Her mother had been Kashmiri, and was lost to her, like paradise, like Kashmir, in a time before memory. Her mother had died giving her birth: the ambassador's wife had told her this much, and the ambassador, her father, had confirmed it. ![]() The intruder was an absence, a negative space in the darkness. Then abruptly she would awake again, convinced, in her disoriented state, that there was an intruder in her bedroom. These agitated periods of sleep-speech were mercifully brief, and when they ended she would subside for a time, sweating and panting, into a state dreamless exhaustion. One night in a spirit of research the ambassador's daughter left a tape recorder running by her bedside but when she heard the voice on the tape its death's-head ugliness, which was somehow both familiar and alien, scared her badly and she pushed the erase button, which erased nothing important. Like Sigourney Weaver channeling a demon in Ghostbusters. Another version described her words as science-fictional, like Klingon, like a throat being cleared in a galaxy far, far away. Night-Arabian, she thought, the dreamtongue of Scheherazade. According to one report she sounded guttural, glottal-stoppy, as if she were speaking Arabic. The evidence was therefore limited, lacking consensus however, a pattern emerged. Not many men had ever been permitted to be present while she slept. At times she cried out in a language she did not speak. She woke up frequently and even when sleep did come her body was rarely at rest, thrashing and flailing as if trying to break free of dreadful invisible manacles. Rushdie tells Steve Inskeep about the book's vision of Kashmir, one that differs dramatically from the chaotic reputation it has today.Īt twenty-four the ambassador's daughter slept badly through the warm, unsurprising nights. He had family in Kashmir growing up and spent summers there, much the way Americans might vacation in Maine or along the Great Lakes. ![]() Rushdie is intimately familiar with the area. Shalimar the Clown is set in Kashmir, the volatile region bordering Indian Pakistan that was recently devastated by an earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people. Author Salman Rushdie has a new book out.
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