Salman Rushdie Midnight's children Salman Rushdie Midnight's ...

and out to another sea which was not the sea in the picture; a sea on which
the sails of Koli dhows glowed scarlet in the setting sun… an accusing finge
r, then, which obliged us to look at the city's dispossessed.
Or maybe and this idea makes me feel a little shivery despite the heat it w
as a finger of warning, its purpose to draw attention to itself; yes, it co
uld have been, why not, a prophecy of another finger, a finger not dissimil
ar from itself, whose entry into my story would release the dreadful logic
of Alpha and Omega… my God, what a notion! How much of my future hung above
my crib, just waiting for me to understand it? How many warnings was I giv
en how many did I ignore?… But no. I will not be a 'madman from somewhere',
to use Padma's eloquent phrase. I will not succumb to cracked digressions;
not while I have the strength to resist the cracks.
When Amina Sinai and Baby Saleem arrived home in a borrowed Studebaker, Ahm
ed Sinai brought a manila envelope along for the ride. Inside the envelope:
a pickle jar, emptied of lime kasaundy, washed, boiled, purified and now,
refilled. A well sealed jar, with a rubber diaphragm stretched over its tin
lid and held in place by a twisted rubber band. What was sealed beneath ru
bber, preserved in glass, concealed in manila? This: travelling home with f
ather, mother and baby was a quantity of briny water in which, floating gen
tly, hung an umbilical cord. (But was it mine or the Other's? That's someth
ing I can't tell you.) While the newly hired ayah, Mary Pereira, made her w
ay to Methwold's Estate by bus, an umbilical cord travelled in state in the
glove compartment of a film magnate's Studey. While Baby Saleem grew towar
ds manhood, umbilical tissue hung unchanging in bottled brine, at the back
of a teak almirah. And when, years later, our family entered its exile in t
he Land of the Pure, when I was struggling towards purity, umbilical cords
would briefly have their day.
Nothing was thrown away; baby and afterbirth were both retained; both arriv
ed at Methwold's Estate; both awaited their time.
I was not a beautiful baby. Baby snaps reveal that my large moon face was
too large; too perfectly round. Something lacking in the region of the chi
n. Fair skin curved across my features but birthmarks disfigured it; dark
stains spread down my western hairline, a dark patch coloured my eastern e
ar. And my temples: too prominent: bulbous Byzantine domes. (Sonny Ibrahim
and I were born to be friends when we bumped our foreheads, Sonny's force
p hollows permitted my bulby temples to nestle within them, as snugly as c
arpenter's joints.) Amina Sinai, immeasurably relieved by my single head,
gazed upon it with redoubled maternal fondness, seeing it through a beauti
fying mist, ignoring the ice like eccentricity of my sky blue eyes, the te
mples like stunted horns, even the rampant cucumber of the nose.
Baby Saleem's nose: it was monstrous; and it ran.