Haroun and the Sea of Stories

SALMAN RUSHDIE

Novel, 1990. Summary.

In this story we encounter storytelling as a means of saving your identity, your relationship with your family, and perhaps even your life—which means that, in a sense, you are saving a world. The British-Indian author Salman Rushdie (b. 1947) had to go underground after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses in 1988. The book was considered blasphemous to Islam by the fundamentalist government of Iran, which issued a death warrant against him. He says that he reached a point where he was so distressed he wasn’t able to think of any stories to tell. But he worked himself out of his depression, and Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a book for children and other people who have a natural love for stories, is the result. This modern fairy tale has many surprising elements, but here we will focus just on the core issue: why stories have value.

Haroun’s father Rashid is a professional storyteller and a very popular one. He usually tells cheerful stories, even though they live in a very sad city. Haroun is beginning to ask questions about his father’s storytelling: Where do the stories come from? From the great Story Sea, says Rashid, and you have to be a subscriber to the water, which comes from a tap installed by one of the Water-Genies. But Haroun doesn’t believe him. And now a sad thing happens in their lives: Haroun’s mother Soraya with the beautiful voice leaves her husband and child for another tenant in their apartment building, Mr. Sengupta, who once told Haroun, What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true? Rashid is at a loss for what to do, because all he knows is storytelling, and now Haroun himself shouts the terrible words at his father, What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true? Soon after, in front of a huge audience in a city in the mountains, Rashid finds that he has lost the gift of gab: He has run out of stories. His stories are finito, khattam-shud (which means over and done with, the words all stories end with in Haroun’s language).

Distressed, Rashid and Haroun go back to their hotel. But Rashid doesn’t like his room, and Haroun doesn’t like his, either, so they switch rooms. And this is why, in the night, Haroun witnesses a strangely clad little character tinkering with something in the bathroom that was supposed to be his father’s: A Water-Genie from the Sea of Stories is turning off the story tap. Confronted by Haroun, he explains that Rashid ordered it so, subconsciously. Haroun points out that his father can still tell stories without any tapwater, and the Water-Genie answers, “Anyone can tell stories . . . Liars, and cheats and crooks, for example. But for stories with that Extra Ingredient, ah, for those, even the best storytellers need the Story Waters.” Now Haroun begs to be taken to whoever decided to cut off his father’s Story Water supply, so he can set the matter straight, and he steals the Disconnecting Tool as a bargaining chip. The Water-Genie agrees to take him to Gup City in Kahani to get the matter resolved, this instant.

At the end of a long journey Haroun is surprised to find that Kahani (which means story) is an undiscovered moon circling the earth, and on this moon is the Sea of Stories. Flying over the sea with the Water-Genie, he sees all the brilliant strands of all the stories in the world intertwining and constantly changing. And the Genie gives him a wish-drink that is supposed to set things straight with his father’s storytelling, but all the boy can think about is how sad he is that his mother has left him; he can’t concentrate on his father’s problem at all. So now the moment for wishing has passed, and he must try something else. But the Water-Genie is now distracted, because a problem has come up: Someone is polluting the Sea of Stories, and he suspects the leader of the Land of Chup, a land in perpetual darkness on the other side of the moon. The leader’s name is Khattam-Shud.

Going with the Genie to Gup City, Haroun finds, to his surprise, that his father is already there—he has made use of a home brew to travel to faraway places and is now being accused of being a spy for the Chupwalas. Rashid is able to explain the situation because he landed in the Twilite area and heard interesting things, and now they learn about the evil intent of Khattam-Shud: Not only is he opposed to stories and fantasies, he also wants to do away with speech altogether and has enforced strict Silence Laws.

Haroun and a few helpers from Gup now travel into the twilight and on to the dark land of Chup, where shadows have acquired a life of their own, and through many dangers and adventures they reach the heart of the Chup empire, a Factory Ship that makes poison to spill into the Sea of Stories. Khattam-Shud’s plan is to block the very source of stories with a plug and spread silence and darkness. Finally they see Khattam-Shud himself, and Haroun is rather surprised: He is a scrawny, skinny, weasly type, and he looks a lot like Mr. Sengupta, who stole his mother away. And when he actually says, “What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” Haroun is certain that he is the same man—but when Khattam-Shud inflates himself and becomes a monster to prove a point, the boy realizes that this creature is much more than just Mr. Sengupta. And now we hear why Khattam-Shud wants to destroy storytelling. Haroun asks, “But why do you hate stories so much? . . . Stories are fun.”

“The world, however, is not for Fun,” Khattam-Shud replied. “The world is for Controlling.”

“Which world?” Haroun made himself ask.

“Your world, my world, all worlds,” came the reply. “They are all there to be Ruled. And inside every single story, inside every Stream in the Ocean, there lies a world, a story-world, that I cannot Rule at all. And that is the reason why.”

But Haroun has one weapon: the bottle of wish-water that he didn’t get to use the first time around. Now he wishes for the sun to shine on Chup and melt all the shadows, including Khattam-Shud and his ship, and it happens. The Chupwala people are freed from darkness, and the Sea of Stories will be clean again. Haroun is offered a reward by the leader of Gup, but all he wants is a happy ending. The leader explains that there are very few happy endings, even in stories, and that they have to come at the end; if they happen in the middle of a story, all they do is cheer things up for a while. . . . Haroun’s father’s supply of Story Water is restored, and together they travel back to earth where they wake, in their beds just in time for Rashid to go to his evening engagement and tell stories, for his gift is now back: He tells the story of Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and the people find it so inspiring that they kick out the most obnoxious of their own leaders.

And so Rashid and Haroun go home, to another surprise: Soraya, Haroun’s mother, has returned. She made a mistake, she says, and now she is back. And Sengupta? Well, he is all over and done with, he is khattam-shud!

Study Questions

1.   Comment on Khattam-Shud’s remark that inside a story lies a world that can’t be controlled. Why is that important?

2.   Is this a story for children? Why or why not?

3.   What do you think the author had in mind with Khattam-Shud and his Silence Laws? Do we have to know Rushdie’s personal history for the story to make sense, or does the story have a broader application?

4.   If you are familiar with the classic Arab collection of stories Arabian Nights, the names of Haroun and Rashid may sound familiar to you. Their last name is Khalifa. What do you think the author meant by creating such a connection?