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

that, after three years, the landowner and his daughter had become willing
to lower certain barriers. Now, for the first time, Ghani said, 'A lump i
n the right chest. Is it worrying, Doctor? Look. Look well.' And there, fr
amed in the hole, was a perfectly formed and lyrically lovely… 'I must tou
ch it,' Aziz said, fighting with his voice. Ghani slapped him on the back.
'Touch, touch!' he cried, 'The hands of the healer! The curing touch, eh,
Doctor?' And Aziz reached out a hand… 'Forgive me for asking; but is it t
he lady's time of the month?'… Little secret smiles appearing on the faces
of the lady wrestlers. Ghani, nodding affably: 'Yes. Don't be so embarras
sed, old chap. We are family and doctor now.' And Aziz, 'Then don't worry.
The lumps will go when the time ends.'… And the next time, 'A pulled musc
le in the back of her thigh, Doctor Sahib. Such pain!' And there, in the s
heet, weakening the eyes of Aadam Aziz, hung a superbly rounded and imposs
ible buttock… And now Aziz: 'Is it permitted that…' 'Whereupon a word from
Ghani; an obedient reply from behind the sheet; a drawstring pulled; and
pajamas fall from the celestial rump, which swells wondrously through the
hole. Aadam Aziz forces himself into a medical frame of mind… reaches out…
feels. And swears to himself, in amazement, that he sees the bottom redde
ning in a shy, but compliant blush.
That evening, Aadam contemplated the blush. Did the magic of the sheet work
on both sides of the hole? Excitedly, he envisaged his headless Naseem tin
gling beneath the scrutiny of his eyes, his thermometer, his stethoscope, h
is fingers, and trying to build a picture in her mind of him. She was at a
disadvantage, of course, having seen nothing but his hands… Aadam began to
hope with an illicit desperation for Naseem Ghani to develop a migraine or
graze her unseen chin, so they could look each other in the face. He knew h
ow unprofessional his feelings were; but did nothing to stifle them. There
was not much he could do. They had acquired a life of their own. In short:
my grandfather had fallen in love, and had come to think of the perforated
sheet as something sacred and magical, because through it he had seen the t
hings which had filled up the hole inside him which had been created when h
e had been hit on the nose by a tussock and insulted by the boatman Tai.
On the day the World War ended, Naseem developed the longed for headache.
Such historical coincidences have littered, and pejrhaps befouled, my fami
ly's existence in the world.
He hardly dared to look at what was framed in the hole in the sheet. Maybe
she was hideous; perhaps that explained all this performance… he looked. An
d saw a soft face that was not at all ugly, a cushioned setting for her gli
ttering, gemstone eyes, which were brown with flecks of gold: tiger's eyes.
Doctor Aziz's fall was complete. And Naseem burst out, 'But Doctor, my God
, what a nose? Ghani, angrily, 'Daughter, mind your…' But patient and docto
r were laughing together, and Aziz was saying, 'Yes, yes, it is a remarkabl