The Satanic Verses

Almost 25 years after it was published and about 3 months since I started reading it, I have finished Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Here are the answers to the main questions I had about the book:

1. What's it about?

It's about two successful Indian men, an actor called Gibreel Farishta and a voice over specialist called Saladin Chamcha. They both survive the explosion of a jumbo jet by terrorists over the English Channel. Gibreel gradually becomes deluded that he is his namesake the archangel and Saladin actually turns into a goat-like incarnation of the devil. Gibreel dreams the history of Islam from its inception in the city of Jahilia (built of sand) at some unspecified point in the past to the return of the Imam (based on Ayatollah Khomenei) from exile to ensure the triumph of the Islamic revolution. Along the way there are bucket loads of insight into the life of an ex-pat Indian in London, language, marriage and many other accessible topics.

2. What are the Satanic Verses?

At first, the people of Jahilia worshipped 360 Gods of whom the Goddess Al-lat was the most revered. Mahound (Rushdie's version of the prophet Muhammed) and his small number of followers are committed to the idea that there is only one God (Al-lah). The most powerful man in Jahilia, the Grandee Abu Simbel, feels threatened by Mahound and offers him a deal: admit the worthiness of just 3 of the 360 Gods and I will not only tolerate, but recognise you. Mahound climbs Mount Cone to speak to his archangel (Gibreel Farishta feels it's him in the dreams).  On the mountain he is told to admit the 3 Gods and on returning to the city conveys the message to an assembled crowd in verse. Later, he retracts the message as the work of the Devil (satanic verses) and he and his followers are forced to flee the city.   

3. Why did the Ayatollah and his fans throw their toys out of the pram?

The answer to this one is not clear cut, but after some Googling, this is my take:

     There is a brothel in Jahilia where the poet Baal hides out after Mahound has returned and imposed an Islamic regime on the city. At some point the prostitutes get the idea of naming themselves after each one of Mahound's many chaste wives to excite their customers and increase profits. This was taken by some as suggesting that the prophet's wives were whores.
     Satanic Verses is a phrase derived from an Arabic one which means something rather different. Its use was construed as implying that the verses in the Koran were the work of the devil. 
    Mahound is a derogatory word for Muhammed used by the English during the crusades.
    In the novel the story of Abraham is told briefly, but in a way that shows him as a cold-hearted man who left his wife (Hagar) and unborn child (Ishmael) in the desert to die and which expresses surprise that the site of this act is worshipped not because of the miracle that Hagar found a source of water there and survived, but because Abraham had graced it with his presence.
    The scribe who writes down the words of Allah supposedly coming directly from him through the mouth of Mahound unchanged is suspicious and so makes some small changes. These are not picked up by Mahound causing the scribe to lose his faith and suggesting that Islam was born of self interest. 
    Finally, and this seems like the kicker to me, the Ayatollah Khomenei character in the novel is portrayed in a less than flattering light with him ending the section lying in the palace forecourt with his mouth open swallowing people whole as they enter.

4. Was there any justification for the Fatwa?

It's easy to understand why Muslims were offended by the book and hard to imagine that Rushdie didn't intend this to some degree. However, even the most extreme versions of Islamic law don't allow for sentencing a person to death without a trial or at least the right to speak in their defence first. And Rushdie wasn't even living in a country subject to Islamic law. The Ayatollah actually encouraged Muslims who knew someone who was close enough to Rushdie to kill him to pay them to do so.

The last word? The Ayatollah was under pressure after making a too little too late truce with Iraq and the publication of The Satanic Verses gifted him an opportunity to distract attention and reinvigorate his supporters. It wasn't an easy read, but was worth the effort, there's a lot more to it than the controversy and I have more respect for, and interest in the author than I did three months ago.

An Uncle Should

An uncle should arrive bearing gifts for his nephews and nieces. Preferably something exotic that you can't buy locally. I used to be strictly opposed to giving money instead on the grounds that it was lazy and showed a lack of imagination, but I've had to accept that it will not only do at a push, but is often preferred.

An uncle should raise the stakes in dinnertime conversation by saying things to nephews and nieces that their parents usually rule unacceptable. Depending on age and the peculiarities of the family involved something that is verging on rude, that hints at sex or digs up something from the past that the parents have hidden from their children is best.

A good uncle should have a flexible concept of uncle-hood which includes the children of friends as well as siblings.

A good uncle should adapt as children grow up, but should not ever try to be 'cool' in order to stay popular as child becomes tween becomes teen becomes young adult.

A good uncle should always retain an air of mystery and never allow the illusion, created during the early years, that he is wise to be destroyed completely. Evidence to the contrary need not be an insurmountable barrier in this respect.

An uncle should be a friend of the family and a friend of each member of the family. Separation or divorce will be a challenge to this point, but magnanimity and skillful exploitation of the neutrality inherent in uncle-hood should be enough to win the day.

A good uncle should visit and invite visits, knowing that the former will always be the default, and end each visit having added something memorable that only he can.

Just Say No to Insurance

Insurance was originally designed to save us from ruin in the event of an unpredictable misfortune. Shipping companies insured against their ship sinking in a violent storm and taking their cargo down with it. Drivers insured against being forced to swerve to avoid a drunken lunatic and writing off their vehicle in the ensuing back flip onto the hard shoulder. Everyone insured, if they could, against being hospitalized after illness or injury. This kind of insurance makes sense to me. Many kinds don't. Liability waiver insurance makes a cheap car rental not cheap. If I say no, almost 1000 pounds is blocked on my credit card and I'm faced with the loss of all of it if I so much as scratch the already heavily scratched 'Vauxhall Corsa or similar'. This is nonsense. That I am forced to take out insurance against an unexpected loss I can't possibly meet the cost of is common sense. But why, if I choose to risk an amount that would be painful, but not terminal, can't I be liable for the real cost of repair of whatever damage I cause? I take better care of the car if I know carelessness will cost me personally. In Thailand you see whole families traveling on small motorbikes without helmets. I asked a tour guide why they take the risk and he said "It's their family, they go slowly." He might have added that they pay attention. They don't wear iPods or talk on the phone, safe in the knowledge that someone else will pay if they lose concentration and crash. If they do crash, they have to take responsibility. And there's the rub: the more insured we are, the less responsible we feel for our actions. Say no to damage waiver insurance, say no to PPI, say no to identity theft insurance, say no to no claims bonus insurance and football shirt insurance and bad weather on holiday insurance and all the thousand types of insurance against the inevitable risks of life that won't bankrupt you if they happen. Take responsibility and feel the thrill of exposure.

Songs that Should Have Been Shot at Birth

As with Pol Pot and Robert Mugabe the world would be a better place if certain songs, despite their popularity, had been shot at birth. Just as one person's dictator is another's war hero, so the choice of song is highly subjective. Here are two of mine.

Lady in Red by Chris de Burgh. He used to write songs that could best be described by adjectives like interesting, haunting, touching, melodious etc. These were songs that would make it onto the Old Grey Whistle Test, but probably not Top of the Pops. Songs that Annie Nightingale liked openly and other people had a cassette of in their car, but rarely talked about. Then he wrote Lady in Red and presumably got rich(ish) and well known, but for me broke the spell he had laboured to create and sowed the seeds of an annoying feedback loop in my head which popped up this week and prompted me to add this saccharine dirge to my 'hit' list.

Another song born with a cute smile on its face that distracted everyone from the budding horns in its temples which begged a bullet to the brain is Candle in the Wind. Don't get me wrong I used to like it too, but now I thank the lord for digital albums which allow you to delete the songs you don't want to hear. Thanks to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, I'm sure it's not just envy of Bernie Taupin who got to spend the late twentieth century swanning around in long leather coats, being filmed getting in and out of limos and generally living a life which was wildly large in proportion to his talent. And Crocodile Rock is ridiculous, but it has every right to life. CitW does NOT and don't even get me started on the Diana version.

Variety is the Substance of Life

Variety is not the spice of life, it's the substance. You can keep your body alive by doing the same repetitive job for years, eating the same staples day after day and sheltering in a generically furnished box made of ticky-tacky on the hillside, but you'll be dying inside. Your identity will stagnate and you won't be living, but rather enduring a slow death. I once met an English doctor who had fallen from grace in his profession. I met him on a campsite in the south of France while I was enjoying a very brief and un-illustrious career as a grape picker in a village called Trouillas. He was testing the theory that man cannot live by bread alone. He thought he could and that he was proving it, but was strangely oblivious to the fact that he was drinking a litre and a half of red wine a day and that his ankles were swollen to the size of basketballs. I lasted 5 days in the job and my biblical friend was so starved of company that he stopped talking about himself and started asking about me in an attempt to stop me from leaving. It worked and I got a fast track psychoanalysis out of it. The point is that the bread may have stood between Brion and starvation, but it was the wine and conversation that was making his situation tolerable.

Rip Her to Shreds

I dreamed an idea for a TV show last night. It felt so good that someone popped into the dream and asked me who I was in love with to be having such good ideas. In the dream I refused to say what the idea was in case someone stole it. Really it was just a title and a feeling. It's called Rip Her to Shreds after the Blondie song. I think all that happens really is that women go on the show wearing outfits they think they look great in and invited guests do their best to make them doubt the wisdom of their choice. It might work best with American outfit-wearers and British guests. Americans are world class at projecting self-confidence, and the British are world class at putting people in their place. I'm wondering how you measure who wins. Maybe you could get a team of body language experts to scrutinise the outfit-wearers for signs of insecurity. Or maybe you could have some kind of sensor measuring stress levels. It would need a skillful moderator to police the border between criticism and cruelty. What you'd need is a stand up comedian who's skilled at dealing with hecklers to put the critics in their place if they went too far.

Winter is when...

I used to binge on soap operas. Then never watch them again. I did it with Dallas, East Enders, Brookside and probably some others, but my longest binge was Coronation Street. According to Wikipedia, Coronation Street was first broadcast on December 9th 1960, 5 days after my minus fourth birthday though strangely Wikipedia has failed to record this. I think it was during the 25th anniversary celebrations that I started watching it. Anyway it was in the Stan and Hilda Ogden/ Jack and Vera Duckworth/ Eddie Yates era. Eddie Yates was a fat binman (that's a garbage collector to those who spell colour without the 'u') who had no luck with the ladies until he met the love of his life on CB radio. He wasn't exactly Oscar Wilde, but one quote from him that has stuck in my mind is: "Spring is when the bins start to smell". It's starting to get cold in the evenings here in Tokyo on October 24th in the year of our lord 2012 and I'm noticing the signs of encroaching winter and remembering Eddie Yates. Winter is when you can forget to put the bins out on a Tuesday night (after 11pm so you don't get busted by the local housewife mafia for not getting up early on Wednesday morning to do it) and not have them crawling with flies by Saturday. Winter is when, if like me you have no heater in your shower room, you have to fill it with steam before getting in. Then sprint to the living room leaving wet footprints on the floor. Winter is when you regret not having had your sweaters dry cleaned after you stopped wearing them the previous spring. Winter is when thoughts turn to skiing. Winter is when guitar strings go out of tune on the tight side. Winter is when the local fast food outlets give you hot tea instead of cold water and the vending machines start dispensing cans of hot drinks again. Winter is when...