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

nd head, round as a tin globe although unmarked by lines of longitude and
latitude; planet headed, he was not labelled like the orb which the Monkey
had once squashed; not made as england (although certainly Sandhurst trai
ned) he moved through saluting gongs and pips; arrived at my aunt Emerald;
and added his own salute to the rest.
'Mr Commander in Chief,' my aunt said, 'be welcome in our home.'
'Emerald, Emerald,' came from the mouth set in the earth shaped head the
mouth positioned immediately beneath a neat moustache, 'Why such formalit
y, such takalluf?' Whereupon she embraced him with, 'Well then, Ayub, you
're looking wonderful.'
He was a General then, though Field Marshalship was not far away… we foll
owed him into the house; we watched him drink (water) and laugh (loudly);
at dinner we watched him again?saw how he ate like a peasant, so that hi
s moustache became stained with gravy… 'Listen, Em,' he said, 'Always suc
h preparations when I come! But I'm only a simple soldier; dal and rice f
rom your kitchens would be a feast for me.'
'A soldier, sir,' my aunt replied, 'but simple never! Not once!'
Long trousers qualified me to sit at table, next to cousin Zafar, surrounded
by gongs and pips; tender years, however, placed us both under an obligatio
n to be silent. (General Zulfikar told' me in a military hiss, 'One peep out
of you and you're off to the guardhouse. If you want to stay, stay mum. Got
it?' Staying mum, Zafar and I were free to look and listen. But Zafar, unli
ke me, was not trying to prove himself worthy of his name…)
What did eleven year olds hear at dinner? What did they understand by joc
und military references to 'that Suhrawardy, who always opposed the Pakis
tan Idea' or to Noon, 'who should have been called Sunset, what?' And thr
ough discussions of election rigging and black money, what undercurrent o
f danger permeated their skins, making the downy hairs on their arms stan
d on end? And when the Commander in Chief quoted the Quran, how much of i
ts meaning was understood by eleven year old ears?
'It is written,' said the round headed man, and the gongs and pips fell sile
nt, 'Aad and Thamoud we also destroyed. Satan had made their foul deeds seem
fair to them, keen sighted though they were.'
It was as though a cue had been given; a wave of my aunt's hands dismissed th
e servants. She rose to go herself; my mother and Pia went with her. Zafar an
d I, too, rose from our seats; but he, he himself, called down the length of
the sumptuous table: 'The little men should stay. It is their future, after a
ll.' The little men, frightened but also proud, sat and stayed mum, following
orders.
Just men now. A change in the roundhead's face; something darker, something
mottled and desperate has occupied it… 'Twelve months ago,' he says, 'I sp
oke to all of you. Give the politicians one year is that not what I said?'