that starts from Attas search for a professional burglar. Brief summary of the plot: Based on story of the theft of a relic containing a hair of the Prophet Muhammad. The tale is a fantastic account of the miraculous but disastrous events befalling all those who come into contact with it. The stolen relic is found by a moneylender, Hashim. Instead of returning it to the mosque from which it was taken, he keeps it. Under its influence, this previously secular Muslim becomes orthodox to the point of extremism and hurt his family by adopting it.
His son, Atta, tries to take the hair back to Mosque, but at the last minute he finds out that the hair is no longer with him because there is a hole in his pocket (2849 L6). Then Huma comes up with another plan, and decides that it will have to be stolen by hiring a thief, Sheikh Sn, who takes the hair amid a scene of carnage. However, she ends up with a disaster. At the end of story, Hashim accidentally kills his own daughter, but he does not realize what he has done until he turns the light on. Finally, the thief is hunted and shot by the police, but his four crippled sons and blind wife have miraculously been cured by their contact with the relic. Rushdie describes Hashims family as an insecure and frightened family. The story is concerned with an iconic object, the hair, and its relocation from a holy place, the shrine, to the profane space of the outside world, then to a secret hiding place in the moneylenders locked study, and finally back to the shrine again. Characters: 2 groups: those whose god is money and those whose god is an actual deity, in this case the prophet Muhammad
Motivated by money: the thieves who beat and rob Atta, the flower-vendor who finds him, Sheikh Sin the Thief of Thieves, whom Huma hired to steal the hair from her father
Hashim the moneylender is under the spell of money when he is first introduced into the story, thought he switches his allegiance from money to religion
His family also under the spell of money, he and his wife made sure to instill the values of money in their children.
The characters who can be considered devout Muslims at the outset of the story are few in name. Sin the thiefs wife and four sons can be considered this way.
The only character of any significance left unaccounted for is the Deputy Commissioner of Police, and his allegiance is open to interpretation. One could say his allegiance is to the law, or rather to justice, which in another significant motivator. He seems to be the personification of government in the story.