Dec 19, 2011

Riots - from Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses"

This is so beautiful, I had to share it. The book was published over twenty years ago, which isn't that much really, but long enough to make us think "look how the same rituals still exist".

Just a little background to the story, not even to help you understand what's happening, but because it's funny to us Mediterranean types: one of the book's characters, Gibreel, wandering around London and being homesick for India, wishes for warmer weather. Because there are supernatural forces at play, the weather does become unusually hot, and so the city erupts into the usual hot-weather activities: riots, police brutality, minority protests, false arrests and so on.

So, the attached pages describe the police seizure of the night club where the protesters keep their headquarters, as seen on the TV news: