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

lled, briefly, with the illusory optimism of freshly soaped cleanliness; t
o discover a dusty, unwashed Ahmed Sinai, whisky bottle in his hand, his e
yes rimmed with blood, swaying upstairs from his office in the manic grip
of djinns. He had been wrestling, in his private world of abstraction, wit
h the unthinkable realities which Mary's revelations had unleashed; and ow
ing to some cockeyed functioning of the alcohol, had been seized by an ind
escribable rage which he directed, neither at Mary's departed back, not at
the changeling in his midst, but at my mother at, I should say, Amina Sin
ai. Perhaps because he knew he should beg her forgiveness, and would not,
Ahmed ranted at her for hours within the shocked hearing of her family; I
will not repeat the names he called her, nor the vile courses of action he
recommended she should take with her life. But in the end it was Reverend
Mother who intervened.
'Once before, my daughter,' she said, ignoring Ahmed's continuing ravings,
'your father and I, whatsitsname, said there was no shame in leaving an i
nadequate husband. Now I say again: you have, whatsitsname, a man of unspe
akable vileness. Go from him; go today, and take your children, whatsitsna
me, away from these oaths which he spews from his lips like an animal, wha
tsitsname, of the gutter. Take your children, I say, whatsitsname both you
r children,' she said, clutching me to her bosom. Once Reverend Mother had
legitimized me, there was no one to oppose her; it seems to me now, acros
s the years, that even my cursing father was affected by her support of th
e eleven year old snotnosed child.
Reverend Mother fixed everything; my mother was like putty like potter's cl
ay! in her omnipotent hands. At that time, my grandmother (I must continue
to call her that) still believed that she and Aadam Aziz would shortly be e
migrating to Pakistan; so she instructed my aunt Emerald to take us all wit
h her Amina, the Monkey, myself, even my aunty Pia and await her coming. 'S
isters must care for sisters, whatsitsname,' Reverend Mother said, 'in time
s of trouble.' My aunt Emerald looked highly displeased; but both she and G
eneral Zulfikar acquiesced. And, since my father was in a lunatic temper wh
ich made us fear for our safety, and the Zulfikars had already booked thems
elves on a ship which was to sail that night, I left my lifelong home that
very day, leaving Ahmed Sinai alone with Alice Pereira; because when my mot
her left her second husband, all the other servants walked out, too.
In Pakistan, my second period of hurtling growth came to an end. And, in Pa
kistan, I discovered that somehow the existence of a frontier 'jammed' my t
hought transmissions to the more than five hundred; so that, exiled once mo
re from my home, I was also exiled from the gift which was my truest birthr
ight: the gift of the midnight children.
We lay anchored off the Rann of Kutch on a heat soaked afternoon. Heat buzz