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

ping from a thick black cloud. And now more sound, more motion: his mothe
r's voice has begun to speak, two syllables, over and over again; and her
hands have begun to move. Ears muffled by underwear strain to catch the
sounds that one: dir? Bir? Dil? and the other: Ha? Ra? No Na. Ha and Ra a
re banished; Dil and Bir vanish forever; and the boy hears, in his ears,
a name which has not been spoken since Mumtaz Aziz became Amina Sinai: Na
dir. Nadir. Na. Dir. Na.
And her hands are moving. Lost in their memory of other days, of what happ
ened after games of hit the spittoon in an Agra cellar, they flutter gladl
y at her cheeks; they hold her bosom tighter than any brassieres; and now
they caress her bare midriff, they stray below decks… yes, this is what we
used to do, my love, it was enough, enough for me, even though my father
made us, and you ran, and now the telephone, Nadirnadirnadirnadirnadirnadi
r… hands which held telephone now hold flesh, while in another place what
does another hand do? To what, after replacing receiver, is another hand g
etting up?… No matter; because here, in her spied out privacy, Amina Sinai
repeats an ancient name, again and again, until finally she bursts out wi
th, 'Arre Nadir Khan, where have you come from now?'
Secrets. A man's name. Never before glimpsed motions of the hands. A boy's
mind filled with thoughts which have no shape, tormented by ideas which ref
use to settle into words; and in a left nostril, a pajama cord is snaking u
p up up, refusing to be ignored… And now ? shameless mother! Revealer of du
plicity, of emotions which have no place in family life; and more: ? brazen
unveiler of Black Mango! Amina Sinai, drying her eyes, is summoned by a mo
re trivial necessity; and as her son's right eye peers out through the wood
en slats at the top of the washing chest, my mother unwinds her sari! While
I, silently in the washing chest: 'Don't do it don't do it don't do!'… but
I cannot close my eye. Unblinking pupil takes in upside down image of sari
falling to the floor, an image which is, as usual, inverted by the mind; t
hrough ice blue eyes I see a slip follow the sari; and then ? horrible! my
mother, framed in laundry and slatted wood, bends over to pick up her cloth
es! And there it is, searing my retina the vision of my mother's rump, blac
k as night, rounded and curved, resembling nothing on earth so much as a gi
gantic, black Alfonso mango! In the washing chest, unnerved by the vision,
I wrestle with myself… self control becomes simultaneously imperative and i
mpossible… under the thunderclap influence of the Black Mango, my nerve cra
cks; pajama cord wins its victory; and while Amina Sinai seats herself on a
commode, I… what? Not sneeze; it was less than a sneeze. Not a twitch, eit
her; it was more than that. It's time to talk plainly: shattered by two syl
labic voice and fluttering hands, devastated by Black Mango, the nose of Sa
leem Sinai, responding to the evidence of maternal duplicity, quivering at
the presence of maternal rump, gave way to a pajama cord, and was possessed