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

e, and I miss her. Yes, that's it.
But there is still work to be done: for instance:
In the summer of 1956, when most things in the world were still larger than
myself, my sister the Brass Monkey developed the curious habit of setting
fire to shoes. While Nasser sank ships at Suez, thus slowing down the movem
ents of the world by obliging it to travel around the Cape of Good Hope, my
sister was also trying to impede our progress. Obliged to fight for attent
ion, possessed by her need to place herself at the centre of events, even o
f unpleasant ones (she was my sister, after all; but no prime minister wrot
e letters to her, no sadhus watched her from their places under garden taps
; unprophesied, un photographed, her life was a struggle from the start), s
he carried her war into the world of footwear, hoping, perhaps, that by bur
ning our shoes she would make us stand still long enough to notice that she
was there… she made no attempt at concealing her crimes. When my father en
tered his room to find a pair of black Oxfords on fire, the Brass Monkey wa
s standing over them, match in hand. His nostrils were assailed by the unpr
ecedented odour of ignited boot leather, mingled with Cherry Blossom boot p
olish and a little Three In One oil… 'Look, Abba!' the Monkey said charming
ly, 'Look how pretty just the exact colour of my hair!'
Despite all precautions, the merry red flowers of my sister's obsession bl
ossomed all over the Estate that summer, blooming in the sandals of Nussie
the duck and the film magnate footwear of Homi Catrack; hair coloured fla
mes licked at Mr Dubash's down at heel suedes and at Lila Sabarmati's stil
etto heels. Despite the concealment of matches and the vigilance of servan
ts, the Brass Monkey found her ways, undeterred by punishment and threats.
For one year, on and off, Methwold's Estate was assailed by the fumes of
incendiarized shoes; until her hair darkened into anonymous brown, and she
seemed to lose interest in matches.
Amina Sinai, abhorring the idea of beating her children, temperamentally in
capable of raising her voice, came close to her wits'end; and the Monkey wa
s sentenced, for day after day, to silence. This was my mother's chosen dis
ciplinary method: unable to strike us, she ordered us to seal our lips. Som
e echo, no doubt, of the great silence with which her own mother had tormen
ted Aadam Aziz lingered in her ears because silence, too, has an echo, holl
ower and longer lasting than the reverberations of any sound and with an em
phatic 'Chup!' she would place a finger across her lips and command our ton
gues to be still. It was a punishment which never failed to cow me into sub
mission; the Brass Monkey, however, was made of less pliant stuff. Soundles
sly, behind lips clamped tight as her grandmother's, she plotted the incine
ration of leather just as once, long ago, another monkey in another city ha
d performed the act which made inevitable the burning of a leathercloth god
own…