The Satanic Verses

As the police drag Saladin from Rosa's home, Gibreel drops into a "dreamlike" (87) state. He remains caught in this trance as Rosa tells him stories about her past. She lived in Argentina with her husband, Don Enrique Diamond, a man seemingly incapable of romance. Gibreel feels her stories "holding him in that lost world" (89). Rosa compares Gibreel to an ostrich hunter she once knew named Martin de la Cruz. Gibreel looks up through the window and sees "A fullgrown, large-as-life ostrich" (90) running past. He continues to live with Rosa for some time. When she turns 89, he takes her out dancing. The "exertions of that night" (91) take a heavy toll on Rosa, and she develops a fever the following day. She lies dying on her bed, and the feverish visions manifest in front of Gibreel, trapping him inside her memories so that "all movement became impossible" (91). Gibreel is forced to play the role of Martin de la Cruz as Rosa remembers a sexual affair with the ostrich hunter. The memory repeats: Sometimes Rosa embraces Martin, sometimes she sends him away. Gibreel sees the many possibilities of Rosa's life. When she dies, Gibreel is freed. He leaves the house and walks away. When he arrives at a boathouse, he discovers a version of Rosa as she appeared in her memories. Gibreel embraces Rosa and they have sex. 

The police and immigration services drag Saladin from Rosa’s house. They strip him naked, finding that the entire lower half of his body has transformed: Saladin now has a pair of goat legs and a large set of strange genitals that are "greatly enlarged and embarrassingly erect" (96). When Saladin evacuates his bowels, he is horrified to realize that he also defecates in the same manner as a goat. The laughing policemen force Saladin to eat the "soft, pellety object" (97) for their entertainment as they hurl racist epithets at him. They talk about Saladin, soccer hooligans, and then about why they need "an increase in observation of the public" (99) for the public's own benefit. Saladin begs the police officers to use their technology to search for his identity in their computer. He wants them to know that he is a British citizen who lost his passport during the terrorist attack. Eventually, the police officers relent. They find Saladin in their system and panic because they have accosted a British citizen. While they try to come up with an excuse for their behavior, their first step is to "get him unconscious" (100).

Saladin wakes up in a strange hospital ward. He has pneumonia and is being treated by a physiotherapist named Hyacinth Phillips. The treatment involves Hyacinth beating Saladin's body as he coughs up a green "slime" (101). That night, a man with a tiger's head approaches Saladin while the guards sleep. As the tiger-headed man reveals, the other patients on the ward are suffering from "mutations" (102) like Saladin. They are also partially transformed into animals or other substances, such as one woman who is now partly made of glass. The tiger-headed man—a manticore—explains to Saladin that the people on the ward are victims of the "power of description" (103). They have become reflections of the images people construct in their minds. The patients want to break out of the hospital. They organize a "great escape" (104), including Saladin and Hyacinth. When the patients break out of the hospital, Saladin decides to return to his home in London.  

Saladin's friend Jumpy Joshi is the man who picked up the telephone when Saladin called his wife Pamela from Rosa's home. Joshi is having an affair with Pamela and was surprised to hear Saladin's voice, as everyone has assumed that Saladin died in the terrorist attack on Flight AI-420. The affair between Joshi and Pamela began on the night of the attack, when Joshi visited Pamela's home to comfort her and—finding her surrounded by "empty whisky bottles" (105)—they had sex. Joshi relays to Pamela that he is concerned that Saladin did not die in the terrorist attack. He remembers how he once dragged his friend to an "anti-war demonstration" (108). The next day, Pamela contacts the airline and is told that no one survived the attack. She becomes angry with Joshi and tells him to leave her home. While driving alone in the car, she thinks about her own past and her husband, Saladin. She does not believe that Saladin ever truly loved her. Rather, he only loved that she was English, with an upper-class accent and many of the affectations of aristocracy. When she arrives at her family home, Pamela's thoughts turn to her deceased parents. They both died by suicide due to financial issues. Pamela knows that they would have been disgusted by the idea of their daughter marrying an Indian man. To Pamela, marrying Saladin was a way to avenge herself against the memory of the parents who left her alone. She sips cognac and thinks about how she planned to leave Saladin before he boarded Flight AI-420.

After Pamela throws him out, Joshi goes to the nearby Shaandaar Café. He drinks a coffee alone and talks to the owner, a man named Muhammad Sufyan. Joshi admits to Muhammad that he is not a religious man. Overhearing the conversation and noticing Joshi's sadness, a customer named Hanif Johnson tries to lighten Joshi's spirits. Later, Pamela and Joshi agree to meet. They are overcome by passion and spend "seven days making love to one another with inexhaustible enthusiasm" (114). On the seventh night, they lie in bed together and hear someone breaking into Pamela's home. They venture cautiously downstairs to find the devilish form of Saladin, "a figure covered in mud and ice and blood" (114). 

Gibreel returns to London on a train. He thinks about the "paradox" (116) of transforming into an archangel even though he does not believe in God. As he feels increasingly untethered to reality, he takes comfort from the lists of rules and regulations for what is permitted on the train. Gibreel wants to return to his life and find Alleluia. When he says her name aloud, a fellow passenger repeats it back to him as though he were muttering a prayer. The passenger introduces himself to Gibreel as John Maslama. He has seen many of Gibreel's films, which he enjoys because Gibreel portrays "A rainbow coalition of the celestial" (117). John explains that he worked in advertising and now owns record stores and a nightclub called Hot Wax. The more John talks, however, the more he emits "the unmistakable odor of the genuine crazy" (118). When John becomes more expressive and begins waving his hands around, he knocks Gibreel's hat to the floor. He reveals the glowing "halo" (118) that now sits atop Gibreel's head. John drops to the ground, praying and begging for Gibreel to forgive him. Unsure what to do, Gibreel embraces the role. He tells John that he has been sent to save humanity. He tells John not to speak to anyone about what has happened on the train. When John agrees, Gibreel walks to a different part of the train and sits alone. He stares through the window, where he sees Rekha Merchant riding on a magic carpet. She waves to Gibreel.

Alleluia teaches a group of teenage girls how to climb mountains. As a professional mountain climber, she knows the perils of the hobby better than anyone. She tells the girls how the ghosts of dead climbers are occasionally seen on mountains. She has seen such a ghost herself. Alleluia also talks about the time she climbed Mount Everest. Once she reached the summit, she experienced strange and ghostly visions of "the specter of Maurice Wilson" (120). She does not tell the girls about the physical toll that mountain climbing has taken on her body. Her feet are often in agony, and Gibreel would often compare her to a mermaid. When she cried at the unfairness of her feet failing her when she was so determined to climb mountains, Gibreel told her that she would always face a struggle because she wants "it too damn much" (121).

Gibreel arrives in "Proper London" (122). He rides the subway through London, which now seems to him like a "hellish maze" (123), still haunted by the vision of Rekha Merchant. No matter where he goes, he cannot escape her. Gibreel exits the subway and wanders through the city, eventually collapsing on a park bench. Alleluia finds him there. He smiles and immediately falls asleep. 

Gibreel dreams while lying on the park bench. In his dream, he visits an Imam who lives in London. In the Imam's house, Gibreel sees a portrait of Ayesha, the Empress of Desh—"a powerful woman, his enemy, his other" (124)—who forced the Imam to leave Desh, a word that means homeland. The Imam has many followers who live in the other apartments in his building and drink only water that has been filtered for its purity. They use the apartment block to broadcast radio messages to Desh from the "soulless country" (126) of their exile. An American convert named Bilal X, known for his mellifluous voice, takes the reins for one broadcast. Like all the broadcasts that came before, the purpose of his message is to inspire the people of Desh to revolt against Ayesha. The Imam preaches that not only should Desh reject Ayesha but all the trappings of modernity, such as science and progressive politics.

The Imam uses a ritual to summon the archangel Gibreel. Playing this role in the dream, Gibreel has no choice but to go to the Imam dressed in "Henry Diamond's posthumous hand-me-downs" (128). The Imam instructs Gibreel to fly them both to Jerusalem. Gibreel has no choice but to obey, so he carries the Imam to Ayesha's imperial palace. When they arrive, the "streets are swarming with people" (129) in open revolution. Gibreel tells the Imam that the people are motivated by hate, not love. The revolution is interrupted by a sudden beam of light from the palace. From within the building, the goddess Al-Lat burst up into the air. The Imam tells Gibreel to "kill her" (130). Gibreel wins the fight and kills Al-Lat, but when he returns to the Imam, he discovers that the Imam has turned into a terrifying monster with a giant mouth. The people walk into the Imam's monstrous mouth and he devours them. Across the city, the clocks begin to toll "the end of time" (130).

Gibreel feels one dream end and another begin. He cannot escape the "old pattern" (130) of these dreams. In Gibreel's next dream, a man named Mirza Saeed Akhtar experiences a terrible nightmare on his 40th birthday. When he wakes up next to his wife Mishal, he watches her sleep for a while and thinks about how much he loves her. Then he steps out on to the veranda overlooking Titlipur, the town where they live. He sees swarms of butterflies fluttering around in giant clouds. According to the legends, such butterflies are the spirit of a saintly woman named Bibiji who died just over a century ago at the age of 242 and whose grave "had the property of curing impotence and warts" (131) until it was lost. Mirza Saeed Akhtar looks down at the garden and sees a young girl "slowly, methodically" (132) eating the butterflies. When the girl collapses, Mirza Saeed shouts out. His shouting wakes everyone in the house as he rushes to help the girl. He picks her up and carries her inside. His wife recognizes the young girl as an orphan from the town. Her name is Ayesha and she suffers from epilepsy.

The girl stays in the family home for some time. During this period, the people of Titlipur begin to believe that Ayesha can communicate with the archangel Gibreel. The experience with Ayesha and the butterflies awakens "passionate desires" (137) in Mirza Saeed Akhtar. He feels increasingly attracted to Mishal and convinces her to indulge his fantasies, in which she stays at home all day clothed in very modest religious garments. Mishal wants to have children so she agrees to her husband's unexpected request. She also believes that spending more time with the saintly young friend of an archangel will help her chances of conception, so Mishal befriends Ayesha so that the "archangel, Ayesha's husband, would grant her a baby" (140). Unfortunately for Mishal, the only message that Ayesha can convey from the archangel is that Mishal is suffering from breast cancer. Mishal is shocked, but a doctor confirms the presence of cancer in her breast. The cancer is "inoperable, too far advanced" (141). Ayesha vanishes, returning a week later, "dressed in golden butterflies" (142). She has an announcement for the people of Titlipur: They must all make the pilgrimage to Mecca if they want to save Mishal. Ayesha tells the people that they will walk to the Arabian Sea where—she has been told by the archangel—"the waves shall be parted" (143). The people of Titlipur agree to make the pilgrimage. Mizra Saeed is furious at the prospect of the "suicidal venture" (144) and forbids Mishal from going on the pilgrimage. However, Mishal insists on joining the other pilgrims.