Eden Lakeview

Talking of Salman Rushdie...I have recently been pondering how it remains — just about — acceptable to construct a formulaic thriller or horror movie around the fears flowing out of those ever prickly issues of class and race, but only someone with a death-wish would develop a script based on a particular treatment of religious conservatism. 

Consider this prototype plot - 'Honour Killing' —  in which a young Bangladeshi girl is left for dead in a London canal, crawls out covered in gunk, and then systematically revenges herself on a dozen close family members. There would be a particularly nasty scene in a Balti House kitchen....

I'd soon be nominated for Best Fatwah wouldn't I? No amount of postmodern irony would get me out of it.

Still, the notion that even the most loosely benevolent ethos can end up cloaked in cultural bigotry is one that I might one day have the coyoles to explore creatively. 

The Zoroastrians might make excellent base material for this. There are only 200,000 of them left and I doubt whether many are armed and out here in Guatemala. For every one that is born, four die. 

In fact, that could be my strapline!