Mirza Saeed, driven into an impotent frenzy by the spectacle of the packing village, burst in on his wife without ceremony. ‘You should see what's going on, Mishu,’ he exclaimed, gesticulating absurdly. ‘The whole of Titlipur has taken leave of its brains, and is off to the seaside. What is to happen to their homes, their fields? There is ruination in store. Must be political agitators involved. Someone has been bribing someone. – Do you think if I offered cash they would stay here like sane persons?’ His voice dried. Ayesha was in the room.

‘You bitch,’ he cursed her. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed while Mishal and her mother squatted on the floor, sorting through their belongings and working out how little they could manage with on the pilgrimage.

‘You're not going,’ Mirza Saeed ranted. ‘I forbid it, the devil alone knows what germ this whore has infected the villagers with, but you are my wife and I refuse to let you embark upon this suicidal venture.’

‘Good words,’ Mishal laughed bitterly. ‘Saeed, good choice of words. You know I can't live but you talk about suicide. Saeed, a thing is happening here, and you with your imported European atheism don't know what it is. Or maybe you would if you looked beneath your English suitings and tried to locate your heart.’

‘It's incredible,’ Saeed cried. ‘Mishal, Mishu, is this you? All of a sudden you've turned into this God-bothered type from ancient history?’

Mrs. Qureishi said, ‘Go away, son. No room for unbelievers here. The angel has told Ayesha that when Mishal completes the pilgrimage to Mecca her cancer will have disappeared. Everything is required and everything will be given.’

Mirza Saeed Akhtar put his palms against a wall of his wife's bedroom and pressed his forehead against the plaster. After a long pause he said: ‘If it is a question of performing umra then for God's sake let's go to town and catch a plane. We can be in Mecca within a couple of days.’

Mishal answered, ‘We are commanded to walk.’

Saeed lost control of himself. ‘Mishal? Mishal?’ he shrieked. ‘Commanded? Archangels, Mishu? Gibreel? God with a long beard and angels with wings? Heaven and hell, Mishal? The Devil with a pointy tail and cloven hoofs? How far are you going with this? Do women have souls, what do you say? Or the other way: do souls have gender? Is God black or white? When the waters of the ocean part, where will the extra water go? Will it stand up sideways like walls? Mishal? Answer me. Are there miracles? Do you believe in Paradise? Will I be forgiven my sins?’ He began to cry, and fell on to his knees, with his forehead still pressed against the wall. His dying wife came up and embraced him from behind. ‘Go with the pilgrimage, then,’ he said, dully. ‘But at least take the Mercedes station wagon. It's got air-conditioning and you can take the icebox full of Cokes.’

‘No,’ she said, gently. ‘We'll go like everybody else. We're pilgrims, Saeed. This isn't a picnic at the beach.’

‘I don't know what to do,’ Mirza Saeed Akhtar wept. ‘Mishu, I can't handle this by myself

Ayesha spoke from the bed. ‘Mirza sahib, come with us,’ she said. ‘Your ideas are finished with. Come and save your soul.’

Saeed stood up, red-eyed. ‘A bloody outing you wanted,’ he said viciously to Mrs. Qureishi. ‘That chicken certainly came home to roost. Your outing will finish off the lot of us, seven generations, the whole bang shoot.’

Mishal leaned her cheek against his back. ‘Come with us, Saeed. Just come.’

He turned to face Ayesha. ‘There is no God,’ he said firmly.

‘There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His Prophet,’ she replied.

‘The mystical experience is a subjective, not an objective truth,’ he went on. ‘The waters will not open.’

‘The sea will part at the angel's command,’ Ayesha answered.

‘You are leading these people into certain disaster.’

‘I am taking them into the bosom of God.’

‘I don't believe in you,’ Mirza Saeed insisted. ‘But I'm going to come, and will try to end this insanity with every step I take.’

‘God chooses many means,’ Ayesha rejoiced, ‘many roads by which the doubtful may be brought into his certainty.’

‘Go to hell,’ shouted Mirza Saeed Akhtar, and ran, scattering butterflies, from the room.

‘Who is the madder,’ Osman the clown whispered into his bullock's ear as he groomed it in its small byre, ‘the madwoman, or the fool who loves the madwoman?’ The bullock didn't reply. ‘Maybe we should have stayed untouchable,’ Osman continued. ‘A compulsory ocean sounds worse than a forbidden well.’ And the bullock nodded, twice for yes, boom, boom.

‘Once I'm an owl, what is the spell or antidote for turning me back into myself?’ Mr. Muhammad Sufyan, prop. Shaan-daar Cafe and landlord of the rooming-house above, mentor to the variegated, transient and particoloured inhabitants of both, seen-it-all type, least doctrinaire of hajis and most unashamed of VCR addicts, ex-schoolteacher, self-taught in classical texts of many cultures, dismissed from post in Dhaka owing to cultural differences with certain generals in the old days when Bangladesh was merely an East Wing, and therefore, in his own words, ‘not so much an immig as an emig runt’ – this last a good-natured allusion to his lack of inches, for though he was a wide man, thick of arm and waist, he stood no more than sixty-one inches off the ground, blinked in his bedroom doorway, awakened by Jumpy Joshi's urgent midnight knock, polished his half-rimmed spectacles on the edge of Bengali-style kurta (drawstrings tied at the neck in a neat bow), squeezed lids tightly shut open shut over myopic eyes, replaced glasses, opened eyes, stroked moustacheless hennaed beard, sucked teeth, and responded to the now-indisputable horns on the brow of the shivering fellow whom Jumpy, like the cat, appeared to have dragged in, with the above impromptu quip, stolen, with commendable mental alacrity for one aroused from his slumbers, from Lucius Apuleius of Madaura, Moroccan priest, ad 120—180 approx., colonial of an earlier Empire, a person who denied the accusation of having bewitched a rich widow yet confessed, somewhat perversely, that at an early stage in his career he had been transformed, by witchcraft, into (not an owl, but) an ass. ‘Yes, yes,’ Sufyan continued, stepping out into the passage and blowing a white mist of winter breath into his cupped hands, ‘Poor misfortunate, but no point wallowing. Constructive attitude must be adopted. I will wake my wife.’

Chamcha was beard-fuzz and grime. He wore a blanket like a toga below which there protruded the comic deformity of goats’ hoofs, while above it could be seen the sad comedy of a sheepskin jacket borrowed from Jumpy, its collar turned up, so that sheepish curls nestled only inches from pointy billy-goat horns. He seemed incapable of speech, sluggish of body, dull of eye; even though Jumpy attempted to encourage him – ‘There, you see, we'll have this well sorted in a flash’ – he, Saladin, remained the most limp and passive of – what? – let us say: satyrs. Sufyan, meanwhile, offered further Apuleian sympathy. ‘In the case of the ass, reverse metamorphosis required personal intervention of goddess Isis,’ he beamed. ‘But old times are for old fogies. In your instance, young mister, first step would possibly be a bowl of good hot soup.’

At this point his kindly tones were quite drowned by the intervention of a second voice, raised high in operatic terror; moments after which, his small form was being jostled and shoved by the mountainous, fleshy figure of a woman, who seemed unable to decide whether to push him out of her way or keep him before her as a protective shield. Crouching behind Sufyan, this new being extended a trembling arm at whose end was a quivering, pudgy, scarlet-nailed index finger. ‘That over there,’ she howled. ‘What thing is come upon us?’