Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 78
78 Mohamed Arshad Ahmedi Rushdie deeply regretted the Partition, as he had to leave India for Pakistan, due to the fact that he was a Muslim, albeit by name alone, but nevertheless a Muslim : ‘I won’t deny it: I never forgave Karachi for not being Bombay. ’ (p. 299). He liked the freedom in India where there was no real pressure in having to display Islamic etiquette. But in Pakistan which was formed as a separate country on the very strength of its religion and the freedom to express it, the pressure was much greater to display Islamic characteristics, and he deeply regretted this from very early on. His deep hatred of Pakistan and Islam is made apparent : ‘So, from the earliest days of my Pakistani adolescence, I began to learn the secret aromas of the world, the heady but quick-fading perfume of new love, and also the deeper, longer-lasting pungency of hate. ’ (p. 298). Rushdie makes it quite clear, in derision, that he would nev- er fit in ‘in the land of the pure’ as he ‘was forever tainted with Bombayness, his head was full of all sorts of religions apart from Allah’s’ and that as his ‘body was to show a marked preference for the impure’, he ‘was doomed to be a misfit. ’ ( p. 301). What he did not realise then was that he would be doomed to be a misfit in almost the whole world in a few years time and that he would be spending his life in hiding. Rushdie also makes a clear differentiation between good and evil and, indubitably, chooses the latter, in arrogant fashion: ‘Sacred: purdah-veils, halal meat, muezzin’s towers, prayer mats; profane: Western records, pig-meat, alcohol. I understood now why mullahs (sacred) refused to enter aeroplanes (profane) on the night before Id-ul-Fitr, not even willing to enter vehicles whose secret odour was the antithesis of godliness in order to make sure of seeing the new moon I learned the olfactory incompatibility of Islam and socialism. . . . . . . more and more, however, I became convinced of