Hair today......Gone Tomorrow (Satirically Speaking)

“This whole thing is so tragic, perhaps only satire can give us the answer”….

I heard Bill Moyer say this when I was watching his show on PBS last Friday night. I had never thought of satire in this way…as a way to present something painful or sad in a way that makes it possible to look at it without flinching or looking away. He was interviewing the authors of a book that was a compilation of expert commentary on the War in Iraq, and how all the experts got it wrong. The authors’ answers to Mr. Moyers questions were wry and at times apologetic…they seemed to think the subject was just as tragic as their interviewer did. Their book is a great example of how satire can make us look at ourselves and admit that we either screwed up or we turned our heads while others did.

Another author who is a master at using satire to make us look at ourselves and our beliefs without flinching is Salman Rushdie. Everyone (or at least most people over 30) knows who Mr. Rushdie is because of a book he wrote in the 80s called “The Satanic Verses”. This book was written as a satirical look at the Prophet Mohammed and the religion of Islam. Because of this prizewinning book, the Ayatollah of Iran called on all zealous Muslims to execute Rushdie (the operative word here is “zealous”). Obviously, there are some people who will not look in the mirror, and will not allow others to look either.

Mr. Rushdie is still alive however, and has written many more books since “The Satanic Verses”. One of those books is called “East, West” and was written in 1994. It is a collection of short stories, which includes one called “The Prophet’s Hair”. This story looks at how a sacred object, thought to be holy and hold heavenly powers can actually turn out to be a hellish, cursed thing when taken and held because of greed. The story begins with a young, beautiful woman searching for a thief. She is in a very dangerous part of the city and does not seem to care that her life is in danger. She is looking for a man who has no fear. The reason she needs this man is because the beautiful woman’s father has something in his possession that is destroying their family. Her brother lays in a coma on the brink of death, and evil is like a dark cloud hanging over her house. Her father exists in a world of greed and madness and is lost to her.

All this started when the beautiful young woman’s father found a sacred icon floating in the river. This icon belonged to the holy temple and had been stolen and then thrown away by the fleeing thieves. It was a simple enough thing to the naked eye. “…a cylinder of tinted glass, cased in exquisitely wrought silver…within its walls a silver pendant bearing a single strand of human hair.” No solid gold, no glorious, precious stones. Just a silver necklace encasing a human hair. Hair. What could be sacred about this? It was not the kind of icon you would see on the altar of a church or temple. Yet, there was something there. The beautiful young woman’s father knew right away what he had found. He knew that it was stolen from the temple; that as a good and virtuous man he should take it back to where it belonged. But something came over him that day as he scooped it out of the river. He took the little thing home and rationalized to himself all the reasons why it was alright to keep the thing. (Just you try getting through one day without at least one juicy rationalization….think about it….it’s hard isn’t it?) In among all the rationalizations that the beautiful young woman’s father listed, was one that told him that if he kept the icon, his family would probably be showered with the holy power that the thing held, and nothing but prosperity would come their way. And anyway, “…the Prophet would have disapproved mightily of this relic worship. He abhorred the idea of being deified! I perform—do I not?—a finer service than I would by returning it. Naturally I don’t want it for its religious value…I am a man of the world, of this world. I see it purely as a secular object of great rarity and blinding beauty.” How this beautiful young woman’s father actually knew what the Prophet would think is a good question. Anyway, as the story unfolds, this little glass vial with the human hair in it wreaks horrible havoc on the beautiful young woman’s family. The holy relic that is worshipped as holding sacred and wonderful power is like a poison in this family’s heart. By the end of the story, no one in the family is spared. The beautiful young woman? Dead. Her brother? Dead. Her father? Dead. Her Mother? Insane? The fearless thief that the beautiful young woman hired to try to save her family from the icon? Dead. You get the picture.

Now why do you suppose that all this happened? Some would say that when you mess with a holy relic, you pay the consequences. But does this make sense? Why would an icon that contains the power of sacred faith cause death and destruction? Some would say that it wasn’t the icon at all, but the hidden evil inside of the people who came in contact with the icon. Sort of like when you do something that you know is really bad, it eats at you until it starts to leak out everywhere and you can’t hide what you have done anymore. Perhaps.

Maybe Mr. Rushdie was trying to get us to see that what we hold dear and sacred sometimes is the wrong thing. Objects don’t hold the power that we are looking for. And no matter how we try to convince ourselves that this Thing that we hold in our hand will save us (whether that thing be money or gold or an object of faith) in the end the most important thing is the power of the human heart and the love that we are capable of feeling for each other. The beautiful young woman’s father had everything he needed. All he had to do was look around himself and see his family. As it is, he held what he thought was a precious object to be more important than all else. At the end of the story, that object was in someone else’s hand….and he was dead and gone.

Over Hair…….