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

mountains and set upon a lake.
The valley lay hidden in an eggshell of ice; the mountains had closed in,
to snarl like angry jaws around the city on the lake… winter in Srinagar;
winter in Kashmir. On Friday, December 27th, a man answering to my grandfa
ther's description was seen, chugha coated, drooling, in the vicinity of t
he Hazratbal Mosque. At four forty five on Saturday morning, Haji Muhammad
Khalil Ghanai noticed the theft, from the Mosque's inner sanctum, of the
valley's most treasured relic: the holy hair of the Prophet Muhammad.
Did he? Didn't he? If it was him, why did he not enter the Mosque, stick in
hand, to belabour the faithful as he had become accustomed to doing? If no
t him, then why? There were rumours of a Central Government plot to 'demora
lize the Kashmir! Muslims', by stealing their sacred hair; and counter rumo
urs about Pakistani agents provocateurs, who supposedly stole the relic to
foment unrest… did they? Or not? Was this bizarre incident truly political,
or was it the penultimate attempt at revenge upon God by a father who had
lost his son? For ten days, no food was cooked in any Muslim home; there we
re riots and burnings of cars; but my grandfather was above politics now, a
nd is not known to have joined in any processions. He was a man with a sing
le mission; and what is known is that on January 1st, 1964 (a Wednesday, ju
st one week after his departure from Agra), he set his face towards the hil
l which Muslims erroneously called the Takht e Sulaiman, Solomon's seat, at
op which stood a radio mast, but also the black blister of the temple of th
e acharya Sankara. Ignoring the distress of the city, my grandfather climbe
d; while the cracking sickness within him gnawed patiently through his bone
s. He was not recognized.
Doctor Aadam Aziz (Heidelberg returned) died five days before the governmen
t announced that its massive search for the single hair of the Prophet's he
ad had been successful. When the State's holiest saints assembled to authen
ticate the hair, my grandfather was unable to tell them the truth. (If they
were wrong… but I can't answer the questions I've asked.) Arrested for the
crime and later released on grounds of ill health was one Abdul Rahim Band
e; but perhaps my grandfather, had he lived, could have shed a stranger lig
ht on the affair… at midday on January ist, Aadam Aziz arrived outside the
temple of Sankara Acharya. He was seen to raise his walking stick; inside t
he temple, women performing the rite of puja at the Shiva lingam shrank bac
k as women had once shrunk from the wrath of another, tetrapod obsessed doc
tor; and then the cracks claimed him, and his legs gave way beneath him as
the bones disintegrated, and the effect of his fall was to shatter the rest
of his skeleton beyond all hope of repair. He was identified by the papers
in the pocket of his chugha coat: a photograph of his son, and a half comp
leted (and fortunately, correctly addressed) letter to his wife. The body,
too fragile to be transported, was buried in the valley of his birth.