Between Cultural Imperialism and the Fatwa: Colonial Echoes and Postcolonial Dialogue in Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories

The first novel Rushdie published after going into hiding was and the Sea of Stories. (1) Many reviewers and critics have assumed that the novel must be a creative response to the death sentence pronounced by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran and have consequently interpreted it as an allegory of free speech or of literature. While this novel is undeniably an allegory at some level, a more careful analysis reveals that its allegorical surface is ambiguous and invites a different reading. In fact, Rushdie simultaneously sets up and deconstructs such a simple allegorical interpretation. Under the circumstances of its publication, it is understandable that many readers of the novel assume its main significance to lie in exposing the mechanisms of dictatorship that oppress free speech in general and freedom of the imagination in particular. critic puts it: Haroun and the Sea of Stories can hardly be read as anything other than an allegory of Rushdie's present predicament. (2) Clearly, Rushdie's readers were expecting to find a creative response or reaction to his personal situation in his new work. the history of literature shows us, writers working under oppressive regimes often write allegorically, transposing their message into elaborate codes to elude detection by censors. Examples abound in the literature of the Soviet era, not to mention Arthur Miller's The Crucible in recent American literature. However, it is important to point out that although and the Sea of Stories was published in 1990, it was conceived to entertain his young son Zafar while he was writing The Satanic Verses, that is, long before the fatwa was pronounced on him. It was part of a deal so I could finish The Satanic Verses. (3) Moreover, the two novels clearly share similar artistic and political concerns which most interpreters of have ignored. Postcolonial critic Homi Bhabha argues that Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses attempts to redefine the boundaries of the western nation, so that the 'foreignness of languages' becomes the inescapable cultural condition for the enunciation of the mother tongue. (4) Strikingly, this description would fit just as well since it also deals with issues of cultural and political confrontation, of boundaries and languages, of exclusion and identity, of interpretation and (re)definition. In this paper I will first explore the aspects of and the Sea of Stories that seemingly lend themselves to a simplistic reading as an allegory about free speech, while simultaneously presenting a critique of the allegorical interpretation. Then I will offer a postcolonial analysis that sheds light on those elements of the novel which are often glossed over in the allegorical interpretation. I will argue that Haroun, generally considered a minor work, in fact achieves a good deal more than a narcissistic retelling of Rushdie's suffering under the fatwa and that it clearly continues the political and aesthetic concerns of his earlier work. The interpretation of the novel as an allegory about democratic and artistic freedom is favored in the Anglocentric world. In the shadow of the fatwa, the novel tends to be seen as the author's plea for the unfettered expression of the imagination. Accordingly, the evil Cultmaster Khattam-Shud is considered to be a portrait of the Ayatollah Khomeini. scholar explains, one cannot help but make the connection between Khattam-Shud and Rushdie's own chief persecutor, Khomeini, the voice of the fatwa that seeks to impose the most final of silences on Rushdie's utterances. (5) The allegorical interpretation identifies a set of binary oppositions clearly signaled in the microcosm of the second moon of the earth called Kahani (meaning Story), where most of the action is set. J. P. Durix points out that As in medieval allegories, the situation is presented in black and white. The characters' names sum up their main characteristics. …

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