Salman Rushdie - Midnight's children

Behind his foolishness and his rages, the cracks continued to spread; the disease munched steadily on his bones, while hatred ate the rest of him away. He did not die, however, until 1964. It happened like this: on Wednesday, December 25th, 1963-on Christmas Day!-Reverend Mother awoke to find her husband gone. Coming out into the courtyard of her home, amid hissing geese and the pale shadows of the dawn, she called for a servant; and was told that the Doctor Sahib had gone by rickshaw to the railway station. By the time she reached the station, the train had gone; and in this way my grandfather, following some unknown impulse, began his last journey, so that he could end his story where it (and mine) began, in a city surrounded by mountains and set upon a lake.

The valley lay hidden in an eggshell of ice; the mountains had closed in, to snarl like angry jaws around the city on the lake… winter in Srinagar; winter in Kashmir. On Friday, December 27th, a man answering to my grandfather's description was seen, chugha-coated, drooling, in the vicinity of the Hazratbal Mosque. At four forty-five on Saturday morning, Haji Muhammad Khalil Ghanai noticed the theft, from the Mosque's inner sanctum, of the valley's most treasured relic: the holy hair of the Prophet Muhammad.

Did he? Didn't he? If it was him, why did he not enter the Mosque, stick in hand, to belabour the faithful as he had become accustomed to doing? If not him, then why? There were rumours of a Central Government plot to 'demoralize the Kashmir! Muslims', by stealing their sacred hair; and counter-rumours about Pakistani agents provocateurs, who supposedly stole the relic to foment unrest… did they? Or not? Was this bizarre incident truly political, or was it the penultimate attempt at revenge upon God by a father who had lost his son? For ten days, no food was cooked in any Muslim home; there were riots and burnings of cars; but my grandfather was above politics now, and is not known to have joined in any processions. He was a man with a single mission; and what is known is that on January 1st, 1964 (a Wednesday, just one week after his departure from Agra), he set his face towards the hill which Muslims erroneously called the Takht-e-Sulaiman, Solomon's seat, atop which stood a radio mast, but also the black blister of the temple of the acharya Sankara. Ignoring the distress of the city, my grandfather climbed; while the cracking sickness within him gnawed patiently through his bones. He was not recognized.

Doctor Aadam Aziz (Heidelberg-returned) died five days before the government announced that its massive search for the single hair of the Prophet's head had been successful. When the State's holiest saints assembled to authenticate the hair, my grandfather was unable to tell them the truth. (If they were wrong… but I can't answer the questions I've asked.) Arrested for the crime-and later released on grounds of ill-health-was one Abdul Rahim Bande; but perhaps my grandfather, had he lived, could have shed a stranger light on the affair… at midday on January ist, Aadam Aziz arrived outside the temple of Sankara Acharya. He was seen to raise his walking-stick; inside the temple, women performing the rite of puja at the Shiva-lingam shrank back-as women had once shrunk from the wrath of another, tetrapod-obsessed doctor; and then the cracks claimed him, and his legs gave way beneath him as the bones disintegrated, and the effect of his fall was to shatter the rest of his skeleton beyond all hope of repair. He was identified by the papers in the pocket of his chugha-coat: a photograph of his son, and a half-completed (and fortunately, correctly addressed) letter to his wife. The body, too fragile to be transported, was buried in the valley of his birth.

I am watching Padma; her muscles have begun to twitch distractedly.'Consider this,' I say. 'Is what happend to my grandfather so very strange? Compare it with the mere fact of the holy fuss over the theft of a hair; because every last detail of that is true, and by comparison, an old man's death is surely perfectly normal.' Padma relaxes; her muscles give me the go-ahead. Because I've spent too long on Aadam Aziz; perhaps I'm afraid of what must be told next; but the revelation will not be denied.

One last fact: after the death of my grandfather, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru fell ill and never recovered his health. This fatal sickness finally killed him on May 27th, 1964.

If I hadn't wanted to be a hero, Mr Zagallo would never have pulled out my hair. If my hair had remained intact, Glandy Keith and Fat Perce wouldn't have taunted me; Masha Miovic wouldn't have goaded me into losing my finger. And from my finger flowed blood which was neither-Alpha-nor-Omega, and sent me into exile; and in exile I was filled with the lust for revenge which led to the murder of Homi Catrack; and if Homi hadn't died, perhaps my uncle would not have strolled off a roof into the sea-breezes; and then my grandfather would not have gone to Kashmir and been broken by the effort of climbing the Sankara Acharya hill. And my grandfather was the founder of my family, and my fate was linked by my birthday to that of the nation, and the father of the nation was Nehru. Nehru's death; can I avoid the conclusion that that, too, was all my fault?

But now we're back in 1958; because on the thirty-seventh day of the mourning period, the truth, which had been creeping up on Mary Pereira-and therefore on me-for over eleven years, finally came out into the open; truth, in the shape of an old, old man, whose stench of Hell penetrated even my clogged-up nostrils, and whose body lacked fingers and toes and was littered with boils and holes, walked up our two-storey hillock and appeared through the dust-cloud to be seen by Mary Pereira, who was cleaning the chick-blinds on the verandah.

Here, then, was Mary's nightmare come true; here, visible through the pall of dust, was the ghost of Joe D'Costa, walking towards the ground-floor office of Ahmed Sinai! As if it hadn't been enough to show himself to Aadam Aziz… 'Arre, Joseph,' Mary screamed, dropping her duster, 'you go away now! Don't come here now! Don't be bothering the sahibs with your troubles! О God, Joseph, go, go na, you will kill me today!' But the ghost walked on down the driveway.

Mary Pereira, abandoning chick-blinds, leaving them hanging askew, rushes into the heart of the house to throw herself at the feet of my mother-small fat hands joined in supplication-'Begum Sahiba! Begum Sahiba, forgive me!' And my mother astounded: 'What is this, Mary? What has got your goat?' But Mary is beyond dialogue, she is weeping uncontrollably, crying 'O God my hour has come, my darling Madam, only let me go peacefully, do not put me in the jailkhana!' And also, 'Eleven years, my Madam, see if I haven't loved you all, О Madam, and that boy with his face like the moon; but now I am killed, I am no-good woman, I shall burn in hell! Funtoosh!' cried Mary, and again, 'It's finished; funloosh!'

Still I did not guess what was coming; not even when Mary threw herself upon me (I was taller than her now; her tears wet my neck): 'O baba, baba; today you, must learn a thing, such a thing I have done; but come now…' and the little woman drew herself up with immense dignity, '… I will tell you all before that Joseph does. Begum, children, all you other great sirs and madams, come now to sahib's office, and I will tell.'

Public announcements have punctuated my life; Amina in a Delhi gully, and Mary in a sunless office… with my whole family trooping amazedly behind us, I went downstairs with Mary Pereira, who would not let go of my hand.

What was in the room with Ahmed Sinai? What had given my father a face from which djinns and money had been chased away and replaced by a look of utter desolation? What sat huddled up in the corner of the room, filling the air with a sulphurous stench? What, shaped like a man, lacked fingers and toes, whose face seemed to bubble like the hot springs of New Zealand (which I'd seen in the Wonder Book of Wonders)?… No time to explain, because Mary Pereira has begun to talk, gabbling out a secret which has been hidden for over eleven years, pulling us all out of the dream-world she invented when she changed name-tags, forcing us into the horror of the truth. And all the time she held on to me; like a mother protecting her child, she shielded me from my family. (Who were learning… as I was… that they were not…)