By Salman Rushdie, 1995
It’s always interesting to read a book by Salman Rushdie
because he so playfully ties so many distinct ideas together, and puts them in a
novel light. And I like the fact that the light he chooses is not a
conventional Euro-centric one. Using the expulsion of the Moors from Spain as a
lens for viewing India’s post-colonial history may be an eccentric model, but it
works at many levels.
I knew only the fact of the expulsion of the Moors, but
Rushdie adds to that the poetry of loss from the last Moorish ruler’s point of
view. Instead of the righteous victory of Christianity over Islam that we
typically hear, it becomes a sad story of an artistic culture destroyed by
violence. This turns the expulsion of the British from India upside down, and I
wonder if that’s what Rushdie intended. But it’s also a metaphor for personal
loss when the artistic side of the narrator’s family is destroyed by crime,
violence and corruption. The family’s history is closely tied to the history of
India – from its wealth as an exporter of exotic spices to its corrupt power in
independent India. The family ultimately collapses in sectarian violence and
expulsion back to a phony Alhambra in Spain. In this, Rushdie goes beyond the poetic
to comic irony, and there’s plenty of that throughout the book, too.
Another key metaphor through the novel is the palimpsest – the
underpainting that shows through when a canvas is re-used. Rushdie uses several
literal palimpsests as the artists in the story paint over embarrassing or
rejected earlier works. And other characters similarly cover up parts of their
lives, which continue to show through in their work and which ultimately lead
to their downfall. This comes back in another form in Rushdie’s repeated
references to the invisible people who work behind the scenes in Bombay and make
the show of wealth possible. And the novel itself is a kind of palimpsest, too,
as the story of the Last Moor of Grenada keeps coming to the surface from
beneath the lives of the characters. In this way, the story is a reflection of
the way that contemporary life is always built on the past, and however modern we
may wish to be, the past keeps coming through. This makes the bizarre story of passion
and corruption in India relevant for us in Canada and elsewhere as we grapple
with the present effects of our own colonial and racist history.
The story offers many parallels with modern life worldwide,
and with Rushdie’s life, too. It was written while his life was under threat
from the fundamentalist fatwa, and some of the extremes in the plot are driven
by political and religious extremists. His one love turns out to be a
death-seeking Christian, and his release from horrifying prison conditions
comes at the hands of fundamentalist Hindus. It is an obsessive fundamentalist
who destroys modern Bombay and the Moor’s family by blowing it all up.
The complexities of the storyline are reflected in Rushdie’s
characteristically rich language of allusions, metaphors and playfulness. I’d
need to know a lot more Indian history and world literature to know even half
of his references, but it’s still a pleasure to read a creative writer who
seems to be having such fun with his craft.
I found both the beginning and the end of the book to be
less engaging than the main body that takes readers through the Moor’s life. The
introduction lays out his prehistory and forebearers in colourful, but sketchy
portraits. Then the final pages wrap up the story in a dash of events that undercuts
their own drama and the richness of the earlier parts of the Moor’s life. This
is not to say that the beginning and the end are less extravagantly written
than the middle – in fact, looking at the first pages again, I love the way
that the story starts at the end and then circles around to reconnect. It introduces
the key themes and characters and links the narrator with both Luther and
Christ at the crucifixion to let us know that we are in for a bold storyline. In
spite of the extremes of the Moor’s life, however, in the end all he wants is to
rest and find a peaceful end to the divisions in the world. This is a nice
ending, and likely true to Rushdie’s feelings at the time, but I’m not sure it
lives up to the richness of the rest of the story.
