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

akistan, however, the clocks ticked and locked.
Reverend Mother did not overtly approve of my sister's career; it smacked
too much of film stardom. 'My family, whatsitsname,' she sighed to Pia mum
ani, 'is even less controllable than the price of gas.' Secretly, however,
she may have been impressed, because she respected power and position and
Jamila was now so exalted as to be welcome in the most powerful and best
placed houses in the land… my grandmother settled in Rawalpindi; however,
with a strange show of independence, she chose not to live in the house of
General Zulfikar. She and my aunt Pia moved into a modest bungalow in the
old part of town; and by pooling their savings, purchased a concession on
the long dreamed of petrol pump.
Naseem never mentioned Aadam Aziz, nor would she grieve over him; it was a
lmost as though she were relieved that my querulous grandfather, who had i
n his youth despised the Pakistan movement, and who in all probability bla
med the Muslim League for the death of his friend Mian Abdullah, had by dy
ing permitted her to go alone into the Land of the Pure. Setting her face
against the past, Reverend Mother concentrated on gasoline and oil. The pu
mp was on a prime site, near the Rawalpindi Lahore grand trunk road it did
very well. Pia and Naseem took it in turns to spend the day in the manage
r's glass booth while attendants filled up cars and Army trucks. They prov
ed a magical combination. Pia attracted customers with the beacon of a bea
uty which obstinately refused to fade; while Reverend Mother, who had been
transformed by bereave, ment into a woman who was more interested in othe
r people's lives than her own, took to inviting the pump's customers into
her glass booth for cups of pink Kashmiri tea; they would accept with some
trepidation, but when they realized that the old lady did not propose to
bore them with endless reminiscences, they relaxed, loosened collars and t
ongues, and Reverend Mother was able to bathe in the blessed oblivion of o
ther people's lives. The pump rapidly became famous in those parts, driver
s began to go out of their way to use it often on two consecutive days, so
that they could both feast their eyes on my divine aunt and tell their wo
es to my eternally patient grandmother, who had developed the absorbent pr
operties of a sponge, and always waited until her guests had completely fi
nished before squeezing out of her own lips a few drops of simple, firm ad
vice while their cars were filled up with petrol and polished by pump atte
ndants, my grandmother would re charge and polish their lives. She sat in
her glass confessional and solved the problems of the world; her own famil
y, however, seemed to have lost importance in her eyes.
Moustachioed, matriarchal, proud: Naseem Aziz had found her own way of copi
ng with tragedy; but in finding it had become the first victim of that spir
it of detached fatigue which made the end the only possible solution. (Tick
, tock.)… However, on the face of it, she appeared to have not the slightes