Salman Rushdie - Midnight's children

She had spent the morning alone with giggling Zohra and the echoes of the name Ravana, not knowing what was happening out there at the industrial estate, letting her mind linger upon the way the whole world seemed to be going mad; and when the screaming started and Zohra-before she could be stopped-joined in, something hardened inside her some realization that she was her father's daughter, some ghost-memory of Nadir Khan hiding from crescent knives in a cornfield, some irritation of her nasal passages, and she went downstairs to the rescue, although Zohra screeched, 'What you doing, sisterji, that mad beast, for God, don't let him in here, have your brains gone raw?'… My mother opened the door and Lifafa Das fell in.

Picture her that morning, a dark shadow between the mob and its prey, her womb bursting with its invisible untold secret: 'Wah, wah,' she applauded the crowd. 'What heroes! Heroes, I swear, absolutely! Only fifty of you against this terrible monster of a fellow! Allah, you make my eyes shine with pride.'

… And Zohra, 'Come back, sisterji!' And the oily quiff, 'Why speak for this goonda, Begum Sahiba? This is not right acting.' And Amina, 'I know this man. He is a decent type. Go, get out, none of you have anything to do? In a Muslim muhalla you would tear a man to pieces? Go, remove yourselves.' But the mob has stopped being surprised, and is moving forward again… and now. Now it comes.

'Listen,' my mother shouted, 'Listen well. I am with child. I am a mother who will have a child, and I am giving this man my shelter. Come on now, if you want to kill, kill a mother also and show the world what men you are!'

That was how it came about that my arrival-the coming of Saleem Sinai-was announced to the assembled masses of the people before my father had heard about it. From the moment of my conception, it seems, I have been public property.

But although my mother was right when she made her public announcement, she was also wrong. This is why: the baby she was carrying did not turn out to be her son.

My mother came to Delhi; worked assiduously at loving her husband; was prevented by Zohra and khichri and clattering feet from telling her husband her news; heard screams; made a public announcement. And it worked. My annunciation saved a life.

After the crowd dispersed, old Musa the bearer went into the street and rescued Lifafa Das's pecpshow, while Amina gave the young man with the beautiful smile glass after glass of fresh lime water. It seemed that his experience had drained him not only of liquid but also sweetness, because he put four spoonfuls of raw sugar into every glass, while Zohra cowered in pretty terror on a sofa. And, at length, Lifafa Das (rehydrated by lime water, sweetened by sugar) said: 'Begum Sahiba, you are a great lady. If you allow, I bless your house; also your unborn child. But also-please permit-I will do one thing more for you.'

'Thank you,' my mother said, 'but you must do nothing at all.'

But he continued (the sweetness of sugar coating las tongue). 'My cousin, Shri Ramram Seth, is a great seer, Begum Sahiba. Palmist, astrologer, fortune-teller. You will please come to him, and he will reveal to you the future of your son.'

Soothsayers prophesied me… in January 1947, my mother Amina Sinai was offered the gift of a prophecy in return for her gift of a life. And despite Zohra's 'It is madness to go with this one, Amina sister, do not even think of it for one sec, these are times to be careful'; despite her memories of her father's scepticism and of his thumbandforefinger closing around a maulvi's ear, the offer touched my mother in a place which answered Yes. Caught up in the illogical wonderment of her brand-new motherhood of which she had only just become certain, 'Yes,' she said, 'Lifafa Das, you will please meet me after some days at the gate to the Red Fort. Then you will take me to your cousin.'

'I shall be waiting every day,' he joined his palms; and left.

Zohra was so stunned that, when Ahmed Sinai came home, she could only shake her head and say, 'You newlyweds; crazy as owls; I must leave you to each other!'

Musa, the old bearer, kept his mouth shut, too. He kept himself in the background of our lives, always, except twice… once when he left us; once when he returned to destroy the world by accident.

Unless, of course, there's no such thing as chance; in which case Musa-for all his age and servility-was nothing less than a time-bomb, ticking softly away until his appointed time; in which case, we should either-optimistically-get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning, and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or ebe, of course, we might-as pessimists-give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought decision action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway; things will be as they will. Where, then, is optimism? In fate or in chaos? Was my father being opti-or pessimistic when my mother told him her news (after everyone in the neighbourhood had heard it), and he replied with, 'I told you so; it was only a matter of time? My mother's pregnancy, it seems, was fated; my birth, however, owed a good deal to accident.

'It was only a matter of time,' my father said, with every appearance of pleasure; but time has been an unsteady affair, in my experience, not a thing to be relied upon. It could even be partitioned: the clocks in Pakistan would run half an hour ahead of their Indian counterparts… Mr Kemal, who wanted nothing to do with Partition, was fond of saying, 'Here's proof of the folly of the scheme! Those Leaguers plan to abscond with a whole thirty minutes! Time Without Partitions,' Mr Kemal cried, That's the ticket!' And S. P. Butt said, 'If they can change the time just like that, what's real any more? I ask you? What's true?'

It seems like a day for big questions. I reply across the unreliable years to S. P. Butt, who got his throat slit in the Partition riots and lost interest in time: 'What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same.' True, for me, was from my earliest days something hidden inside the stories Mary Pereira told me: Mary my ayah who was both more and less than a mother; Mary who knew everything about all of us. True was a thing concealed just over the horizon towards which the fisherman's finger pointed in the picture on my wall, while the young Raleigh listened to his tales. Now, writing this in my Anglepoised pool of light, I measure truth against those early things: Is this how Mary would have told it? I ask. Is this what that fisherman would have said?… And by those standards it is undeniably true that, one day in January 1947, my mother heard all about me six months before I turned up, while my father came up against a demon king.

Amina Sinai had been waiting for a suitable moment to accept Lifafa Das's offer; but for two days after the burning of the Indiabike factory Ahmed Sinai stayed at home, never visiting his office at Connaught Place, as if he were steeling himself for some unpleasant encounter. For two days the grey moneybag lay supposedly secret in its place under his side of their bed. My father showed no desire to talk about the reasons for the grey bag's presence; so Amina said to herself, 'Let him be like that; who cares?' because she had her secret, too, waiting patiently for her by the gates of the Red Fort at the top of

Chandni Chowk. Pouting in secret petulance, my mother kept Lifafa Das to herself. 'Unless-and-until he tells me what he's up to, why should I tell him?' she argued.

And then a cold January evening, on which 'I've got to go out tonight' said Ahmed Sinai; and despite her pleas of 'It's cold-you'll get sick…' he put on his business suit and coat under which the mysterious grey bag made a ridiculously obvious lump; so finally she said, 'Wrap up warm,' and sent him off wherever he was going, asking, 'Will you be late?' To which he replied, 'Yes, certainly.' Five minutes after he left, Amina Sinai set off for the Red Fort, into the heart of her adventure.