Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 81
Rushdie: Haunted By His Unholy Ghosts 81 ‘Voices are speaking to me inside my head. I think - Ammi, Abboo, I really think - that Archangels have started to talk to me. ’ (p. 162). However, it is in one reference to Muhammad(sa) that Rushdie’s true and dangerous motive surfaces : ‘Muhammad (on whose name be peace, let me add; I don’t want to offend anyone). ’ (p. 161). Is it not ironic that this is exactly what Rushdie intended to do. He had started to play a dangerous game, which in time was going to become monstrous and ogrous in nature and of which he would no longer have any control. He had made his own proverbial bed in a very early stage of his literary career, and very soon, he would be made to lie in it! Due to his conceit and arrogance, one could sense an ominous and foreboding fate awaiting him : ‘Muted for an evening and a night and a morning, I struggled, alone, to understand what had happened to me; until at last I saw the shawl of genius fluttering down, like an embroidered butterfly, the mantle of greatness setting upon my shoulders. ’ (p. 161). Through his literary talent, Rushdie thought that he could ex- press whatever views he wished and attribute them to others and thus safeguard his own self; this was a force, a sense of power that he never had before and he seemed to revel in it, as he clearly ex- presses : ‘By sunrise, I had discovered that the voices could be control- led - I was a radio receiver, and could turn the volume down or up; I could select individual voices; I could even, by an effort of will, switch off my newly-discovered inner ear. It was astonishing how soon fear left me. ’ (p. 162). So Salman Rushdie thought that he had discovered a new way to let his true feelings be known and to pass on his message under the guise of fiction, but at the same time exonerating himself before-