Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 83
Rushdie: Haunted By His Unholy Ghosts 83 would have to revert to a dictionary all the time and would progress through the novel laboriously. Or could it be that the books were written for the benefit of those Europeans who ruled in India and their families who had a more than average knowledge of the Asian languages. Even so, the range of readership must have been extremely limited and could not have warranted Salman Rushdie becoming a Booker Prize winner. Surely, all the signs point to a deliberate plan to build the repu- tation of Rushdie by any means and to use him as a guinea-pig. He was probably aware of that fact, but it did not seem to matter to him, as long as he was being bestowed worldly honours and promised untold riches. And Rushdie certainly hints at the fact that there was worse still to come : ‘Archangels no longer speak to mortals. . . . the voices in my head far outnumbered the ranks of the angels. . . . My voices, far from be- ing sacred, turned out to be as profane, and as multitudinous, as dust. . . . . . But I ask for patience - wait. . . . . Don’t write me off too eas- ily. ’ (p. 166). SH A M E Rushdie’s third novel, published in 1983, had an appropriate name - it hinted at a characteristic that he certainly lacked. When we now read Rushdie’s earlier novels, after witnessing the infa- mous debacle of The Satanic Verses, we cannot help but notice how frequently he has put his foot in his mouth and how his work has rebounded on him. A classic example of this is found in page 39 : ‘No matter how determinedly one flees a country, one is obliged to take along some hand-luggage; and can it be doubted that Omar Khayyam. . . . having been barred from feeling shame. . at an early age, continued to be affected by that remarkable ban throughout his later years. ’ How the predicament of Omar Khayyam (the central figure in the novel) has rebounded on Rushdie himself. Salman Rushdie has