NP Kashmir: Line of Control

[Otto]

KWP:
> Let's hope so... Dein Wort in Gottes Gehörgang,
>

I wonder if He will listen to me . . .

This is still a literary mailing-list -- so here's some literature. I have
altered the opening quote compared to what you read in the original text of
the novel because I liked the words in my newer Quran-edition (not the
Penguin-classics edition as in the novel) after finding out from which
chapter the author had taken this quote. As it is always with these quotes
in postmodern novels you should read a little bit around the original quote
the author is giving:

THE CHAPTER OF CONGEALED BLOOD
                        (XCVI. Mecca.)
IN the name of the merciful and compassionate God.
READ, in the name of thy Lord!
Who created man from congealed blood!
Read, for thy Lord is most generous!
Who taught the pen!

"(As the Quran tells us: *Recite, in the name of the Lord thy Creator, who
created Man from clots of blood.)*
One Kashmiri morning in the early spring of 1915, my grandfather Aadam Aziz
hit his nose against a frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to
pray. Three drops of blood plopped out of his left nostril, hardened
instantly in the brittle air and lay before his eyes onnthe prayer-mat,
transformed into rubies. Lurching back until he knelt with his with his head
once more upright, he found that tears which had sprung from his eyes had
solidified, too; and at that moment, as he brushed diamonds contemptuously
from his lashes, he resolved never again to kiss earth for any god or man."
(Salman Rushdie, "Midnight's Children," 1981, p. 10)

Otto