The Prophet%u2019s Hair %u2013 A Satire

What is Satire? Is it mere humor? wit? Or sarcasm? Or does it indeed reflect an author’s disapproval of something and intent to bring about improvement?

In the short story ‘The Prophet’s Hair’, Salman Rushdie portrays Hashim as a wealthy moneylender who is family-oriented and values his children’s independent spirits. “Hashim was fond of pointing out that while he was not a godly man he set a great store by ‘living honorably in the world” (p. 41). One day, Hashim accidently finds the missing prophet’s hair that had been stolen the previous morning from its shrine at Hazrztbal mosque. “It was a cylinder of tinted glass cased in exquisitely wrought silver, and Hashim saw within its walls a silver pendant bearing a single strand of human hair” (p. 42). However, instead of doing the right thing of returning it back to the mosque, Hashim follows his own agenda and decides to keep this relic for himself. He justifies this by saying that the prophet mightily disapproved relic-worship and by keeping this with him and away from those who worship it, he was actually performing “a finer service”.

This discovery, seemingly one of luck and good will to the reader at a glance, however, brings destruction and misfortune upon Hashim and his family. He became violent, angry, and religious. He valued his children’s independent spirit no more. “Seemingly careless of the effect of his words on the carefully constructed and fragile constitution of the family’s life, Hashim began to gush, to spume long streams of awful truths” (p. 45). Hashim went as far as to disown his daughter for her independent spirit due to the fact that she refused to wear a face cover. The ironic thing is that, coupled with this behavior, he also became religious. “From then on, he began to pray five times a daily for the first time in his life, and his wife and children were obligated to do likewise” (p. 46).

The prophet’s hair not only caused a change in the life of Hashim, but also in the life of his children and wife. “But before our story can properly be concluded, it is necessary to record that when the four sons of the dead sheikh awoke on the morning of his death, having unwittingly spent a few minutes under the same roof as the famous hair, they found that a miracle had occurred, that they were all sound of limb and strong of wind, as whole as they might have been if their father had not thought to smash their legs in the first hours of their lives” (p. 58).  However, this too portrays an ironic situation, that is, by becoming “”fully able” their earning powers would reduce by 75 per cent and so they were “ruined men”. Also, the miracle of the wife gaining her sight could be seen as one of irony because now she can see all the evils of the world.

Thus we see how a “mere relic” (and I do not mean to be offensive in any way) can change around the life of someone just because of the way it is thought of, or embraced. That is, the greed of wanting it all for himself and thinking that he was religiously superior and had power brought about death and destruction upon his whole family. I think that Rushdie does a good job of using satire to portray life’s situations because the character of Hashim reflects the society as a large.