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

a chair drawn up to a desk topped with green leathercloth. Metallic noise
of a metal paper cutter being lifted, colliding momentarily with telephone.
The brief rasp of metal slicing envelope; and one minute later, Ahmed was
running back up the stairs, yelling for my mother, shouting:
'Amina! Come here, wife! The bastards have shoved my balls in an ice bucke
t!'
In the days after Ahmed received the formal letter informing him of the free
zing of all his assets, the whole world was talking at once… 'For pity's sak
e, janum, such language!' Amina is saying and is it my imagination, or does
a baby blush in a sky blue crib?
And Narlikar, arriving in a lather of perspiration, 'I blame myself entirely;
we made ourselves too public. These are bad times, Sinai bhai freeze a Musli
m's assets, they say, and you make him run to Pakistan, leaving all his wealt
h behind him. Catch the lizard's tail and he'll snap it off! This so called s
ecular state gets some damn clever ideas.'
'Everything,' Ahmed Sinai is saying, 'bank account; savings bonds; the rents
from the Kurla properties all blocked, frozen. By order, the letter says. B
y order they will not let me have four annas, wife not a chavanni to see the
peepshow!'
'It's those photos in the paper,' Amina decides. 'Otherwise how could tho
se jumped up clever dicks know whom to prosecute? My God, janum, it's my
fault…'
'Not ten pice for a twist of channa,' Ahmed Sinai adds, 'not one anna to give
alms to a beggar. Frozen like in the fridge!'
'It's my fault,' Ismail Ibrahim is saying, 'I should have warned you, Sinai b
hai. I have heard about these freezings only well off Muslims are selected, n
aturally. You must fight…'
'… Tooth and nail!' Homi Catrack insists, 'Like a lion! Like Aurangzeb your a
ncestor, isn't it? like the Rani of Jhansi! Then let's see what kind of count
ry we've ended up in!'
'There are law courts in this State,' Ismail Ibrahim adds; Nussie the duck
smiles a bovine smile as she suckles Sonny; her fingers move, absently stro
king Ms hollows, up and around, down and about, in a steady, unchanging rhy
thm… 'You must accept my legal services,' Ismail tells Ahmed, 'Absolutely f
ree, my good friend. No, no I won't hear of it. How can it be? We are neigh
bours.'
'Broke,' Ahmed is saying, 'Frozen, like water.'
'Come on now,' Amina interrupts him; her dedication rising to new heights,
she leads him towards her bedroom… 'Janum, you need to lie for some time.'
And Ahmed: 'What's this, wife? A time like this cleaned out; finished; crus
hed like ice and you think about…' But she has closed the door; slippers ha
ve been kicked off; arms are reaching towards him; and some moments later h