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

A true fact about Sonny Ibrahim: despite all his bullfighting dreams, his ge
nius lay in the realm of mechanical things. For some time now, he had taken
on the job of maintaining all the bikes on Methwold's Estate in return for g
ifts of comic books and a free supply of fizzy drinks. Even Evelyn Lilith Bu
rns gave her beloved Indiabike into his care. All machines, it seemed, were
won over by the innocent delight with which he caressed their moving parts;
no contraption could resist his ministrations. To put it another way: Sonny
Ibrahim had become (out of a spirit of pure inquiry) an expert at picking lo
cks.
Now offered a chance of demonstrating his loyalty to me, his eyes brightene
d. 'Jus' show me the lock, man! Lead me to the thing!'
When we were sure we were unobserved, we crept along the driveway between B
uckingham Villa and Sonny's Sans Souci; we stood behind my family's old Rov
er; and I pointed at the boot. 'That's the one,' I stated. 'I need to be ab
le to open it from the outside, and the inside also.'
Sonny's eyes widened. 'Hey, what're you up to, man? You running away from
home secretly and all?'
Finger to lips, I adopted a mysterious expression. 'Can't explain, Sonny,' I s
aid solemnly, 'Top drawer classified information.'
'Wow, man,' Sonny said, and showed me in thirty seconds how to open the boot
with the aid of a strip of thin pink plastic. 'Take it, man,' said Sonny Ib
rahim, 'You need it more than me.'
Once upon a time there was a mother who, in order to become a mother, had
agreed to change her name; who set herself the task of falling in love wit
h her husband bit by bit, but who could never manage to love one part, the
part, curiously enough, which made possible her motherhood; whose feet we
re hobbled by verrucas and whose shoulders were stooped beneath the accumu
lating guilts of the world; whose husband's unlovable organ failed to reco
ver from the effects of a freeze; and who, like her husband, finally succu
mbed to the mysteries of telephones, spending long minutes listening to th
e words of wrong number callers… shortly after my tenth birthday (when I h
ad recovered from the fever which has recently returned to plague me after
an interval of nearly twenty one years), Amina Sinai resumed her recent p
ractice of leaving suddenly, and always immediately after a wrong number,
on urgent shopping trips. But now, hidden in the boot of the Rover, there
travelled with her a stowaway, who lay hidden and protected by stolen cush
ions, clutching a thin strip of pink plastic in his hand.
O, the suffering one undergoes in the name of righteousness! The bruising
and the bumps! The breathing in of rubbery boot air through jolted teeth!
And constantly, the fear of discovery… 'Suppose she really does go shoppin
g? Will the boot suddenly fly open? Will live chickens be flung in, feet t