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

… We halted in front of an unfamiliar building in Carnac Road. Exterior: c
rumbling. All its windows: blind. 'You coming with me, son?' Ahmed Sinai g
ot out of the car; I, happy to be accompanying my father on his business,
walked jauntily beside him. A brass plate on the doorway: Ear Nose Throat
Clinic. And I, suddenly alarmed: 'What's this, Abba? Why have we come…' An
d my father's hand, tightening on my shoulder and then a man in a white co
at and nurses and 'Ah yes Mr. Sinai so this is young Saleem right on time
fine, fine'; while I, 'Abba, no what about the picnic '; but doctors are s
teering me along now, my father is dropping back, the man in the coat call
s to him, 'Shan't be long damn good news about the war, no?' And the nurse
, 'Please accompany me for dressing and anaesthesia.'
Tricked! Tricked, Padma! I told you: once, picnics tricked me; and then th
ere was a hospital and a room with a hard bed and bright hanging lamps and
me crying, 'No no no,' and the nurse, 'Don't be stupid now, you're almost
a grown man, lie down,' and I, remembering how nasal passages had started
everything in my head, how nasal fluid had been sniffed upupup into somew
here that nosefluid shouldn't go, how .the connection had been made which
released my voices, was kicking yelling so that they had to hold me down,
'Honestly,' the nurse said, 'such a baby, I never saw.'
And so what began in a washing chest ended on an operating table, because I
was held down hand and foot and a man saying 'You won't feel a thing, easier
than having your tonsils out, get those sinuses fixed in no time, complete
clear out,' and me 'No please no,' but the voice continued, 'I'll put this m
ask on you now, just count to ten.'
Count. The numbers marching one two three.
Hiss of released gas. The numbers crushing me four five six.
Faces swimming in fog. And still the tumultuous numbers, I was crying, I t
hink, the numbers pounding seven eight nine.
Ten.
'Good God, the boy's still conscious. Extraordinary. We'd better try anothe
r can you hear me? Saleem, isn't it? Good chap, just give me another ten!'
Can't catch me. Multitudes have teemed inside my head. The master of the nu
mbers, me. Here they go again 'leven twelve.
But they'll never let up until… thirteen fourteen fifteen… O God O God the
fog dizzy and falling back back back, sixteen, beyond war and pepperpots,
back back, seventeen eighteen nineteen.
Twen
There was a washing chest and a boy who sniffed too hard. His mother undre
ssed and revealed a Black Mango. Voices came, which were not the voices of
Archangels. A hand, deafening the left ear. And what grew best in the hea