Salman Rushdie - Luka and the Fire of Life

Salman Rushdie

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Epub ISBN 9781407092461

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Published by Jonathan Cape 2010

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Copyright Salman Rushdie 2010

Salman Rushdie has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

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First published in Great Britain in 2010 by
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ISBN 9780224061629 (HARDBACK)
ISBN 9780224090216 (TRADE PAPERBACK)
ISBN 9780224093392 (Waterstones Limited Edition)

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ALSO BY SALMAN RUSHDIE

Fiction

Grimus
Midnights Children
Shame
The Satanic Verses
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
East, West
The Moors Last Sigh
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Fury
Shalimar the Clown
The Enchantress of Florence

Non-Fiction

The Jaguar Smile
Imaginary Homelands
Step Across This Line

Plays

Haroun and the Sea of Stories
(with Tim Supple and David Tushingham)
Midnights Children
(with Tim Supple and Simon Reade)

Anthology

The Vintage Book of Indian Writing (co-editor)

M agic lands lie all around,

I nside, outside, underground.

L ooking-glass worlds still abound.

A ll their tales this truth reveal:

N aught but love makes magic real.

There was once, in the city of Kahani in the land of Alifbay, a boy named Luka who had two pets, a bear named Dog and a dog named Bear, which meant that whenever he called out Dog! the bear waddled up amiably on his hind legs, and when he shouted Bear! the dog bounded towards him wagging his tail. Dog the brown bear could be a little gruff and bearish at times, but he was an expert dancer, able to get up on to his hind legs and perform with subtlety and grace the waltz, the polka, the rhumba, the wah-watusi and the twist, as well as dances from nearer home, the pounding bhangra, the twirling ghoomar (for which he wore a wide mirror-worked skirt), the warrior dances known as the spaw and the thang-ta, and the peacock dance of the south. Bear the dog was a chocolate Labrador, and a gentle, friendly dog, though sometimes a bit excitable and nervous; he absolutely could not dance, having, as the saying goes, four left feet, but to make up for his clumsiness he possessed the gift of perfect pitch, so he could sing up a storm, howling out the melodies of the most popular songs of the day, and never going out of tune. Bear the dog and Dog the bear quickly became much more than Lukas pets. They turned into his closest allies and most loyal protectors, so fierce in his defence that nobody would ever have dreamed of bullying him when they were nearby, not even his appalling classmate Ratshit, whose behaviour was usually out of control.

This is how Luka came to have such unusual companions. One fine day when he was twelve years old, the circus came to town and not just any circus, but the GROF, or Great Rings of Fire, itself, the most celebrated circus in all of Alifbay, featuring the Famous Incredible Fire Illusion. So Luka was at first bitterly disappointed when his father, the storyteller Rashid Khalifa, told him they would not be going to the show. Unkind to animals, Rashid explained. Once it may have had its glory days but these days the GROF has fallen far from Grace. The Lioness had tooth decay, Rashid told Luka, and the Tigress was blind and the Elephants were hungry and the rest of the circus menagerie was just plain miserable. The Ringmaster of the Great Rings of Fire was the terrifying and enormous Captain Aag, aka Grandmaster Flame. The animals were so scared of the crack of his whip that the Lioness with toothache and the blind Tigress continued to jump through hoops and play dead and the skinny Elephants still made Pachyderm Pyramids for fear of angering him, for Aag was a man who was quick to anger and slow to laugh. And even when he put his cigar-smoking head into the Lionesss yawning mouth, she was too scared to bite it off just in case it decided to kill her from inside her belly.

Rashid was walking Luka home from school, wearing, as usual, one of his brightly coloured bush shirts (this one was vermilion) and his beloved, battered panama hat, and listening to the story of Lukas day. Luka had forgotten the name of the tip of South America and had labelled it Hawaii in a geography test. However, he had remembered the name of his countrys first president and spelled it correctly in a history test. He had been smacked on the side of the head by Ratshits hockey stick during games. On the other hand, he had scored two goals in the match and defeated his enemys team. He had also finally got the hang of snapping his fingers properly, so that they made a satisfying cracking noise. So there were pluses and minuses. Not a bad day overall; but it was about to become a very important day indeed, because this was the day they saw the circus parade going by on its way to raise its Big Top near the banks of the mighty Silsila. The Silsila was the wide, lazy, ugly river with mud-coloured water, which flowed through the city not far from their home. The sight of the droopy cockatoos in their cages and the sad dromedaries humphing along the street touched Lukas generous young heart. But saddest of all, he thought, was the cage in which a mournful dog and a doleful bear stared wretchedly all about. Bringing up the rear of the cavalcade was Captain Aag with his pirates hard black eyes and his barbarians untamed beard. All of a sudden Luka became angry (and he was a boy who was slow to anger and quick to laugh). When Grandmaster Flame was right in front of him Luka shouted out at the top of his voice, May your animals stop obeying your commands and your rings of fire eat up your stupid tent.