The Prophet's Hair

The Prophet’s Hair is a short story from the book East, West by Salman Rushdie about the unfortunate effects of a religious relic – a silver vial containing a hair from the prophet Muhammad – on a greedy money lender’s family. In all, it is a well crafted religious satire filled with many tragic ironies.

The money lender named Hashim, who is self justified in charging 70 percent interest by aiming to cure the “fever of borrowing borrowing all the time,” finds a silver vial floating in a lake, which contains a hair from the prophet Mohamed. He covets the relic until it quickly turns him ragingly religious. In his stark transformation, he orders his family to follow devout Islamic laws to the point that it completely tears them apart. The irony is that the relic, even though as seemingly insignificant as a hair, supernaturally destroys his family.

There are many more ironies and contradictions throughout the story, such as how the Hashim’s son Atta asks to hire the “services of a dependably professional burglar,” and how the relic is stolen from and returned to the mosque in two unsuccessful burglaries, and how the second burglar, wishing only to earn enough money to retire and secure a “respectable death” by avoiding being stabbed in the stomach by another burglar, ends up getting shot in the stomach by the police during the burglary, and how the burglar’s deformed sons become enraged when they are healed, because they are thus less profitable as beggars.

The story is successful because it exaggerates and embellishes many truths, stereotypes, and prejudices. However, it is important to remember that satire is comedy for and from the slightly cynical, and to not lose site of the significance or true value of what it is poking fun at.