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

s were also enough. The Indian planes, reluctant to come down low, bombed f
rom a great height; the vast majority of their missiles fell harmlessly int
o the sea. One bomb, however, annihilated Major (Retired) Alauddin Latif an
d all his seven Puffias, thus releasing me from my promise for ever; and th
ere were two last bombs. Meanwhile, at the front, Mutasim the Handsome emer
ged from his tent to go to the toilet; a noise like a mosquito whizzed (or
did not whiz) towards him, and he died with a full bladder under the impact
of a sniper's bullet.
And still I must tell you about two last bombs.
Who survived? Jamila Singer, whom bombs were unable to find; in India, t
he family of my uncle Mustapha, with whom bombs could not be bothered; b
ut my father's forgotten distant relative Zohra and her husband had move
d to Amritsar, and a bomb sought them out as well.
And two more bombs demand to be told.
… While I, unaware of the intimate connection between the war and myself,
went foolishly in search of bombs; after the curfew hour I rode, but vigil
ante bullets failed to find their target… and sheets of flame rose from a
Rawalpindi bungalow, perforated sheets at whose centre hung a mysterious d
ark hole, which grew into the smoke image of an old wide woman with moles
on her cheeks… and one by one the war eliminated my drained, hopeless fami
ly from the earth.
But now the countdown was at an end.
And at last I turned my Lambretta homewards, so that I was at the Guru Mand
ir roundabout with the roar of aircraft overhead, mirages and mysteries, wh
ile my father in the idiocy of his stroke was switching on lights and openi
ng windows even though a Civil Defence official had just visited them to ma
ke sure the blackout was complete; and when Amina Sinai was saying to the w
raith of an old white washing chest, 'Go away now I've seen enough of you,'
I was scooting past Civil Defence jeeps from which angry fists saluted me;
and before bricks and stones could extinguish the lights in my aunt Alia's
house, the whining came, and I should have known there was no need to go l
ooking elsewhere for death, but I was still in the street in the midnight s
hadow of the mosque when it came, plummeting towards the illuminated window
s of my father's idiocy, death whining like pie dogs, transforming itself i
nto falling masonry and sheets of flame and a wave of force so great that i
t sent me spinning off my Lambretta, while within the house of my aunt's gr
eat bitterness my father mother aunt and unborn brother or sister who was o
nly a week away from starting life, all of them all of them all squashed fl
atter than rice pancakes, the house crashing in on their heads like a waffl
e iron, while over on Korangi Road a last bomb, meant for the oil refinery,
landed instead on a split level American style residence which an umbilica
l cord had not quite managed to complete; but at Guru Mandir many stories w