Still in jealous fury, Rekha cursed London-bound Gibreel with life in hell. By implication, her emphatic gesture cast doubt on Gibreel’s angelic repute. Confessedly, she cursed Gibreel with a hellish life and damned him because, in the first place, it was him who had sent her to hell. And she called him devil, who both came from and was going to hell. Indeed the subsequent development of the novel’s main plot undid the strictly dichotomous distinction between angels and devils. This said, provisionally, Rekha’s damning words had to be taken with a grain of salt. As Islam shunned suicide, she was a character doomed to hell. Accordingly, she uttered verses in an unidentifiable and unintelligible language, which was remarkably harsh and sibilant. This was almost certainly Arabic, and Gibreel vaguely discerned the word Al-lat in her revengeful verses. Al-lat was the leading goddess of Mecca before the advent of Islamic monotheism. Hence Rekha’s goddess was antipodal to Islam’s God, or Allah, and morally suspect.
Arguably, the novel’s description of the exact workings of the supernatural miracle that saved Gibreel and Saladin was an all the more forceful blow to the traditionally conceived notion of an angel. In contrast to angels that were intermediaries between gods and men, the angel Gibreel of The Satanic Verses was a highly malleable figure, who apparently conveyed messages between man and man, that is, between the same man—utilized as a sort of inspirational midwife. This last aspect of Gibreel’s angelic nature became more obvious in the novel’s following chapters and story lines with other prophetic revelations, including those devoted to Mahound and prophetess Ayesha. Nevertheless, the opening chapter did subtly broach the topic. It demonstrated angel Gibreel’s subservience to mankind in the making of a supernatural miracle and, in this connection, his malleability in the hands of man. Angel Gibreel did not act as a go-between God and men, or between God and Saladin. Of the two, in what concerned their safe landing, Saladin’s role has apparent primacy. Up in the air, despite his distaste for the boisterous and extravagant Gibreel, Saladin instinctively refrained from shunning the latter’s embrace. Somehow against himself, he did not get to command the other to stay away from him, to go away. Something that began to move and make loud noises in his intestines kept him from rejecting Gibreel. Instead he received Gibreel’s embrace with open arms. According to Saladin, in retrospect, what took over his will and saved his life despite himself was an inner volition. This inner volition had risen up against his slavish desire for assimilation through cultural self-denial, which symbolically amounted to death or disappearance. Hence a genuine, unspoilt, an all-powerful desire for survival overtook him, and it immediately condemned his pitiful character and its trademark quality, being his incomplete artificial presence. Saladin simply surrendered to such an innermost and expansive force. However, what overruled his will had an outside origin too. An external entity, resembling a hand, embraced him, so tightly yet so gently, but in all cases causing extreme discomfort, and it was capable of controlling his words and movements too. Then whatever its exact origin, this volition of and through Saladin, commanded angel Gibreel to fly and sing. Consequently, angel Gibreel began to flap his arms with increasing rapidity and sang in a language and with a tune that was reminiscent of Rekha’s curse in verse. And already embraced, they thereby save their lives. Apparently, Saladin commanded Gibreel, and Gibreel did what was asked from him.
Afterward in safety, Gibreel took this incident to be a celestial miracle, but the more Westernized of the two, Saladin, attributed it to disturbed perceptions and sheer luck. More truly, he attempted to reject the experience through reasoning. Yet paradoxically, in their dealings with other people, it was Saladin who honestly attempted to explain what happened and was taken for an absolute fool. Gibreel, man of the people, showed more common sense.
When all is said and done, the opening of The Satanic Verses heralded a momentous reinterpretation of the division of labor between man and angel. Most noticeably in this new relationship, God was out of the picture. But instead, the narrator made a vague reference to Satan to explain the chapter’s lifesaving miracle. He said, he knew what had really happened, he had seen it all. He avowedly made no claims to omnipresence and omnipotence but suggestively asked who really worked the miracles and whether Gibreel’s song was angelic or satanic? Then he put his identity into question and asked who had the best melodies. Inevitably, this and additional narratorial interjections have led to recurrent speculation about a satanic narrator. And not far removed from such speculation was the possibility of Saladin’s demonic possession, especially given his later transformations, both physical and moral. All the more so because during Saladin’s fall from the skies to England, he had felt a relentless grip on his heart, which made him think death was out of the question. Indeed it was after his supernatural or demonic possession, possibly effected through a light ray, he had ordered Gibreel to fly and sing.7 Hence his miraculous safe landing at England marked rebirth in dual sense, as the demonic newcomer.
Chapter I.2
In The Interpretation of Dreams, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1950 [1899]) argued, dreams were a subconscious attempt to reassemble thoughts, images, and sensations incurred in the conscious or awake state of being. In parallel, the narrator’s detailed description of Gibreel’s previous life in chapter I.2 offered sufficient evidence for supposing that his angelic revelations were projections based on his past learning and experiences. Although none of these shed any light on Gibreel’s miraculous safe landing in England, they did possibly explain his spectral or holy visions. Thus, for example, the narrator informed that Rekha, whose specter had visited Gibreel flying on a Bokhara rug, in real life owned carpet showrooms. As to her flying, she had committed suicide by throwing herself down Bombay’s highest skyscraper, the Everest Vilas. She had committed suicide because Gibreel, with whom she was having an extramarital affair, had vanished. And Gibreel’s enigmatic farewell note that referred to airborne activity might have inspired the way in which she had committed suicide, for it referred to humans as aerial entities, with origins in dreams and clouds, and their flying to regenerate themselves. Hence while never explicitly admitted in the novel, Gibreel was possibly feeling responsible, or his sense of guilt lay at the root of Rekha’s frequent spectral visits to him.
Nonetheless, throughout his life Gibreel, a fictional Bollywood movie icon, was fed by a religious imaginary. He was born Ismail Najmuddin. His first name was inspired by the child that Ibrahim (Abraham) sought to sacrifice. His last name meant, the faith’s star. He substituted Gibreel for Ismail on his way to stardom. This was in homage to his mom who originated the idea. She considered him to be her personal angel and called him farishta, meaning angel.
Furthermore, in his fifteen years long career, Gibreel, the biggest star in the history of Indian movies, specialized in theological movies.8 He incarnated every god in the pantheon of gods, including blue-skinned Krishna, elephant-headed Ganesh, Hanuman the monkey king, and Gautama under the bodhi tree. For his fans across religious boundaries, he represented the most suitable and immediately noticeable image of God. When he mysteriously disappeared, it literally meant the demise of the Supreme. The demarcation line between the actor and his performances had for a long time become defunct. Interestingly, on the one hand, Gibreel suffered from halitosis, which the narrator suggested was a devilish trait, and his face was profane, sensual, and lately—after his mysterious near-fatal illness—debilitated. On the other hand, his face was godlike. Holy, perfect, and graceful.
Psychic notions were deeply ingrained in his mind. Even before stardom, he felt special. According to his mom who called him angel, just looking at him meant the fulfillment of her dreams. Earlier than anything else, this communicated to him a sense of uniqueness. Apparently, he was always able to satisfy others’ most intimate desires without even knowing how it happened. He had become an orphan at the age of twenty, but a well-off and well-connected childless couple took pity on him, and within five years he became a movie star. These bittersweet experiences fostered the feeling that he was not on his own, something in the world was watching over him. And he eventually came to believe in the existence of a guardian angel.
Since his formative years, Gibreel believed that the supernatural world existed, including God, angels, demons, djinns, and afreets. His mother had told him many stories of the Islamic prophet. Afterward, Gibreel was able to compare himself to Muhammad, who was once