What would you do with a miracle?

No matter what faith or religion you believe in, there are miracles being performed every day. Is it not a miracle that the sun continues to rise every morning and it has not burnt out like other stars have?  Or that the miracle of life happens on a daily basis? Miracles are happening all around us and all the time, but people don’t tend to recognize them let alone appreciate them. This isn’t a new thing for the people of today. Back when Jesus performed great miracles the prophecies still denied them as nothing more than trickery or witchcraft. But the point is miracles, big and small, happen whether someone realizes it or not.

Currently in my literature class we are reading East, West by Salman Rushdie. It is a book comprised of multiple short stories. The one I will be focusing on is titled, The Prophet’s Hair. The story is about this wealthy man you finds the legendary vile containing a hair from the Prophet Muhammad.  His family believes the hair is the reason for new strange behavior towards them. He acts totally out of character and the family hates it. They end up hiring a thief to steal the vile with the hair so hopefully their house will go back to normal.  The thief is successful but at a price….his life. He manages however to make it home to his wife and four sons before he dies though. The thief’s family is what I am going to examine in more detail.

The thief’s wife is an older lady who has been blind for a long time. He had four sons that were all crippled…but not by accident. He didn’t want them to become like him or become better than him because he was the “Thief of Thieves”. Shortly after their births the father smashed their legs. Now before the thief was gunned down by the police he had made it back to his home. So in the morning after his death they had “unwittingly spent a few minutes under the same roof as the famous hair, they found that a miracle had occurred.”(pg 58)

What was the miracle and how did they react? Well the four sons were no longer crippled. They had full function of their legs. But they were not grateful “because the miracle had reduced their earning powers.” (pg 58) The wife however got her vision back. She unlike her sons was grateful. Even though she had lost her husband, she was able to “spend her last days gazing once more upon the beauties of the valley.”(pg 58)

So what was Rushdie’s point of putting this last little bit of information in the story of The Prophet’s Hair? I believe it is to point out the selfishness and ungratefulness people are these days. There are some like the wife that look on the brighter side of things…viewing the cup as half full. Then there are some like the sons that mumble and grown because the “gift” isn’t what they would have picked.  I believe Rushdie is trying to remind people that even simple miracles can be great and it is up to us to make the best of it. We can choose to sulk because of the miracle or enjoy the blessings it has provided for us.