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

eached the walls of her self control. Dust made her sneeze; the sneeze br
ought tears to her eyes; and now the tears would not stop, and we all witnes
sed our hoped for performance after all, because once they fell they fell li
ke Flora Fountain, and she was unable to resist her own talent; she shaped t
he flood like the performer she was, introducing dominant themes and subsidi
ary motifs, beating her astonishing breasts in a manner genuinely painful to
observe, now squeezing, now pummelling… she tore her garments and her hair.
It was an exaltation of tears, and it persuaded Reverend Mother to eat. Dal
and pistachio nuts poured into my grandmother while salt water flooded from
my aunt. Now Naseem Aziz descended upon Pia, embracing her, turning the sol
o into a duet, mingling the music of reconciliation with the unbearably beau
tiful tunes of grief. Our palms itched with inexpressible applause. And the
best was still to come, because Pia, the artiste, brought her epic efforts t
o a superlative close. Laying her head in her mother in law's lap, she said
in a voice filled with submission and emptiness, 'Ma, let your unworthy daug
hter listen to you at last; tell me what to do, I will do.' And Reverend Mother, tearfully
i soon; in our old age we will live near our youngest daughter, our Emerald
. You will also come, and a petrol pump will be purchased.' And so it was t
hat Reverend Mother's dream began to come true, and Pia Aziz agreed to reli
nquish the world of films for that of fuel. My uncle Hanif, I thought, woul
d probably have approved.
The dust affected us all during those forty days; it made Ahmed Sinai churl
ish and raucous, so that he refused to sit in the company of his in laws an
d made Alice Pereira relay messages to the mourners, messages which he also
yelled out from his office: 'Keep the racket down! I am working in the mid
dle of this hullabaloo!' It made General Zulfikar and Emerald look constant
ly at calendars and airline timetables, while their son Zafar began to boas
t to the Brass Monkey that he was getting his father to arrange a marriage
between them. 'You should think you're lucky,' this cocky cousin told my si
ster, 'My father is a big man in Pakistan.' But although Zafar had inherite
d his father's looks, the dust had clogged up the Monkey's spirits, and she
didn't have the heart to fight him. Meanwhile my aunt Alia spread her anci
ent, dusty disappointment through the air and my most absurd relatives, the
family of my uncle Mustapha, sat sullenly in corners and were forgotten, a
s usual; Mustapha Aziz's moustache, proudly waxed and upturned at the tips
when he arrived, had long since sagged under the depressive influence of the dust.
And then, on the twenty second day of the mourning period, my grandfathe
r, Aadam Aziz, saw God.
He was sixty eight that year still a decade older than the century. But six
teen years without optimism had taken a heavy toll; his eyes were still blu