Review: Salman Rushdie's "The Moor's Last Sigh"

          Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh is ostensibly a family saga, focusing on over a century of the da Gama family’s involvement in India’s spice trade industry. The saga centers on a woman, Aurora Zogoiby (neé da Gama), who becomes a prolific painter during the early 20^th century. But, the story is no simple saga, because lurking behind the rise of a family spice empire and its prolific artist, there is a darker story, a palimpsest that the tale’s narrator, the Moor of the title, slowly reveals by picking away the blander painting overlaying it.

          The da Gama spice empire is nothing but a front for the organized criminal empire of Aurora Zogoiby’s husband, Abraham Zogoiby. Abraham, a Jew who claims among his ancestors the last Moorish king of Alhambra, rises from his humble position as a clerk in a da Gama godown, when the spice empire’s young heiress, Aurora falls madly in love with him. Abraham rejects his heritage and takes his place at the helm of the spice empire, which he preserves through the Second World War by intimidating ship’s captains to brave the U-boat infested shipping lanes, with the threat certain death at the hands of disgruntled dockhands that he personally incites against them. Yet even such means leave the spice empire in peril, and Abraham must make a deal with the mother that he repudiated when he married Aurora. Abraham promises his mother that she may raise his first born son as a Jew in exchange for the gems he once discovered hidden by his mother in the community synagogue. The jewels ultimately preserve the da Gama spice empire, but they threaten connubial bliss, as Aurora, upon discovering his promise, declares a cessation of physical relations between her and her husband until her mother-in-law dies. The marriage survives, and after Abraham’s mother dies, the couple is blessed with three daughters in quick succession, and then, later by their only son, Moraes “Moor” Zogoiby.

          Moor is born with a condition, he was born four-and-a-half months too early (or perhaps, as Moor himself suggest, right on time; there is that matter of the unaccounted for night in Aurora’s travels nine months before his birth). Moor also ages twice as fast as other humans, and he has a deformed club, instead of a right hand.

          The family thrives in Bombay, where Abraham builds his criminal empire. Aurora turns a blind eye to Abraham’s business methods and concentrates on her art. With Moor as her model, Aurora embarks on the greatest artistic project of her life, the Moor sequence, which depicts Moor as Boabdil, the last Moorish king of Granada, from who the Zogoiby family claimed descent. In Bombay, Moor’s body ages quickly, but his faculties are restricted to a normal rate of growth. He falls in love with the wrong woman, whose conniving precipitates Moor’s falling out with his family.

          Banished, Moor joins with Abraham and Aurora’s political enemies, until, after Aurora’s death, he reconciles with his father. But, the reconciliation comes too late, for Moor desperately wants reconciliation with his dead mother. Nonetheless, he becomes his father’s confidant, and learns the extent of his father’s criminal empire. Events move quickly. The police close in on Abraham, and his political enemies seek to bring him down. Eventually, Moor flees, as the Bombay he knows crumbles around him. His final journey culminates in the small, mountain-top Spanish town of Benegeli, where he hopes to posthumously reconcile with his mother, and where he reunites with an old friend from his family’s past.

          Rushdie’s narrative brilliance shines in novel’s intricacies. Behind the tale lurks the palimpsest of history. Rushdie presents an India emerging from the vestiges of colonialism to become a country in the modern era. As the saga unfolds, characters dabble in communism, produce well-ridiculed scientific theories, and confront religious sectarianism. His characters exist in the world that he creates. Each character has its own mannerisms and speech. One can easily pick out Aurora’s lines by the added o’s and y’s. “Irish” da Gama, the Moor’s great-uncle, always appears accompanied by his favorite dog – whether living, or stuffed and mounted on wheels. The novel abounds in coincidence, and though some coincidences are a bit too fortuitous, they are delivered in the Rushdie fashion, with the proper amount of skepticism and unapologetic, self-consciousness that enables them to come across as narratively brilliant. The novel is well-deserving of its acclaim.

JCM

11 January 2013