Salman Rushdie - Midnight's children

We went to school with cousin Zafar, who seemed less anxious to marry my sister now that we were children of a broken home; but his worst deed came one weekend when we were taken to the General's mountain cottage in Nathia Gali, beyond Murree. I was in a state of high excitement (my illness had just been declared cured): mountains! The possibility of panthers! Cold, biting air!-so that I thought nothing of it when the General asked me if I'd mind sharing a bed with Zafar, and didn't even guess when they spread the rubber sheet over the mattress… I awoke in the small hours in a large rancid pool of lukewarm liquid and began to yell blue murder. The General appeared at our bedside and began to thrash the living daylights out of his son. 'You're a big man now! Damn it to hell! Still, and still you do it! Get yourself organized! Good for nothing! Who behaves in this damn way? Cowards, that's who! Damn me if I'll have a coward for a son…' The enuresis of my cousin Zafar continued, however, to be the shame of his family; despite thrashings, the liquid ran down his leg; and one day it happened when he was awake. But that was after certain movements had, with my assistance, been performed by pepperpots, proving to me that although the telepathic air-waves were jammed in this country, the modes of connection still seemed to function; active-literally as well as metaphorically, I helped change the fate of the Land of the Pure.

The Brass Monkey and I were helpless observers, in those days, of my wilting mother. She, who had always been assiduous in the heat, had begun to wither in the northern cold. Deprived of two husbands, she was also deprived (in her own eyes) of meaning; and there was also a relationship to rebuild, between mother and son. She held me tightly one night and said, 'Love, my child, is a thing that every mother learns; it is not born with a baby, but made; and for eleven years, I have learned to love you as my son.' But there was a distance behind her gentleness, as though she were trying to persuade herself… a distance, too, in the Monkey's midnight whispers of, 'Hey, brother, why don't we go and pour water over Zafar-they'll only think he's wet his bed?'-and it was my sense of this gap which showed me that, despite their use of son and brother, their imaginations were working hard to assimilate Mary's confession; not knowing then that they would be unable to succeed in their re-imaginings of brother and son, I remained terrified of Shiva; and was accordingly driven even deeper into the illusory heart of my desire to prove myself worthy of their kinship. Despite Reverend Mother's recognition of me, I was never at my ease until, on a more-than-three-years-distant verandah, my father said, 'Come, son; come here and let me love you.' Perhaps that is why I behaved as I did on the night of October yth, 1958.

… An eleven-year-old boy, Padma, knew very little about the internal affairs of Pakistan; but he could see, on that October day, that an unusual dinner-party was being planned. Saleem at eleven knew nothing about the Constitution of 1956 and its gradual erosion; but his eyes were keen enough to spot the Army security officers, the military police, who arrived that afternoon to lurk secretly behind every garden bush. Faction strife and the multiple incompetences of Mr Ghulam Mohammed were a mystery to him; but it was clear that his aunt Emerald was putting on her finest jewels. The farce of four-prime-ministers-in-two-years had never made him giggle; but he could sense, in the air of drama hanging over the General's house, that something like a final curtain was approaching. Ignorant of the emergence of the Republican party, he was nevertheless curious about the guest-list for the Zulfikar party; although he was in a country where names meant nothing-who was Chaudhuri Muhammad Ali? Or Suhrawardy? Or Chundrigar, or Noon?-the anonymity of the dinner-guests, which was carefully preserved by his uncle and aunt, was a puzzling thing. Even though he had once cut Pakistani headlines out of newspapers-furniture hurling slays deputye-pak speaker-he had no idea why, at six p.m., a long line of black limousines came through the sentried walls of-the Zulfikar Estate; why flags waved on their bonnets; why their occupants refused to smile; or why Emerald and Pia and my mother stood behind General Zulfikar with expressions on their faces which would have seemed more appropriate at a funeral than a social gathering. Who what was dying? Who why were the limousine arrivals?-I had no idea; but I was on my toes behind my mother, staring at the smoked-glass windows of the enigmatic cars.

Car-doors opened; equerries, adjutants, leaped out of vehicles and opened rear doors, saluted stiffly; a small muscle began to tic in my aunt Emerald's cheek. And then, who descended from the flag-waving motors? What names should be put to the fabulous array of moustaches, swagger-sticks, gimlet-eyes, medals and shoulder-pips which emerged? Saleem knew neither names nor serial numbers; ranks, however, could be discerned. Gongs and pips, proudly worn on chests and shoulders, announced the arrival of very top brass indeed. And out of the last car came a tall man with an astonishingly round head, round as a tin globe although unmarked by lines of longitude and latitude; planet-headed, he was not labelled like the orb which the Monkey had once squashed; not made as england (although certainly Sandhurst-trained) he moved through saluting gongs-and-pips; arrived at my aunt Emerald; and added his own salute to the rest.

'Mr Commander-in-Chief,' my aunt said, 'be welcome in our home.'

'Emerald, Emerald,' came from the mouth set in the earth-shaped head-the mouth positioned immediately beneath a neat moustache, 'Why such formality, such takalluf?' Whereupon she embraced him with, 'Well then, Ayub, you're looking wonderful.'

He was a General then, though Field-Marshalship was not far away… we followed him into the house; we watched him drink (water) and laugh (loudly); at dinner we watched him again?saw how he ate like a peasant, so that his moustache became stained with gravy… 'Listen, Em,' he said, 'Always such preparations when I come! But I'm only a simple soldier; dal and rice from your kitchens would be a feast for me.'

'A soldier, sir,' my aunt replied, 'but simple-never! Not once!'

Long trousers qualified me to sit at table, next to cousin Zafar, surrounded by gongs-and-pips; tender years, however, placed us both under an obligation to be silent. (General Zulfikar told' me in a military hiss, 'One peep out of you and you're off to the guardhouse. If you want to stay, stay mum. Got it?' Staying mum, Zafar and I were free to look and listen. But Zafar, unlike me, was not trying to prove himself worthy of his name…)

What did eleven-year-olds hear at dinner? What did they understand by jocund military references to 'that Suhrawardy, who always opposed the Pakistan Idea'-or to Noon, 'who should have been called Sunset, what?' And through discussions of election-rigging and black-money, what undercurrent of danger permeated their skins, making the downy hairs on their arms stand on end? And when the Commander-in-Chief quoted the Quran, how much of its meaning was understood by eleven-year-old ears?

'It is written,' said the round-headed man, and the gongs-and-pips fell silent, 'Aad and Thamoud we also destroyed. Satan had made their foul deeds seem fair to them, keen-sighted though they were.'

It was as though a cue had been given; a wave of my aunt's hands dismissed the servants. She rose to go herself; my mother and Pia went with her. Zafar and I, too, rose from our seats; but he, he himself, called down the length of the sumptuous table: 'The little men should stay. It is their future, after all.' The little men, frightened but also proud, sat and stayed mum, following orders.

Just men now. A change in the roundhead's face; something darker, something mottled and desperate has occupied it… 'Twelve months ago,' he says, 'I spoke to all of you. Give the politicians one year-is that not what I said?' Heads nod; murmurs of assent. 'Gentlemen, we have given them a year; the situation has become intolerable, and I am not prepared to tolerate it any longer!' Gongs-and-pips assume stern, statesmanlike expressions. Jaws are set, eyes gaze keenly into the future. 'Tonight, therefore,'-yes! I was there! A few yards from him!-General Ayub and I, myself and old Ayub Khan!-'I am assuming control of the State.'