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

The first mutilation of Saleem Sinai, which was rapidly followed by the se
cond, took place one Wednesday early in 1958 the Wednesday of the much ant
icipated Social under the auspices of the Anglo Scottish Education Society
. That is, it happened at school.
Saleem's assailant: handsome, frenetic, with a barbarian's shaggy moustache
: I present the leaping, hair tearing figure of Mr Emil Zagallo, who taught
us geography and gymnastics, and who, that morning, unintentionally precip
itated the crisis of my life. Zagallo claimed to be Peruvian, and was fond
of calling us jungle Indians, bead lovers; he hung a print of a stern, swea
ty soldier in a pointy tin hat and metal pantaloons above his blackboard an
d had a way of stabbing a finger at it in times of stress and shouting, 'Yo
u see heem, you savages? Thees man eez civilization! You show heem respect:
he's got a sword!' And he'd swish his cane through the stonewalled air. We
called him Pagal Zagal, crazy Zagallo, because for all his talk of llamas
and conquistadores and the Pacific Ocean we knew, with the absolute certain
ty of rumour, that he'd been born in a Mazagaon tenement and his Goanese mo
ther had been abandoned by a decamped shipping agent; so he was not only an
'Anglo' but probably a bastard as well. Knowing this, we understood why Za
gallo affected his Latin accent, and also why he was always in a fury, why
he beat his fists against the stone walk of the classroom; but the knowledg
e didn't stop us being afraid. And this Wednesday morning, we knew we were
in for trouble, because Optional Cathedral had been cancelled.
The Wednesday morning double period was Zagallo's geography class; but only
idiots and boys with bigoted parents attended it, because it was also the
time when we could choose to troop off to St Thomas's Cathedral in crocodil
e formation, a long line of boys of every conceivable religious denominatio
n, escaping from school into the bosom of the Christians' considerately opt
ional God. It drove Zagallo wild, but he was helpless; today, however, ther
e was a dark glint in his eye, because the Croaker (that is to say, Mr Crus
oe the headmaster) had announced at morning Assembly that Cathedral was can
celled. In a bare, scraped voice emerging from his face of an anaesthetized
frog, he sentenced us to double geography and Pagal Zagal, taking us all b
y surprise, because we hadn't realized that God was permitted to exercise a
n option, too. Glumly we trooped into Zagallo's lair; one of the poor idiot
s whose parents never allowed them to go to Cathedral whispered viciously i
nto my ear, 'You jus' wait: hell really get you guys today.'
Padma: he really did.
Seated gloomily in class: Glandy Keith Colaco, Fat Perce Fishwala, Jimmy Ka
padia the scholarship boy whose father was a taxi driver, Hairoil Sabarmati
, Sonny Ibrahim, Cyrus the great and I. Others, too, but there's no time no
w, because with eyes narrowing in delight, crazy Zagallo is calling us to o