.

Flatland
Refers to Edwin Abbott's geometrical fantasy novel: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), which depicts a two-dimensional world.

she was still protesting too much
When Hamlet has a group of traveling actors portray a scene rather like he murder of his father, the Queen comments on the protestations of loyalty expressed by the wife in the play, ironically (and revealingly): "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" (Act III, scene 2, l. 221).

Vinod Khanna
Vinod Khanna, muscular Bollywood action hero, born 1947. A list of his films., Mentioned again on p. 350.

Sri Devi
Female Indian movie star. Picture of Sridevi.

Bradford
A city with a large Muslim population. It was here that The Satanic Verses was burned by protesters in one of the seminal acts of the "Rushdie affair." More about Bradford from the point of view of the city government.

Dick Turpin
Famous British highwayman.

Ned Kelly
Famous Australian outlaw. More on Ned Kelly.

Phoolan Devi
A woman bandit-leader who, after years of violence and 23 murders, was much romanticized in the Indian press; but when she surrendered to the police, she was revealed to be more militant and less glamorous than had been supposed. A film based on her life, entitled Bandit Queen, was made by Shekhar Kapoor, over her vehement objections. She ran unsuccessfully for office in 1991 and successfully in 1996.

William Bonney
American outlaw, Billy the Kid.

also a Kid
Baby goats are called kids too, of course.

bob's your uncle.
A common British expression of uncertain derivation used at the end of a list meaning something like "and there you are."

This place makes a packet, dunnit?
This place makes a bundle, doesn't it?

La lutte continue
"The struggle continues:" slogan of several revolutionary movements.

Hal Valance
A valance is a decorative flounce over a window which performs no particular function but looks pretty. The name indicates Hal's superficial and useless contributions to the world as an advertising executive: mere window-dressing. A catalog of Valances.

advice given by Deep Throat to Bob Woodward: Follow the money
"Deep Throat" (referring to the notorious pornographic film by that name) was the code name assigned to the main informant of the Washington Post reporters who uncovered much of the Watergate scandal by tracking the handling of money used by Nixon's staff to buy silence. The part was played in the film version by Hal Holbrook. The Bob Woodward/Carl Bernstein book on the scandal, and the movie based on it, was called All the President's Men. More information on the movie.

wasted
Excessively thin.

White Tower
A fashionable Franco-Greek restaurant at 1 Percy Street in London's West End. Details about The White Tower.

Orson Welles
The famous actor/director who became enormously fat in later years.

Maurice Chevalier
French musical performer and actor in both French and American films.

Mrs Torture
A satire on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Commentators have noted that it is ironic that after Rushdie far more viciously satirized British racism than Muhammad's preaching it was the British government which protected him from Islamic extremists.

midatlantic-accented
An accent calculated to be neither precisely British nor precisely American, but somewhere in between.

Mary Wells
Mary Wells made her reputation in advertising in 1965 by creating a highly-successful image makeover for Braniff Airlines which involved painting its airplanes in seven different colors (yellow, orange, turquoise, beige, ochre and two shades of blue--but not pink). See "Braniff Refuels on Razzle-Dazzle," p. 110. For more on Wells' campaign see Loomis 114-117.

David Ogilvy for his eyepatch
In the sixties the David Ogilvy agency (for which Rushdie briefly worked) created a highly successful advertising campaign promoting Hathaway shirts worn by a male model with a black patch over one eye.

Jerry della Femina
When della Femina was asked by executives at the Bates advertising agency to suggest ideas for an ad campaign for Panasonic he jokingly suggested "From those wonderful folks who gave you Pearl Harbor." He thought highly enough of this anti-Asian crack to make it the title of his 1970 volume of humorous reflections on the ad business (della Femina 103). Since the slogan was never really a part of della Femina's "work" in advertising, one may assume that Rushdie is recalling it for its xenophobic thrust.

bums
American "asses."

Valance in the Blofeld role and 007 nowhere on the scene
Refers to a James Bond villain. Information on Blofield.

Dr Uhuru Simba
Ironically combines the African slogan "Uhuru!" (freedom) with a word for "lion" associated with Tarzan films.

Brown Uncle Tom
A complex reference to the legendarily submissive slave in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's School Days (1857) set at Rugby, the British public (private) school which Rushdie himself attended. Can someone help me find a Rugby School page? I'm overwhelmed by hits relating to the sport. See also below, p. 269.

Teuton
German.

quiff
A tuft of hair standing up in front.

Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian-born body-builder and action-movie star. Another immigrant. Arnold Schwarzenegger links.

quantel
A computer-imaging firm. The new figure is a latex model whose image is computer processed. The Quantel home page.

Rutger Hauer
This Dutch-born actor played the menacing Roy Batty in Blade Runner. This parody high-school yearbook page contains a photograph of Hauer as Batty. More pictures of Roy Batty.

shiksa
Insulting Yiddish term for a gentile woman. Often spelled shikse.

How have the Black protests against the Aliens Show backfired?

rosbif, boudin Yorkshire, choux de bruxelles
Ironically French labels for typically boring English foods: roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, brussels sprouts.

nymphet
Term invented by Vladimir Nabakov in Lolita to describe a highly attractive preadolescent girl.

like a goat to the slaughter
The usual phrase is "like a lamb to the slaughter," from Isaiah 53:7 or "as a lamb to the slaughter" from Jeremiah 53:7.

michelins sticking out between her sari and her choli
See above, p. 60. Traditional Indian dress for women includes a short bodice called a choli which leaves some bare flesh below the breasts and above the waist.

Lambrakis . . . Z
Dr. Gregory Lambrakis was a popular leftist parliamentary deputy in the Greek government who was assassinated on May 22, 1963 in a plot by extreme right terrorists (who eventually seized power in 1967 and began a reign of repression and terror). He was widely viewed as a martyr, and protestors wrote the letter "Z" on walls, meaning zei, "he lives." His story was told in a novel entitled Z by Vassilis Vassilikos in 1966; and the novel was in turn made into a major film by Constantine Costa Gavras in 1969.

Tini bénché achén! . . . Farishta bénché achén
He's alive. Farishta (Gibreel) is alive.

Ciné-Blitz
See above, note on Blitz, p. 13.

Billy Battuta
See note above, p. 260 on Battuta's travels.

The Message
A reverent but inept 1976 film, originally released as Al-Risalah (English, Mohammed, the Messenger of God, ) depicting the life of Muhammad, fiercely attacked by devout Muslims, who object to any pictorial depiction of the Prophet. As Rushdie notes, the film avoided ever actually putting the Prophet on the screen. This passage clearly reflects Rushdie's consciousness that the story he was about to tell would strike some as blasphemous.

Struwelpeter
Struwwelpeter (the usual spelling) is a wildly naughty boy who features in verse stories by nineteenth-century German children's author Heinrich Hoffmann. Mimi has presumably taken on the name as a joke. Struwwelpeter stories.

It was so, it was not
A standard opening phrase in Indian fantastic stories, often used by Rushdie; equivalent in function to the European "Once upon a time" but emphasizing the equivocal nature of the narrative it introduces.

baggy salwar pantaloons
Typically voluminous women's trousers.

bottled djinn
This pun on the Arabic word for "genie" and "gin" (both found in bottles) is also repeatedly used in Midnight's Children.

Elephant Man illness
Neurofibromatosis, from the circus name of its most famous victim, Joseph Carey (John) Merrick (1862-1850). A 1974 play about Merrick called The Elephant Man was produced in 1979, and a movie by the same title appeared in 1980. Photos of Neurofibromatosis symptoms. Not for the squeamish.

Big Eid
Muslim holiday commemorating Abraham's near-sacrifice of Ishmael (in Jewish and Christian traditions, Isaac), called "big" to distinguish it from the "little" Eid which ends Ramadan.

mullah
In Islam, the spiritual head of a mosque.

Lucretius . . . Ovid
In a passage from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things, lines 670-671) (See Verstraete 231-232). the first century BC philosopher poet Lucretius suggests that life may have evolved. His contemporary Ovid's Metamorphoses retell the classic Greco-Roman myths focusing on the magical transformations that people and gods undergo into new forms. The passage quoted is from Book 15, lines 169-172 (Verstraaete 331).

cuckold's horns
In the Renaissance and later cuckolds--men whose wives are unfaithful to them--were said to wear horns.

passionate intensity
Alludes to Yeats' 1920 poem "The Second Coming," lines 6-8:

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

pot and kettle
An old expression applied to those who criticize people when they are guilty of the same fault to a greater degree compares them to a pot calling a kettle black.

mote and beam
In Matthew 7:3 Jesus similarly criticizes those who judge others by saying that they object to the "mote" (dust speck) in another person's eye when thy have a "beam" (plank) in their own.

the David Carradine character in the old Kung Fu programmes
Refers to a popular but odd television series (revived in 1993) featuring a Zen Buddhist monk wandering the Wild West, seeking peace but forever forced to do battle with evil.

Notting Hill
Where Rushdie himself used to live.

lower thumb
Penis.

Freemasonry
The Freemasons are a fraternal organization that in its early years combined rationalism with mysticism.

obeah
Caribbean name for a kind of black magic rooted in African tradition. A page on obeah in St. Lucia.

witchfinding . . . Matthew Hopkins
See note above on p. 182, on Matthew Hopkins.

Gloriana
Name used by Renaissance poets to refer to Queen Elizabeth I. When she spoke, people listened.

New Broomstick Needed to Sweep Out Witches
This would seem to be the title of an article written by or about Pamela rather than a real book.

her hair had gone snow-white
Like Ayesha in the Titlipur plot (see p. 225).

mutey
Monstrous mutant, usually the result of exposure to radiation; more commonly "mute."

yellowbrick lane
Alludes to the Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz, which leads to the Emerald City, and Brick Lane in London, where many Asians live, and which is transformed into Brickhall in the novel (see below, note on Brickhall, p. 283.)

he pronounced no sentences
Pun: didn't announce sentences of criminals/didn't speak.

Kurus and Pandavas
The two families (cousins) whose war is the principal subject of the Mahabharata
.

Mahabharata
The classic epic which is a central text of Hinduism.

Mahavilayet
Great foreign country. See Vilayet, above, p. 4.

National Front
A racist, anti-immigrant British political organization.

murder of the Jamaican, Ulysses E. Lee
(perhaps incongruously combining the names of the opposing chief generals in the American Civil War: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee.)

The Brickhall Three
"Brickhall" is a blending of the names of two Asian neighborhoods in London, Brick Lane and Southhall (Seminck 8). A tourist guide to London's East End, including Brick Lane. Protests against the trial of groups of defendants often refer to them by number, i. e. "The Chicago Seven." The example Rushdie probably had in mind was the "Guildford Four," imprisoned by the British for a series of 1974 pub bombings after one Gerry Conlon was tortured into confessing. After many appeals, the four were finally vindicated and released. The case was a long-running scandal, described in Gerry Conlon's Proved Innocent (London: Penguin, 1990). The book was made into a successful film entitled In the Name of the Father (1993).

Jatinder Singh Mehta
This allusion to a tavern murder is meant to be typical but is not based on an event involving anyone by this specific name (personal communication from Salman Rushdie).

bhangra beat
The popular dance music of London's Indian and Pakistani youth, derived from traditional Punjabi dances originally performed at weddings and other celebrations.

Jamme Masjid
A mosque in Brick Lane, formerly a Jewish synagogue and a Christian church, reflecting the changing population in the neighborhood. Named after the famous 17th-century Jama, Jami or Juma Masjid in Delhi which is mentioned on p. 519. Information about the Jama Masjid.

Huguenots' Calvinist church
Calvinism was founded in Switzerland and the Huguenots were French, so even this earliest incarnation of the building was doubly immigrant-based.

Sympathy for the Devil
A classically apocalyptic rock song by the Rolling Stones, from their Beggar's Banquet album.

Eat the Heinz Fifty-Seven.
For years the Heinz Foods Company advertised that it made 57 varieties of canned foods. This parodies the various slogans calling for freeing a certain number of prisoners. Information on the H.J. Heinz Company.

Pleasechu meechu . . . hopeyu guessma nayym
Phonetic rendering of Mick Jagger's refrain in Sympathy for the Devil: "Pleased to meet you . . . Hope you guess my name."

CRC
Community Relations Council.

What social tensions are reflected in the transformations that London is undergoing?

'This isn't what I wanted. This is not what I meant, at all.'
From T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." (Note by Martine Dutheil.)

the heart, for obvious reasons, in the mouth
"To have one's heart in one's mouth" is a common expression for being terrified.

das Ich
The self, the term which is rendered as "ego" in English translations of Freud.

I am . . . that I am.
See above, p. 182.

Submission
See note above, on p. 125.

What does Saladin mean by these two lines?

baron-samedi
In voodoo, Baron Samedi is host of the dead. A voodoo primer.

Club Hot Wax
A three-way pun: hot wax means currently popular music (records were formerly made from molded wax masters), a common method of removing body hair, and the custom of literally melting wax figurines depicted below. Rushdie may well have been inspired by reading in Antonia Fraser's life of Charles II (a person whose life we know he was interested in--see p. 340) of an anti-Catholic celebration held in London on November 17, 1679. In a self-conscious replacement of the traditional Guy Fawkes' Day ceremony (see below, note on p. 293), wax figures of the pope, attendant devils and nuns (the latter labelled as courtesans) were displayed and the figure of the pope was ceremoniously burned in a huge bonfire (Fraser 384-385).

Blak-An-Tan
Aside from its obvious racial associations, the name is the term assigned by the Irish independence movement to the occupying British soldiers based on their uniforms: "the Black and Tans."

Hamza-nama cloth
See above, p. 69.

Mary Seacole
A black woman who also cared for the troops in the Crimean War, but didn't gain the same fame as Florence Nightingale, popularly known as "The lady with the lamp."

Abdul Karim, aka The Munshi, whom Queen Victoria sought to promote, but who was done down by colour-barring ministers
Abdul Karim served as Victoria's tutor ("munshi") in Hindi and personal confidante for many years; but many of her advisors considered him a security risk and tried to discourage the relationship (Moorhouse, pp. 120-121). The Victoria Memorial in Calcutta.

black clown of Septimius Severus
According to the highly unreliable Historia Augusta (written in late antiquity), when Severus (born in North Africa and Emperor of Rome 146-211 AD) encountered a black man widely reputed to be a buffoon, he was not amused, but considered the meeting an ill omen. He urged his priests to consult the organs of a sacrificial animal, which they also found to be black. Not long after, he died. There are some grounds for believing that Severus himself may have been black. See also note on the Triumphal Arch of Septimus Severus, on p. 38.

Bust of Septimus Severus in the Granet Museum, Aix-en-Provence. Photo by Paul Brians.

Grace Jones
Black model and singer popular in the eighties.

Ukawsaw Groniosaw
He wrote an account of his life in slavery, published in 1731, entitled A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, Written by Himself. Text of the Narrative.

how-we-make-contribution-since-de-Rome-Occupation
The claim is being made that immigrants have been making contributions to English civilization since the Romans colonized it in the 1st century CE.

Mosley, Powell, Edward Long, all the local avatars of Legree
Racist British politicans. For Enoch Powell, see above, p. 186. "Avatar" is the Hindu term for an incarnation. Simon Legree is the slave-owning villain of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. See above, p. 267.

Maggie-maggie-maggie
Margaret Thatcher is melted in effigy.

the guy
On November 5 English children celebrate the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the houses of Parliament by burning in effigy the chief criminal, Guy Fawkes. They go from house to house asking for "a penny for the Guy" to finance the creation of the effigy.

obeah
See above, note for p. 280.

Topsy and Legree
The innocent slave girl and the villainous slaveowner of Uncle Tom's Cabin. See above, p. 267 & 292.

melted like tigers into butter
Alluding to Little Black Sambo, a children's book extremely popular until objections against the racist associations aroused by the illustrations and character names led to its fall from favor. In it, the hero cleverly climbs a tree to escape two tigers and allows them to chase each other until they melt into butter which he proceeds to take home to his mother to serve on pancakes. Though most readers imagined the story as set in Africa, tigers do not live there, though they do live in India.

Cho Oyu
The name is Tibetan, probably meaning "Goddess of the Turquoise." More information on Cho Oyu. Photograph of Cho Oyu.

Shangri-La
A magical kingdom in the Himalayas where no one grows old, described in James Hilton's Lost Horizons.

Picabia
This artist experimented with cubism, dadaism, and surrealism; see p. 297.

How does Otto Cone's philosophy reflect themes in the novel?

Father Christmas
British name for Santa Claus.

Mao
Chinese Premier Mao Tse Tung. Under his rule the Chinese brutally invaded and occupied Tibet. Materials from the Tibet Support Group.

In the beginning was the word
The famous opening line of the book of John.

kreplach
Jewish noodle dish. Cheese kreplach recipe. Kreplach with several fillings.

pearl without price
Precious jewel worth sacrificing all else for, from Jesus' parable in Matthew 13:45-46; a strikingly Christian allusion from the assimilationist Jewish Otto.

"stuffed monkey"
In 1920 Picabia glued a toy monkey onto a piece of cardboard and labelled it "Portrait de CŽzanne, Portrait de Rembrandt, Portrait de Renoir, Natures mortes." (Barràs 202, 229).

Jarry's Ubu Roi
Alfred Jarry wrote a series of plays, including this one (Ubu the King) about a vile-tempered, crude tyrant. He was hailed by the surrealists as a genius.

Polish literature . . . Herbert . . . Milosz . . .Baranczak
Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Mislosz, Stanislaw Baranczak.

mid-off
In cricket, the mid-off (short for mid-wicket off) stands on the off-side, at the other end of the pitch from the batter, near the bowler. He is mainly there to stop the off-drive from the batsman (a shot played straight down the wicket), as well as to assist in catching the throws from other fielders to the bowlers end in case of attempted runouts (David Windsor).

Widow of Windsor!
A term used by Rudyard Kipling to refer to Queen Victoria after the death of Prince Albert. British monarchs live in Windsor Castle. Victoria made something of a career out of being a widow.

pantomime member
British pantomimes are satirical dramatic productions, usually produced at Christmas. They are not pantomimes in the American sense at all, including as they do dialogue. The equivalent expression would be "cartoon member."

tsimmis
Traditional Jewish stew.

London W-two
W2 is the postal code of Paddington, where they live.

Chanukah
The Jewish festival of lights, also spelled Hanukkah, celebrated in December. Information about Hanukkah.

imitation of life
The 1959 remake of a 1934 film based on a Fannie Hurst novel by the same name, in which the light-skinned daughter of a black woman "passes" for white. Lana Turner stars as an ambitious actress Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson performs in a bit part.Plot summary. More information on the film.

lift-shaft
British for "elevator shaft." Yet another suicide by jumping.

survivor of the camps
The Nazi death camps.

Cecil Beaton
Famous British fashion photographer. He designed costumes for stage and film productions, winning an Oscar for his costume designs for the 1964 film of My Fair Lady. Information about Beaton. A photograph of Audrey Hepburn in one of the award-winning costumes.

chimeran graft
Blend of two different plants.

puddings
Desserts.

Gurdjieffian mystics
Mystics influenced by the Russian Georgy S. Gurdjieff (1872?-1949), himself influenced by Indian thought. George Baker's Gurdjieff in America.

gift of tongues
The miraculous ability to speak foreign languages (tongues), often manifested as the recitation of apparent nonsense syllables. The classic instance of this phenomenon is the first Pentecost (Acts 2:1-15). A collection of Biblical passages on the subject.

p-a-c-h-y
Elephants are pachyderms.

Moscow Road
A fashionable street northwest of Kensington Gardens.

elephant joke
There was a vogue for elephant jokes in the fifties. The most famous: "Where does an elephant sit down?" Answer: "Anywhere he wants."

In what ways are both Gibreel and Allie made to feel they are outsiders in England?

chimera
In mythology, a beast made up of the parts of various animals. The theme of hybridization and transplantation refers to Gibreel's own immigrant status, of course.

Singer Brothers dybbukery
Her mother interprets Allie's obsession with Gibreel in Jewish terms. Isaac Bashevis Singer featured a dybbuk (in Jewish folklore, a demonic spirit which can take possession of a human body) in his novel Satan in Goray , where it behaved much like an incubus, a creature which has wild sex with sleeping women. Visions of similar creatures haunt Jegor, a character in The Family Carnovsky, by I. B. Singer's older brother, Israel Joseph Singer.

L'Argent du Poche
"Small Change," a 1976 François Truffaut film about a group of schoolboys.

land's attempt to metamorphose into sky
Reflects the recurrent theme of metamorphosis.

they were there
When the New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary, who had been the first to climb Mount Everest in 1953 (with the Nepalese sherpa Tenzing Norgay), was asked why he climbed mountains, he replied, "Because they are there." The sherpas are a people who live in the Himalayas and who make much of their living from helping mountain climbers.

Namche Bazar
One of the last villages in Nepal in which mountain climbers stop for supplies before attempting to climb Mt. Everest. Information on Namche Bazar.

Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell
William Blake's mystical work combines traditional biblical elements with an enthusiastic celebration of eroticism as a vehicle of spiritual revelation. Like some other romantic poets, he considers the demonic realm depicted in Milton's Paradise Lost to be not a source of wickedness, but of creative and regenerative energy suppressed by Christianity's traditional obsession with virginity and chastity. He argues for a reunion of the polarities traditionally radically split off from each other by Christian dualism, as in this passage from p. 3: "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active spring from Energy." Compare Blake's approach to good and evil with that of Rushdie, who blends demonic and angelic characteristics in his two protagonists.

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God
This saying is characteristic of the many unorthodox "Proverbs of Hell" (see p. 8 of The Marriage of Heaven & Hell) praising the whole-hearted enjoyment of life, such as "The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom" and "He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence." Goats are traditionally associated with carefree natural sexuality through their connection with satyrs, but are symbols of the damned in Christianity (See Matthew 25:32-33). This ambiguity is much played with throughout the novel. Extracts from the Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Additional note by Martine Dutheil:
Among the "Proverbs of Hell," some are strikingly relevant to Rushdie's artistic project, such as "Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead" (as an image of postcolonial writing's relation to Western culture); "Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion" (which anticipates the "brothel" sections in Rushdie's novel); "You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough" and, even more significant for Blake and Rushdie's vision of art, "Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth".

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true
17th-Century Irish Archbishop James Ussher famously calculated the date of creation, based on biblical chronology, at 4004 BC, and predicted the end of the world in 1996, as referred to on p. 305. This passage occurs at the top of p. 14 of The Marriage of Heaven & Hell. This statement is followed by these words: "For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt." There then follows the phrase quoted at the top of p. 305: "This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment."

What are the main themes of the section during which Gibreel examines Allie's copy of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell?

I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing.
This sentence is actually the second on p. 12 of The Marriage of Heaven & Hell, earlier than the preceding passage quoted by Rushdie. It occurs just before the passage quoted on p. 338.

the Regenerated Man
The image described is on p. 21 of William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise. . . .
This is the first line of p. 21 of The Marriage of Heaven & Hell.

golden chain-mail Rabanne
Alluding to one of the bizarre clothing designs of Paco Rabanne.

crashpad
"Crashpad" was a hippie term used in the sixties to refer to an apartment or house ("pad") where homeless young people could live--"crash"--for free.

sugar-lump
LSD was commonly distributed in sugar cubes in its early days.

no shortage of brain cells
It was widely reported in the sixties that taking LSD destroyed brain cells.

trying, in the idiom of the day, to fly
Because being drugged was called "getting high," there were many allusions to flying in hippie drug slang. Elena's suicide is linked through this term to the other deaths by falling in the novel.

virgin queen
One of the titles of Queen Elizabeth I, who never married.

virgo intacta
Intact virgin.

'ACID BATH' She drowned while high on LSD ("acid"), but in various industrial processes metals are dipped into a literal "acid bath."

parachute silk
Allie has bedsheets made of recycled parachutes, making an apt symbol of arrival for a man who has plummeted from the sky.

What are the Allie's main characteristics, and how do they sometimes cause conflict in her life?

isn't it?
Typical Anglo-Indian expression, meaning "aren't there?"

Luzhin
Main character in Vladimir Nabokov's novel dealing with chess, Zashchita Luzhina (The Defense).

Marinetti
Filippo Tommasso Marinetti (1876-1944), leader of the Italian Futurist art movement, attracted to machinery and speed, aligned with Fascism.

kathputli
Hindi for marionettes.

one-off
Unique item, or here, event.

Guantanamera
Popular Cuban song by Jose Marti, associated with the Castro revolution. The original Spanish Lyrics, with guitar chords. The melody in MIDI format. (Requires a Midi plug-in.)

best minds of my generation
(opening of Allen Ginsberg's Howl. (1956). The poem begins:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at daw looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night. . . .

Discuss Allie's contention that truth has fled to the mountains. What do you think she means? Note that her father explains a related theory on the next page. Do you agree with her? Explain.

O but he's dead, and at the bottom of the sea.
This sounds intriguingly like a line from an Elizabethan play, but is in fact entirely Rushdie's own invention (personal communication from Salman Rushdie).

locus classicus
Originally, classic passage in a literary work; here, classic place.

the Angel of the Recitation
The Angel Gabriel is said to have dictated the Qur'an to Muhammad.

now that Shaitan had fallen
In Islam, Shaitan is a Jinn, cast down from heaven for refusing to fall down before Adam. In Jewish and Christian belief Satan is said to have been an Angel, cast down from Heaven for rebelling against God.

as Iago warned, doth mock the meat it feeds on
From Shakespeare's Othello III: iii lines 165-167: O. beware, my lord of jealousy; / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on. . . ." The line suggests that jealousy destroys those who harbor it, devouring them.

like Brutus, all murder and dignity. . . . The picture of an honourable man
Refers to Antony's funeral oration in Act III, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, where he ironically calls the assassinsóincluding Marcus Junius Brutus, one of Caesar's closest associatesó"honourable men."

wpb
Wastepaper basket.

one day men shall fly
Leonardo da Vinci, now mainly famous for paintings like the Mona Lisa, spent a great deal of time and ingenuity trying to design a flying machine.

Yoji Kuri
His darkly comic films are more influenced by Western cartoons than most Japanese animation. Titles in English include "Vanish" and "Manga."

for Blake's Isaiah, God had simply been an immanence, an incorporeal indignation
Alluding to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 12:

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert. that God spake to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.

Isaiah answr'd. I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discovr'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then perswaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.

a man of about the same age as himself
Gayatri Spivak notes that the following description looks rather like Rushdie himself

(48).

Ooparvala . . . 'The Fellow Upstairs.'
God.

Neechayvala, the Guy from Underneath
The Devil.

masala movie
Melodramatic Indian film, see note on p. 166.

'Ad or Thamoud
Two tribes mentioned in the Qur'an as having rejected prophets from God; ancient mighty peoples who vanished through wickedness. For further information, see Haykal 31.

the thirteenth-century German Monk Richalmus
This crochety monk was obsessed with demons, blaming them for all of the petty irritants that surrounded him in his Liber Revelationum de Insidiis et Versutiis Daemonum Adversus Homines, first printed by Bernard Pez in his Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novisisimus (Wittenberg?: Philippi, Martini & Joannis Veith, 1721-29), vol. 1, part 2, columns 373-472.

Semjaza and Azazel
Identified in the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch, Chapters 6-9, as wicked leaders of the angels ("sons of God") mentioned in the passage from Genesis 6:4 cited immediately below. The Book of Enoch. Azazel is also identified in Leviticus 16:6-10 as a spirit to whom a sacrificial goat must be offered by driving it into the wilderness. This ritual sacrifice is part of the famous "scapegoat" ritual often alluded to but seldom understood. Azazel is sometimes interpreted as a demon who lives in the desert.

lusting after the daughters of men
Genesis 6: 4, tells of the Nephilim, mighty offspring of "the sons of God" mating with "the daughters of men."

the Prophet, on whose name be peace
The ritually orthodox way to refer to Muhammad.

In what way does Gibreel compare himself with Muhammad?

a part of town once known . . .
London's Soho district.

ka
Sanskrit term often used to refer to an unnamed divine source of being, literally "who."

Janab
Honorific title like "sahib."

O, children of Adam
This passage comes from the Qur'an, Sura 7, verse 27. The contest insists on God's goodness as contrasted with Shaitan's wickedness.

Jahweh
One rendering of the sacred name of God in Judaism, also often spelled "Yahweh."

Deutero-Isaiah
"Second Isaiah," the name assigned to the presumed author of Chapters 40-55 of Isaiah. He is said to have lived long after the writer of the first thirty-nine chapters. His work, completed toward the end of the exile of the Jews in Babylon, would have been added to the book in order to update it. The very use of this term reflects modern Biblical scholarship appealing to a skeptic like Rushdie.

Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?
Amos 3:6. This and the following citations make the point that God was depicted at first as a source of evil as well as good, and that Satan was only gradually differentiated from him. The dualism characteristic of later religions like Islam is seen as a "pretty recent fabrication."

What relevance does this discussion of the relationship between good and evil have to the rest of the novel?

Ithuriel
In Milton's Paradise Lost,Book IV, Ithuriel's golden spear transformed Satan from his disguise as a toad back into his original form (Joel Kuortti).

Zephon had found the adversary squat like a toad
by Eve's ear in Eden, using his wiles

to reach
The organs of her fancy, and with them forge
Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams.

Lives there who loves his pain?
This and the following lines are from Paradise Lost, Book IV, lines 888-890 in which reproaches Satan for transgressing God's law. (Comment by Martine Dutheil.)

Who would not, finding way, break loose from hell,
Though thither doomed? Thou wouldst thyself, no doubt,
And boldly venture to whatever place
Farthest from pain, where thou mightst hope to change
Torment with ease . . .

felo de se
Suicide.

seize the day
This traditional expression, meaning "do it now," comes from the Latin carpe diem (Horace: Odes, I:21, line 8).

pukka
Racially pure. Bigoted British colonial slang derived from Hindi pakka, meaning "ripe."

Levantine
From the Levant: the Middle East.

Wildernesse
The Wildernesse Golf Club is located in Sevenoaks, Kent, southwest of London.

Iblis
From Greek diabolos, "the slanderer;" name of the rebel angel/devil in the Qur'an.

Tchu Tché Tchin Tchow.
Gibreel is trying to remember Chamcha's name; but this succession of syllables may well be a veiled allusion to a British musical comedy entitled Chu Chin Chow, produced for the stage in 1916 (script by Oscar Ashe, music by Frederic Norton), and filmed twice (in 1923 and 1934). A great success in its original staging, the production was a spectacular musical based on a much older pantomime (see above, p. 297) telling the story of Ali Baba and Forty Thieves. The musical remained popular enough to receive a production on ice under the same title in 1953. Whichever version he encountered, the Arabian Nights' setting of the tale would have attracted Rushdie's attention; and the fact that the lead thief, named Abu Hassan in the play, was also called by the very Chinese-sounding name of "Chu Chin Chow" illustrates the kind of ignorant orientalizing that Europeans have long engaged in, and to which Rushdie frequently alludes in the novel. (Sources: Dimmitt 279, Sharp 179, 1136, Enciclopedia 170, Times 9, Variety, Wearing 656-657. See note on thirty-nine stone urns below, p. 377.

Wren's dome
The massive dome of London's St. Paul's Cathedral, designed by Christopher Wren.

Underground
Subway.

the Council
Local British government body.

swing them by their necks
The French Revolutionaries hung the hated aristocrats from the Parisian lampposts.

Orphia Phillips
As the following lines make clear, she is the sister of Hyacinth Phillips, whom Saladin met on p. 169.

I cyaan believe I doin this
Orphia, Uriah and Rochelle all speak Caribbean dialect.

sure as eggsis
Abbreviation of a British collquialism, "eggs is eggs," perhaps a pun on the alegebraic expression of equivalence: "X is X."

obeah
See above, note for p. 280.

mashin up
In Caribbean dialects "mash up" is used to describe the creation of all sorts of damage--here, for "crumpling," and below, "mash up" means "wreck."

dabba . . . dabbawalla
See note above, on p. 18, on dabbas.

travelling mat
See above, note on p. 108.

something straaange in the neighbourhood
The children are playing at being Ghostbusters, quoting the refrain of the title song from the 1984 film by that name: "If there's something strange in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!." More information about Ghostbusters.

gulag
Acronym for the prison camps of the Soviet Union.

fairy-queen
One of the many titles associated with Queen Elizabeth I, but here probably an anti-gay insult.

Bachchas
Children (Hindi).

rude rhymes
"Rude" is a much stronger term in Britain than in the U.S. Do these count as Satanic Verses?

redeeming the city like something left in a pawnshop
The Judeo-Christian tradition of a redeemer (Hebrew goël) is a figure who pays the amount due in order to liberate whoever or whatever has been condemned. In Christian theology Christ is the sacrificial lamb who, echoing the Passover lamb of the Jews, dies to free his followers from sin and damnation. Thus the use of the term "redeem" to refer to liberating an item left at a pawnshop is historically accurate, if irreverent.

calm-calm
In Indian dialect, adjectives are sometimes repeated thus to emphasize them. Other examples are "big-big" (p. 68) and "bad-bad" (p. 334).

three-little-words
"Three Little Words" is the title of a popular song written in 1930 for an Amos and Andy film, Check and Double Check, by Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar. The words are, of course, "I love you." Instead, Gibreel replies with another, very unsatisfactory, three words.

tamasha
Show, circus, celebration (from the name for a very popular form of bawdy Indian folk theater).

harmonium
Box-like portable organ somewhat like an accordion introduced into India by Christian missionaries and widely adopted for the playing of traditional Indian music.

The gazals of Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Faiz (1914-1978), born in what is now Pakistan, was one of South Asia's most distinguished and influential modern poets. Much of his Urdu poetry was Marxist-inspired political poetry in support of the poor. In his acknowledgements, Rushdie cites Mahmood Jamal as the source of this translation, slightly emended by himself. For gazals, see note on p. 8.

the fifties classic Mughal-e-Azam
(Dir. K. Asif, starring Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, & Madhubala, 1960) A spectacular historical fantasy in which the son of the Mughal emperor Akbar the Great falls in love with a dancing girl. The text of the song in Hindi.

Cleopatra's Needle
An Egyptian obelisk, now located on the Victoria Embankment by the Thames. It has nothing to do with Cleopatra, having been created about 1500 BC.

There is no God but God.
See note above, on p. 105.

In the pages that follow, try to decide how literally we are to take Gibreel's transformation.