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

old lady can smell the mines!' Bonzo was drafted forthwith into the armed
forces as a four legged mine detector with the courtesy rank of sergeant ma
jor.
I mention Bonzo's achievement because it gave the General a stick with whi
ch to beat us. We Sinais and Pia Aziz were helpless, non productive member
s of the Zulfikar household, and the General did not wish us to forget it:
'Even a damn hundred year old beagle bitch can earn her damn living,' he
was heard to mutter, 'but my house is full of people who can't get organiz
ed into one damn thing.' But before the end of October he would be gratefu
l for (at least) my presence… and the transformation of the Monkey was not
far away.
We went to school with cousin Zafar, who seemed less anxious to marry my s
ister now that we were children of a broken home; but his worst deed came
one weekend when we were taken to the General's mountain cottage in Nathia
Gali, beyond Murree. I was in a state of high excitement (my illness had
just been declared cured): mountains! The possibility of panthers! Cold, b
iting air! so that I thought nothing of it when the General asked me if I'
d mind sharing a bed with Zafar, and didn't even guess when they spread th
e rubber sheet over the mattress… I awoke in the small hours in a large ra
ncid pool of lukewarm liquid and began to yell blue murder. The General ap
peared at our bedside and began to thrash the living daylights out of his
son. 'You're a big man now! Damn it to hell! Still, and still you do it! G
et yourself organized! Good for nothing! Who behaves in this damn way? Cow
ards, that's who! Damn me if I'll have a coward for a son…' The enuresis o
f my cousin Zafar continued, however, to be the shame of his family; despi
te thrashings, the liquid ran down his leg; and one day it happened when h
e was awake. But that was after certain movements had, with my assistance,
been performed by pepperpots, proving to me that although the telepathic
air waves were jammed in this country, the modes of connection still seeme
d to function; active literally as well as metaphorically, I helped change
the fate of the Land of the Pure.
The Brass Monkey and I were helpless observers, in those days, of my wiltin
g mother. She, who had always been assiduous in the heat, had begun to with
er in the northern cold. Deprived of two husbands, she was also deprived (i
n her own eyes) of meaning; and there was also a relationship to rebuild, b
etween mother and son. She held me tightly one night and said, 'Love, my ch
ild, is a thing that every mother learns; it is not born with a baby, but m
ade; and for eleven years, I have learned to love you as my son.' But there
was a distance behind her gentleness, as though she were trying to persuad
e herself… a distance, too, in the Monkey's midnight whispers of, 'Hey, bro
ther, why don't we go and pour water over Zafar they'll only think he's wet