Quichotte

by Salman Rushdie

An interjection, kind reader, if you’ll allow one: It may be argued that stories should not sprawl in this way, that they should be grounded in one place or the other, put down roots in the other or the one and flower in that singular soil; yet so many of today’s stories are and must be of this plural, sprawling kind, because a kind of nuclear fission has taken place in human lives and relations, families have been divided, millions upon millions of us have traveled to the four corners of the (admittedly spherical, and therefore cornerless) globe, whether by necessity or choice. Such broken families may be our best available lenses through which to view this broken world. And inside the broken families are broken people, broken by loss, poverty, maltreatment, failure, age, sickness, pain, and hatred, yet trying in spite of it all to cling to hope and love, and these broken people—we, the broken people!—may be the best mirrors of our times, shining shards that reflect the truth, wherever we travel, wherever we land, wherever we remain. For we migrants have become like seed-spores, carried through the air, and lo, the breeze blows us where it will, until we lodge in alien soil, where very often—as for example now in this England with its wild nostalgia for an imaginary golden age when all attitudes were Anglo-Saxon and all English skins were white—we are made to feel unwelcome, no matter how beautiful the fruit hanging from the branches of the orchards of fruit trees that we...

To redescribe the country in their private language was also to take ownership of it. “I understand now why the racists want everyone to speak only English,” Sancho told Quichotte. “They don’t want these other words to have rights over the land.” That launched Quichotte into a new elaboration of his “Indian country” trope. “Once there were other words with rights,” he said. “Words belonging to those other Indians. Now sometimes those words are just sounds with lost meanings. Shenandoah, unknown Native origin. At other times the meaning remains but nobody knows it, which denies the word its influence. Ticonderoga is the junction of two waterways. Nobody knows that. Chicago is an onion field. Who knew? Punxsutawney, town of sandflies, or maybe mosquitoes. Nobody knows it, not even on Groundhog Day. Mississippi, great river. Maybe somebody could guess that. These are the words of lost power. New words were poured over them to take away their magic. On the West Coast, holy names of saints in Spanish, Francisco, Diego, Bernardino, José, also Santa Maria de los Angeles. On the East Coast, names from England burying the past beneath them, Hampshire, Exeter, Southampton, Manchester, Warwick, Worcester, Taunton, Peterborough, Northampton, Chesterfield, Putney, Dover, Lancaster, Bangor, Boston. And of course New York.”

Maybe this was the human condition, to live inside fictions created by untruths or the withholding of actual truths. Maybe human life was truly fictional in this sense, that those who lived it didn’t understand it wasn’t real.

“I’ve only been around for a short time,” Sancho said, “but in that period I have noticed that conscience isn’t a major requirement in human affairs. Ruthlessness, narcissism, dishonesty, greed, bigotry, violence, yes.”