A Simple Strand

What if I told you that in my possession I had a strand of hair. This hair is so important that people would kill for it.  You’d most likely look at me and laugh, or quietly nod your head and think I’d gone mental. What power could a small piece of human hair have over anyone? In the story The Prophet’s Hair by Salman Rushdie, a single hair sets off a furry of events that leads to death, unhappiness, and regret. This hair isn’t just a clump swept up from the Barbers floor, it just happens to be that of the Prophet Muhammad. Still why would a strand of hair have so much power over someone? It certainly doesn’t contain any magic cure all, or divine answer, it’s simply just a strand of hair that belonged to someone who passed away long ago.  However not everyone views it in such a light. It could be anything, crosses, the host, relics or any other talismans. Power and admiration are given to objects deservedly or not. Rushdie’s novel is written from a satirical point of view for the purpose of exposing the consequences of giving relics/religious materials too much power.

 Several themes are touched on during the story.  Among these are greed, hypocrisy, obsession, corruption, and power. Each is experienced like a twelve step program by the unfortunate character Hashim.  A moneylender who seeks to teach his borrowers better management skill and prides himself on having children that he’d instilled with “ the virtues of thrift, plain dealing and a healthy independence of spirit.” (East, West, page 42) All in all he seems like a pretty decent guy, but when the Prophet’s Hair finds it’s way into his possession he becomes an obsessive tyrant mixed with the personality of Gollum. Hashim’s greed keeps him from returning the hair to it’s rightful home, and his collectors obsession makes him paranoid that the hair will be stolen. He forces his once independent and easy going family to conform to a devout fundamentalist Muslim lifestyle. While divulging his own terrible secrets. Hashim’s thirst for power forced his children to take drastic measures which ultimately cost them their lives.

Salman Rushdie paints a pretty good picture of the pitfalls of giving too much power to something so simple and hollow. It’s not wrong to admire and revere a religious symbol, but one must take its glow with a grain of salt.  Something like the Prophet’s Hair should have strengthened Hashim’s family and community, as it’s an old and lasting symbol of their religion and culture. Instead Hashim gets caught up in the hair’s potential and the emotion that surrounds it, creating a snowball effect of destruction that fans out across the city. Rushdie focuses on the irony of the changes in Hashim and the domino effect that follows. It’s not a laugh out loud funny type of story. Rushdie uses satire more as a tool to “attack on something of which the he strongly disapproves, using satire as the weapon of wit” (Wikipedia, 2008). For example the only person in the story who benefits from the Prophet’s Hair is the Sheikh’s widow, the one person who cared zero for it and could not see it. Only she was able to benefit from its presence.

 The Prophet's hair is an effective satire tool.  The reader learns a lesson without reading too deeply into the text. It’s entertaining so you're hooked immediately, which means you’ll at least stay for the irony and then leave with the author’s message.  Rushdie achieved what he set out to do with this story and did so in a way that I believe is inoffensive. However I do understand that with many religious individuals something of this nature could be seen as tasteless, while others simply do not understand satire and it’s purpose.