Karol - Rushdie -2/16

xxvi) the peforated sheet is not the only thing with holes in it; before we get to it, on page 5, about Aadam: "Many years later, when the hole inside him had been clogged up with hate, and he came to sacrifice himself..." People, throughout the book, have holes in them.

“One Kashmiri morning in the early spring of 1915, my grandfather Aadam Aziz hit his nose against a frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to pray. Three drops of blood plopped out of his left nostril, hardened instantly in the brittle air and lay before his eyes on the prayer-mat, transformed into rubies. Lurching back until he knelt with his head once more upright, he found that the tears which had sprung to his eyes had solidified, too; and at that moment, as he brushed diamonds contemptuously from his lashes, he resolved never again to kiss earth for any god or man. This decision, however, made a hole in him, a vacancy in a vital inner chamber. leaving him vulnerable to women and history.” (15)

The hole in Adam Azziz before it is “clogged up with hate” (16) is created in this scene where he apparently curses god (or stops praying); “a vacancy in a vital chamber” materializes in him. These holes for him are compromises but Nassem they are different.

For Nassem the holes come in her fragmented projections of her love for Aadam become her visage of the perforated sheet. However, this sheet is also figuratively and literally how Aadam sees her, through “brief fragments of her body.” (72) This represents the fragmentary limits of human interaction and how they can never love each other wholly. For Ahmed Sinai the holes converse with each other indiscriminately:

“Each day she selected one fragment of Ahmed Sinai, and
concentrated her entire being upon it until it became wholly
familiar; “My God,” she told
herself, “it seems that there are a million different things to love
about every man!” But she was undismayed. “Who, after all,” she
reasoned privately, “ever truly knows another human being
completely?”(89)

This is striking that she was undismayed - not dismayed that she could never see the whole of him and therefore achieve love... Love, as her duty as a Muslim, is a process for Amina... it appears to be a religious act. .....  Aadam resolved never to kiss earth, creating a hole. Does that mean that the man of science became estranged from the earthy wisdom of the ferryman? Understanding this book is a process, too, which defies completion - I guess. Robin.