A Greedy Home; A Needy Home

The Salman Rushdie short story The Prophet’s Hair is the perfect platform from which we can listen to age old of lessons about greedy people. Whether in our family or outside of it, greed can be a crippling force because of what experiences it can bring to a home. As Rushdie plainly shows us in the beginning of the story, greed drives us into environments and situation we aren’t familiar with or even belong in; most of which end poorly. In any case, greed and its effects on a household seem to be at the center of The Prophet’s Hair; namely, that obsession over a material object can rip apart a family apart. Rushdie comically uses the hair of the Prophet Muhammad to make this point clear showing that regardless of how holy an item is; or even how much good it can bestow on its owner, if a person obsesses over it too much it’ll affect those around him negatively. All the many troubles which arise from this holy healing relic arise not because the item itself creates this obsession; but because, someone or another wants to keep it for themselves and show it off. As Rushdie poetically puts it “Every collector must share his treasures with one other human being…” (44). In this statement Rushdie reveals to us the point of his story and the major flaw in being a greedy person; in that, you crave the object of your desires, not because you care about the object in itself but because you desire the attention it brings to you even at the cost of others. How many times has this very same obsession sent us into dark dank alley ways or driven us into actions not normally characteristic of ourselves? As a personal example to the effects which greed can hold over a family, I offer one situation which seems fairly common among other families.
My great grand uncle, on my father’s side of the family, had absolutely no relatives to take care of him in his dotage except for my father, my brother, and me. Now mind you, this is a WWII veteran who worked passionately every day in his life, never took crap from anyone, knew everyone intimately in our community, and loved to curse. In any case, the day soon came where he physically couldn’t get out of bed anymore and we had to take care of him in our house because there was no way we were leaving him in a hospital or nursing home. So every day, for about nine or so years, we took care of everything he needed so as to make his transition into death as peaceful as possible. During this time also, our family spent a hefty sum of money on medical expenses and equipment; and during the last two years, also had to spend money sending two runts to college (that’s my bro and I). Unbeknownst to us, Uncle Bill (this lovely man’s name) had three pensions and a ton of money in the bank he saved up to give away at the end of his life. So when that day finally came, our family thought “well, we took care of him. Now he’s taking care of us.” Little did we realize the incoming flood of up-until-now incommunicado aunts and uncles, upon hearing about the man’s death, rushing like vultures to grab up any money they could get their hands on. Normally I reserve terrible metaphors for paper writing at three in the morning; but, I am distressed to say that was the truth of it. Not one of these family members came to our aid in helping our Uncle Bill transition peacefully into eternal rest; they came only for the money he had in his name. Our family wound up in a money squabble which we are still legally fighting off this very day. So while reading Rushdie’s story The Prophet’s Hair, I understand, in an extremely personal way, the pressure greedy people can place on a home.

When Family Is Home

The overarching topic that I couldn't help but notice in Rushdie's opening stories is the topic of family. Each of them, in their own way, touched upon familial relations and the issues that arise from them. Overall, the concept of family has a strong tie where one's home is, and the stories show that when the familial bonds are true, so too is the homeland.

"Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies," the first story, is the perfect place to start. In it, Rehana wishes to gain a visa to go to England to be with her fiancee. Although at the beginning of the story she seems quite determined to succeed, we later learn that her engagement is an arranged one, and she doesn't even know (or therefore, love), the man she will be marrying. When she is denied by the Consulate to travel to England, she does not seem to be upset. She says, "Now I will go back to Lahore and my job. I work in a great house, as ayah to three good boys. They would have been sad to see me leave" (15). The reader must also remember that Rehana went to the Consulate on her own, while all the other women went with relatives, because she herself is an orphan. One might think, therefore, that she would be distraught not to join her fiancee in England and remain alone in Lahore, but England and her financee are not her true homes. We may gather that her attachment to her job and the three boys there is her own unconventional type of family.

In "The Free Radio," we are made to cringe with the narrator as Ramani marries the thief's widow and takes in her five children. Although our opinion of the widow is tainted by the narrator's, we do view her in distaste, especially when she convinces Ramani to get a vestectomy because *she* does not want any more children. Ramani, while once very much in love, slowly has to "make a phenomenal effort, which was much more tiring than driving a rickshaw, more tiring even than pulling a rickshaw containing a thief's widow and her five living children and the ghosts of two dead ones" (28). When he moves away with his family to Bombay, the narrator explains that his letters are obviously not true, but are strong and necessary dreams like the radio once was. What is most tragic is Ramani's inability to find a home. He leaves his hometown with his family hoping to become a movie star and forget his sorrow, but even in Bombay he is unsuccessful in finding what he wants. Since his is with his wife and step-children in both places, we can assume that they are not "enough" for him. Ramani is younger than her, yoked with five children not his own, and forever incapable of having any of his own. Sounds to me like no matter where he goes, he will never be able to be at home with them and the things they remind him of.

As for myself, I can relate completely to this concept. If I am in a situation where the people around me do not feel like family, it is very difficult to feel at home. For example, when I was younger and would go to summer camp, I would always cry when I got there because I didn't know anyone and just wanted my family to be there. By the end of the week, once I had bonded with the other girls in my cabin through late night campfires and the like, I felt quite at home despite being hours from my house. On the other side, I can be physically inside my house but if no one else is home, I won't feel comfortable. Granted, sometimes it is nice to have the house to myself and have some peace and quiet, but if I am alone in my house for long periods of time it starts to take on an eerie quiet and I don't feel at home at all. I think it's definitely true that who you are with (or not with) totally affects your perception. If we are with the ones who truly understand us, then we can be truly at home anywhere. Further, we need them around, otherwise what we think of as home might not be home at all but simply a place where we reside.

Home: "the blessed word"

Rushdie’s “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers,” as is probably indicated by the title, contains multiple references to The Wizard of Oz as well as to the “blessed word” of home in general. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy ventures outside of her homeland just to realize that all she actually wants to do is return to that home. And who can blame her, really? I mean, in the film, she’s suddenly blinded by a rainbow of new colors, talks to a lot of creatures that shouldn’t normally even be able to talk, and has to fight a witch and her army of flying monkeys (this last being especially terrifying to me since, as all my friends and family know, I am generally pretty repulsed by and scared of monkeys, even the regular non-flying ones). In all seriousness, though, Dorothy is not really the only one seeking “home” in the film. I think that the film speaks much more about the importance of dreams and having your needs fulfilled, which is what home is truly about. Maybe Dorothy needed to dream and venture outside of her home, even if it was all within a dream in the end, in order to realize that her needs were already being met by the love of those around her at home. The lion, the tin man, and the scarecrow had to realize their dreams in order to feel contentment and love: in other words, to feel at home. And maybe the witch was just angry that her home had been altered forever through the death of her sister by an invading force that may appear to her much like hostile colonizing forces have appeared to many indigenous people. And certainly, what could seem like more of a sign of permanent and hostile colonization than seeing the invaders crush your own sister with a house?

I think that without a sense of contentment and feeling that your desires and dreams are fulfilled, you cannot feel at home. If your dream lies elsewhere, then maybe that is where your true home is. I feel lucky in that I do usually feel content in my current situation, or home, and that my dreams and desires are within my reach already. I love spending time with my friends, family, and boyfriend, and I really love Annapolis and Baltimore. I think that I have a lot of different desires and dreams for my life, but I especially would like to teach and to keep writing in a variety of ways. I also definitely want a family. I think that I feel at home because I am on the way to fulfilling many of these dreams already and don’t feel that my current situation is keeping me from these things. As my hopes and desires shift or are fulfilled, my home will shift. And even if they aren’t all fulfilled, if I feel that my home gave me the adequate space and ability to attempt to reach my goals, than I will feel content and truly at home. I think that home requires the freedom to go after what you truly want. Home is no longer home to you if it constricts you and leaves you feeling unfulfilled.

In Rushdie’s stories, home and dreams are common elements. In “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers,” the slippers are valued because people believe that they will fulfill one’s desires or dreams, and, in doing so, transport one home. Much of the story, early on, is a catalogue of the various groups of people who desire the slippers because of the unfulfilled dreams that leave them lacking a sense of home. Tramps, refugees, those who seek protection from witches, and orphans who miss their parents are among the groups longing for home. The narrator longs to be with his love once again. Each of these groups of people may be in the place or location that is technically home to them; unlike Dorothy, they have not landed in a strange world. Yet each feels that they are not at home because each has a sense of an unfulfilled dream, and that unfulfillment leads each to feel trapped in his current situation instead of free and at home.

The narrator in “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers” interestingly calls home the “blessed word” (93) as if to remind the reader that a home is not simply the place from which you come. Home is not as simple as that. A true home is a blessing, for it is where one feels content, free, and fulfilled. Perhaps Rushdie is deliberately playing with this idea of home as the “blessed word” in his earlier story, “The Prophet’s Hair,” in which what is considered blessed essentially destroys the blessedness of a peaceful home. The relic, which would be traditionally considered blessed, ends up being the opposite of blessed for the family whose home it enters, since it tears the family apart. And what is truly blessed, the peace and contentment of home, is destroyed.

Home is present thoughout many, if not all, of Rushdie’s stories. In “The Free Radio,” Ramani dreams and believes that his dream of receiving a free radio from the government will come true. It is when he discovers that his dream will not be fulfilled that he seems to feel discontent with his current home and physically changes locations in order to be able to pursue another dream of becoming an actor. Although the narrator doubts that he will achieve this goal, Ramani still seems to be more content in the end because his situation is not stopping him from attempting to reach his goal, and is therefore a true home to him. In another story, “Good Advice is Rarer Than Rubies,” Rushdie reminds us that we should not assume what others’ dreams are or where they feel they are truly at home. Since Miss Rehana already feels content, fulfilled, and at home with her situation in “a great house, as ayah to three good boys” (15), she has no desire to shift her home to England. Her dreams are not in England or tied to Mustafa Dar, and, thus, her home is not there either.

Will Ruby Slippers take us "Home"?

In class we often address the problem of attaining freedom and how one is able to become “free” through finding their true home or homeland. One of the most compelling quotes in the “Auction of the Ruby Slippers” may sum up the general idea and desire for a place called home. “Home has become such a scattered, damaged, various concept in our present travails. There is so much to yearn for. There are so few rainbows any more. How hard can we expect even a pair of magic shoes to work?...Are they literalists, or will they permit us to redefine the blessed word?”(93). For most of the semester we have been discussing how to find one’s home, but maybe our true home, the one we have always desired and dreamed about, is only attainable in our fictitious, imaginable world. Maybe, as a society who is constantly striving for perfection, we are unable to recognize the comfort in our present homes and thus we are constantly seeking for a bigger, better, home. Rushdie asks, “Are we asking, hoping for too much?” The real problem is not trying to attain freedom but how to live with the freedom we have been granted and grow in the homeland that was chosen for us.
This statement pretty much contradicts most of what we have been saying throughout the semester. It has been accepted that each individual must find their own home and create their own path but we have yet to consider the act of acceptance in order to gain freedom. If we place all of our hope for a better tomorrow into a “pair of magic slippers “, than we are bound to be disappointed. However, if we live in the here and now and address the reality of our lives, we may be able to achieve a greater happiness and a greater freedom than ever before. Rushdie’s Ruby Slippers story was one of the best stories I have read thus far. I think it perfectly captures the hopeless desires of all types of people to better themselves and better their futures. While watching the “Wizard of Oz” one can’t help but hope that they too may be granted one final wish to transform their lives into that perfect, fictitious portrayal they have always imagined. But the truth is that there is no magic wizard, cowardly lion, nurturing tin-man, good witch of the east or even magic, ruby slippers. We are simply left with the ability to accept our home for what it is and make the best out of the lives we have been blessed with. Instead of dreaming about some fictitious paradise we must work towards bettering ourselves and our homelands and maybe that is where true happiness and freedom lies.

(Dis)Comfort at Home

The unnamed narrator of “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers” reflects, “‘Home’ has become such a scattered, damaged, various concept in our present travails” (93). I think it is safe to say that when one attempts to define home as the word is generally used, he/she might say something to the effect of “a person’s house, a physical location.” But, if one is asked to define “home” as his/her personal home, would that answer still be the same? As the narrator points out, there are many, varying definitions of home, and not all of them lead to a location. This particular narrator’s home is in his cousin (yes, his cousin) Gale’s...well, her “lady parts.” He hopes to outbid movie stars, “memorabilia junkies,” philosophers, scientists, exiles and even orphans for the slippers, the magical lure of which has drawn a large crowd of people who just want to go home. He thinks that perhaps giving the slippers to Gale can win back her love so that ultimately he can return home. Of course, Gale’s “home” is only one of the many “metaphors of homeliness” present in the minds of the crowd, each metaphor different and unique. However, the narrator fears the slippers may be “literalists” who cannot comprehend these metaphors and will ultimately take their possessor to his/her literal home, or place of residence.

Why is it that the physical home has lost its grip on “home” as a feeling of comfort? While I know that for me my house is still my home, my place of security, this is not the case for everyone, as Rushdie illustrates in his story, most especially “The Prophet’s Hair.” After Atta and Huma’s father Hashim discovers a stolen vial of the Prophet Muhammad’s and becomes fervently religious, to point of burning every book in the house except the Qur'an and abusing his family verbally and physically, their home represents a type hell for the siblings. Religion can often be a type of symbolic home for believers; yet their father’s newfound devotion, which is actually more of a wicked possession than honest piety, terrorizes the young people so much that they leave their home to enter the unsafe streets of the criminals, hoping to find a thief to steal back the Prophet’s hair. However, what is interesting is that even prior to the father’s madness the family does not even seem comfortable in their large house by the river. Their breakfast conversations are filled with “expressions of courtesy and solicitude,” expressions “on which the family prided itself” (42). Atta and Huma’s definition of home rests fragilely on manners and appearance, and the narrator foreshadows its destruction: “the glassy contentment of that household [...] was to be shattered beyond all hope of repair” (42). Through his narrator, Rushdie as author suggests that “home” is a place of safety and joy. One’s true home can certainly be his/her physical residence, but for that to be the case he/she must be comfortable there. The siblings are not comfortable at home because they are not free to be themselves, to speak openly and personally or to express their feelings. Instead, their father raises them to be civil and detached, and when this facade of “home” breaks with their father’s possession, putting the pieces back together is impossible. Instead, the family destroys itself, with all of them dying except the mother, who instead goes crazy and must leave the house for an asylum.

Physical objects themselves do not dictate “home,” and they are not appropriate means of finding one’s home. Atta and Huma make the mistake of believing removing one particular object from their house will return them home; they are blind to the fact there is no home to which they can return since their idea of home was never real. The narrator of “Ruby Slippers” thinks Dorothy’s slippers can bring him back to his home, a return which me recognizes could be impossible because after years of separation the Gale he remembers probably is not the same as the real Gale of the present (96). He found his home is a person. This in itself is not a problem, though the problem arises in this case because Gale, his home, is changing and moving while he stays static. For “home” to exist in another person, both people together must be moving and growing, always willing to find their comfort in one another.

Indigenizing the World of Writing

Albert Wendt’s Nuanua stands as a shining testament that the art of writing is for all people. Sure colonialists might have introduced it to the “uncivilized” natives, but the native people in turn have taken writing and molded it to fit their own culture. Through using this alien technology, the indigenous can present their own homeland as they see it, how they see life and the people in it. As Wendt describes, they ‘indigenonize’ writing.

Like Rushdie’s mirror analogy, writing has many pieces, many angles. It can take several sides. Literature is the art in which the individual can fully express a diverse range of thoughts through one or many characters in a setting. In the case of post-colonial literature writing acts as a medium for the native people to affirm their identity. In his paper, Wendt describes in one of his sections that much of the colonists writing downplayed the people as merely “extras”, as the local savages to be converted and civilized. Such stories as Things Fall Apart, Love and Longing in Bombay, and Sons for the Return Home give these people, these ‘natives’, the literal chance to tell another story . The ones that outsiders might have originally overlooked. Such opportunities bring truth, allowing foreign eyes to intimately experience the homeland that they could only grasp from an outsider’s views. The writing gives the culture a voice, gives the individual a voice. The possibilities amass so that not only can an individual in a particular culture paint a picture of his homeland, but develop a unique homeland that they personally identify to. This is a freedom I feel all writers share in their work, but for those who follow who write in post colonial style I see a pattern of duality. On one side, the sense of immersion into the character’s world that is unmistakable. In Things Fall Apart Okonkwo’s story takes one through the Nigerian village and weaves for the reader a truly vivid image of the culture’s way of life. As the story progresses, the homeland Achebe creates changes as well, especially with the arrival of the white missionaries. Even here Achebe avoids the ‘single story’ by showing both the positive and negative approaches to conversion/ colonization. The connecting factor throughout all of this however is that this is Okonkwo’s story. The changes in this exterior setting also reflect changes to his own homeland, we see not only a different culture, we see it from his viewpoint and are able to reflect on how he (and others) were affected. By using the character of Okonkwo, Achebe has the freedom to explore different aspects of his homeland, while remaining true to the character he invented. Through telling Okonkwo’s story, Achebe brings to mind that every culture is composed of individuals just as unique as Okonkwo. Although united by culture, people/ characters still retain a unique identity.


When it comes down to it writing is so much bigger than post-colonial style. In many other cultures, by individuals in each, it is a way to freely present ideas and messages through the story. Even though they may take on different characters and archetypes, storytelling is unique to each writer. We all indigenize writing.

Kisses in the Nederends

Kisses in the Nederends is an… interesting read, to say the least. I did not expect the nature of the book to be quite so blunt. Epeli Hau’ofa creates what I believe to be unrealistic characters, and the methods used to try to cure Oilei seem ridiculous. I found myself rolling my eyes while Marama was explaining how snoring and farting were related. However, this is a completely different culture, one which I am not familiar with in the slightest. They obviously have different traditions and methods for healing, and, although they seem ridiculous, it is wrong of me to label them in that way just because they are different.

Hau’ofa’s work is a mixture of colloquial and descriptive writing; he uses everyday language efficiently so that readers can easily follow his story, yet he throws in certain words that add so much to his describing the scene. For example: “Makarita stormed furiously back into the house and towered over her prostrate husband” (13). Words such as “towered” and “stormed” clearly indicate Makarita’s anger and embarrassment toward her husband; this is a much more efficient way of depicting her emotions than simply stating, “Makarita was angry.”

I found that the names were difficult to remember. I found myself questioning a number of the names because I could not remember them, especially Marama, Makarita, and Mere. I could not keep those names attached to the characters. Was it because Hau’ofa threw the reader into the middle of the story? I feel as though he barely had time for characterization (or he didn’t exactly characterize at all) and instead threw around the names as if the reader was already familiar with the people. It also could have been my own fault; maybe I should have read more carefully.