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

f my private despondency: she had given lecture tours in the Soviet Union a
nd America. Also, her food tasted good. (Despite its hidden content.)
But the air and the food in that mosque shadowed house began to take its to
ll… Saleem, under the doubly dislocating influence of his awful love and Al
ia's food, began to blush like a beetroot whenever his sister appeared in h
is thoughts; while Jamila, unconsciously seized by a longing for fresh air
and food unseasoned by dark emotions, began to spend less and less time the
re, travelling instead up and down the country (but never to the East Wing)
to give her concerts. On those increasingly rare occasions when brother an
d sister found themselves in the same room they would jump, startled, half
an inch off the floor, and then, landing, stare furiously at the spot over
which they had leaped, as if it had suddenly become as hot as a bread oven.
At other times, too, they indulged in behaviour whose meaning would have b
een transparently obvious, were it not for the fact that each occupant of t
he house had other things on his or her mind: Jamila, for instance, took to
keeping on her gold and white travelling veil indoors until she was sure h
er brother was out, even if she was dizzy with heat; while Saleem who conti
nued, slave fashion, to fetch leavened bread from the nunnery of Santa Igna
cia avoided handing her the loaves himself; on occasion he asked his poison
ous aunt to act as intermediary. Alia looked at him with amusement and aske
d, 'What's wrong with you, boy you haven't got an infectious disease?' Sale
em blushed furiously, fearing that his aunt had guessed about his encounter
s with paid women; and maybe she had, but she was after bigger fish.
… He also developed a penchant for lapsing into long broody silences, which
he interrupted by bursting out suddenly with a meaningless word: 'No!' or,
'But!' or even more arcane exclamations, such as 'Bang!' or 'Whaam!' Nonse
nse words amidst clouded silences: as if Saleem were conducting some inner
dialogue of such intensity that fragments of it, or its pain, boiled up fro
m time to time past the surface of his lips. This inner discord was undoubt
edly worsened by the curries of disquiet which we were obliged to eat; and
at the end, when Amina was reduced to talking to invisible washing chests a
nd Ahmed, in the desolation of his stroke, was capable of little more than
dribbles and giggles, while I glowered silently in my own private withdrawa
l, my aunt must have been well pleased with the effectiveness of her reveng
e upon the Sinai clan; unless she, too, was drained by the fulfilment of he
r long nurtured ambition; in which case she, too, had run out of possibilit
ies, and there were hollow overtones in her footsteps as she stalked throug
h the insane asylum of her home with her chin covered in hair plasters, whi
le her niece jumped over suddenly hot patches of floor and her nephew yelle
d 'Yaa!' out of nowhere and her erstwhile suitor sent spittle down his chin
and Amina greeted the resurgent ghosts of her past: 'So it's you again; we
ll, why not? Nothing ever seems to go away.'