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

eap gutter newsprint, and the offices of trade unions, smashed to the grou
nd, and roadside ditches filling up with people who were not merely asleep
bare chests were seen, and the hollow pimples of bullet holes. Ayooba Sha
heed Farooq watched in silence through moving windows as our boys, our sol
diers for Allah, our worth ten babus jawans held Pakistan together by turn
ing flamethrowers machine guns hand grenades on the city slums. By the tim
e we brought Sheikh Mujib to the airport, where Ayooba stuck a pistol into
his rump and pushed him on to an aircraft which flew him into West Wing c
aptivity, the buddha had closed his eyes. ('Don't fill my head with all th
is history,' he had once told Ayooba the tank, 'I am what I am and that's
all there is.')
And Brigadier Iskandar, rallying his troops: 'Even now there are subversive
elements to be rooted out.'
When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy… dog s
oldiers strain at the leash, and then, released, leap joyously to their work
. O wolfhound chases of undesirables! O prolific seizings of professors and
poets! O unfortunate shot while resisting arrests of Awami Leaguers and fash
ion correspondents! Dogs of war cry havoc in the city; but although tracker
dogs are tireless, soldiers are weaker: Farooq Shaheed Ayooba take turns at
vomiting as their nostrils are assailed by the stench of burning slums. The
buddha, in whose nose the stench spawns images of searing vividness, continu
es merely to do his job. Nose them out: leave the rest to the soldier boys.
cutia units stalk the smouldering wreck of the city. No undesirable is safe
tonight; no hiding place impregnable. Bloodhounds track the fleeing enemies
of national unity; wolfhounds, not to be outdone, sink fierce teeth into the
ir prey.
How many arrests ten, four hundred and twenty, one thousand and one? did o
ur own Number 22 Unit make that night? How many intellectual lily livered
Daccans hid behind women's saris and had to be yanked into the streets? Ho
w often did Brigadier Iskandar 'Smell this! That's the stink of subversion
!' unleash the war hounds of unity? There are things which took place on t
he night of March 25th which must remain permanently in a state of confusi
on.
Futility of statistics: during 1971, ten million refugees fled across the bo
rders of East Pakistan Bangladesh into India but ten million (like all numbe
rs larger than one thousand and one) refuses to be understood. Comparisons d
o not help: 'the biggest migration in the history of the human race' meaning
less. Bigger than Exodus, larger than the Partition crowds, the many headed
monster poured into India. On the border, Indian soldiers trained the guerri
llas known as Mukti Bahini; in Dacca, Tiger Niazi ruled the roost.
And Ayooba Shaheed Farooq? Our boys in green? How did they take to battlin