Salman Rushdie

Narration: It is a flashback style of narration

that starts from Attas search for a professional
burglar.
Brief summary of the plot:
Based on story of the theft of a relic containing a hair
of the Prophet Muhammad. The tale is a fantastic
account of the miraculous but disastrous events
befalling all those who come into contact with it. The
stolen relic is found by a moneylender, Hashim.
Instead of returning it to the mosque from which it
was taken, he keeps it. Under its influence, this
previously secular Muslim becomes orthodox to the
point of extremism and hurt his family by adopting it.

His son, Atta, tries to take the hair back to Mosque, but at
the last minute he finds out that the hair is no longer with
him because there is a hole in his pocket (2849 L6). Then
Huma comes up with another plan, and decides that it will
have to be stolen by hiring a thief, Sheikh Sn, who takes
the hair amid a scene of carnage. However, she ends up
with a disaster.
At the end of story, Hashim accidentally kills his own
daughter, but he does not realize what he has done until he
turns the light on. Finally, the thief is hunted and shot by
the police, but his four crippled sons and blind wife have
miraculously been cured by their contact with the relic.
Rushdie describes Hashims family as an insecure and
frightened family. The story is concerned with an iconic
object, the hair, and its relocation from a holy place, the
shrine, to the profane space of the outside world, then to a
secret hiding place in the moneylenders locked study, and
finally back to the shrine again.
Characters:
2 groups: those whose god is money and those whose god
is an actual deity, in this case the prophet Muhammad

Motivated by money: the thieves who beat and rob
Atta, the flower-vendor who finds him, Sheikh Sin
the Thief of Thieves, whom Huma hired to steal the
hair from her father

Hashim the moneylender is under the spell of money
when he is first introduced into the story, thought he
switches his allegiance from money to religion

His family also under the spell of money, he and his
wife made sure to instill the values of money in their
children.

The characters who can be considered devout Muslims at
the outset of the story are few in name. Sin the thiefs wife
and four sons can be considered this way.

The only character of any significance left unaccounted for
is the Deputy Commissioner of Police, and his allegiance is
open to interpretation. One could say his allegiance is to
the law, or rather to justice, which in another significant
motivator. He seems to be the personification of
government in the story.