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The Balcony and the Satanic Verses

I think this is the best part in Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm’s essay The Importance of Being Earnest About Salman Rushdie:

The self-enclosed universes of Hijab and The Grand Balcony exist and function against the background of a revolution taking place in the outside world. In both instances, the revolution forms a threat to the very existence of the bordello. In The Balcony, the revolution fails after destroying the Queen, the Archbishop's palace, the law courts, and the army headquarters. As the Chief of Police becomes the master of the new counter-revolutionary order, Genet transports Madam Irma and her clients out of the "house of illusions" to become the Queen, the Archbishop etc. in support of the new regime of repression. In the Hijab episode the revolution succeeds after destroying the old centers and symbols of Jahilian power. As its chief, Mahound, becomes the master of the new revolutionary order, Rushdie transports him and his "queens" into the "house of costly lies" to become the eunuch-poet, the Madam and the working girls in subversion of the new regime of Submission (if in the theater of a Genet Irma can become the Queen, then there is nothing to prevent the 'Queens' of Islam from becoming Irmas in the fiction of a Rushdie). But it remains true that the background to both Hijab and The Grand Balcony is the installation of a new order by a chief efficient enough to maintain his authority over the populace and intelligent enough to exploit their traditions and practices to render his power absolute. Thus, just as the Chief of Police sought successfully the assistance of Irma and her clients to legitimate his supremacy, Mahound also helped consolidate his newly achieved mastery by allowing Hijab to continue in its old ways for a time. The two works taken together make clear that neither the legitimation nor the subversion of real power in the real world can proceed without houses of illusion and costly lies. And again, the big utopian question poses itself: Is it possible for modern humanity to attain a condition where the exercise and transfer of power shall require neither "houses of illusion" nor "houses of costly lies"?

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