A revolution of water-carriers, immigrants and slaves

A revolution of water-carriers, immigrants and slaves is Baal’s phrase, which Salman the Persian repeats when the two meet again. Its force lies in making a political subject out of people placed at the margins of established power: workers, migrants, and the enslaved. The phrase returns in a novel where Saladin Chamcha’s claims to belonging are repeatedly tested by officials, employers, and the public, and where protest follows the death of Uhuru Simba in custody.

The Phrase Recalled

Baal recognizes the stranger by his way of speaking and calls him a foreigner. The stranger answers by citing the phrase as Baal’s own words. Baal then remembers that he is Salman the Persian, one of the people closest to Mahound; Salman corrects Baal’s mistaken identification of him by another name. The recollection ties the phrase to a shared past, but Salman’s explanation of how proximity can make a conjurer’s trick easier to see gives their reunion an edge of disillusionment. The words are not merely a slogan passed between old acquaintances: they carry the memory of someone who has learned to scrutinize the power he once stood near.

Immigration and the Production of Outsiders

The phrase’s emphasis on immigrants acquires a stark contemporary echo in the treatment of Saladin Chamcha after the Bostan disaster. When a caller reports a suspicious person on the beach, fifty-seven constables and thirteen dogs join the search; immigration officers are present when the police find Saladin at Rosa Diamond’s house. His account of the air disaster is drowned out by laughter, and his claim to British status is discounted when he cannot produce identifying documents. The scene makes suspicion institutional and collective: an anonymous report mobilizes a large police presence, while Saladin’s own words fail to establish who he is.

That exclusion continues in a different register when Hal Valance tells Saladin that The Aliens Show will dispense with his services. Valance describes the show’s market as an ethnic universe, yet argues that Saladin’s presence makes it too racial and that audiences want mainstream entertainment instead. Saladin, in a turban and disguise, sees himself as a marooned genie searching for a magic lamp. The exchange turns migrant identity into a market category that can be exploited for a show and then rejected as commercially inconvenient. The phrase’s conjunction of immigrants with laborers and the enslaved thus resonates against a world that sorts people by race while limiting their power to define themselves.

From Marginalized People to Political Voice

In Brickhall, Saladin insists on his professional and civic credentials, naming his membership in Actors’ Equity, the Automobile Association, and the Garrick Club and asking the police to check their records. One officer answers with a racist insult and questions whether Saladin’s name can belong to an Englishman. Saladin points out that the immigration officers themselves do not sound Anglo-Saxon. His reply exposes the unevenness of the test: his identity is challenged through name and appearance, while the officials’ own accents do not disqualify them from exercising authority.

The phrase’s revolutionary language also finds a later, concrete political setting in the response to Uhuru Simba’s death in custody. At a crowd gathered outside the police station, Antoinette Roberts challenges the community liaison officer’s description of the death as an extraordinary accident, arguing that the authorities are gambling with people’s lives. Hanif Johnson draws attention to the fact that the other bunk in Simba’s cell was unoccupied and that the only witnesses were prison officers, disputing the account that a nightmare alone explained his death. Walcott Roberts urges the crowd to maintain its anger. These are not presented as a direct repetition of Baal’s phrase, but they sharpen its political resonance: people made vulnerable by race and institutional power speak publicly, organize their account of events, and refuse to let an official explanation close the matter.