Butterflies of Freedom: in support of Salman Rushdie

Writers from across the globe are showing their solidarity with Salman Rushdie and their support of the freedom to write, by reading selected texts from his work in public and online. I would very much like to join this effort by recording my own reading of a Rushdie passage, for although I’m not a literary writer but an academic one, writing is my life and so I know what it means. But instead of reading the passage I have selected, I will simply put it here in its written form. The honest reason is that I wouldn’t be able to read it aloud in front of a camera – the writing is so beautiful and powerful that I would not be able to control my breath and my emotions. To all of you out there who think you have the right to tell others what they can or cannot write: look at what it actually is that you are trying to kill. You have already lost, for it is much stronger than you will ever be. It will easily survive you, it will survive Rushdie as well - in fact, it will survive each and every person alive who may be reading it today. You will never stop it. 

 

From The Satanic Verses, ch. 8: “The Parting of the Arabian Sea”

 

On the last night of his life he heard a noise like a giant crushing a forest beneath his feet, and smelled a stench like the giant’s fart, and he realized that the tree was burning. He got out of his chair and staggered dizzily down to the garden to watch the fire, whose flames were consuming histories, memories, genealogies, purifying the earth, and coming towards him to set him free; – because the wind was blowing the fire towards the grounds of the mansion, so soon enough, soon enough, it would be his turn. He saw the tree explode into a thousand fragments, and the trunk crack, like a heart; then he turned away and reeled towards the place in the garden where Ayesha had first caught his eye; – and now he felt a slowness come upon him, a great heaviness, and he lay down on the withered dust. Before his eyes closed he felt something brushing at his lips, and saw the little cluster of butterflies struggling to enter his mouth. Then the sea poured over him, and he was in the water beside Ayesha, who had stepped miraculously out of his wife’s body … ‘Open,’ she was crying. ‘Open wide!’ Tentacles of light were flowing from her navel and he chopped at them, chopped, using the side of his hand. ‘Open,’ she screamed. ‘You’ve come this far, now do the rest.’ – How could he hear her voice? – They were under water, lost in the roaring of the sea, but he could hear her clearly, they could all hear her, that voice like a bell. ‘Open,’ she said. He closed.

            He was a fortress with clanging gates. – He was drowning. – She was drowning too. He saw the water fill her mouth, heard it begin to gurgle into her lungs. Then something within him refused that, made a different choice, and at the instance that his heart broke, he opened.

            His body split apart from his adam’s apple to his groin, so that she could reach deep within him, and now she was open, they all were, and at the moment of their opening the waters parted, and they walked to Mecca across the bed of the Arabian sea.

 

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