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

A nameless morning. Ayooba Shaheed Farooq awaking in the boat of their absu
rd pursuit, moored by the bank of Padma Ganga to find him gone. 'Allah Alla
h,' Farooq yelps, 'Grab your ears and pray for pity, he's brought us to thi
s drowned place and run off, it's all your fault, you Ayooba, that trick wi
th the jump leads and this is his revenge!'… The sun, climbing. Strange ali
en birds in the sky. Hunger and fear like mice in their bellies: and whatif
, whatif the Mukti Bahini… parents are invoked. Shaheed has dreamed his pom
egranate dream. Despair, lapping at the edges of the boat. And in the dista
nce, near the horizon, an impossible endless huge green wall, stretching ri
ght and left to the ends of the earth! Unspoken fear: how can it be, how ca
n what we are seeing be true, who builds walls across the world?… And then
Ayooba, 'Look look, Allah!' Because coming towards them across the rice pad
dies is a bizarre slow motion chase: first the buddha with that cucumber no
se, you could spot it a mile off, and following him, splashing through padd
ies, a gesticulating peasant with a scythe, Father Time enraged, while runn
ing along a dyke a woman with her sari caught up between her legs, hair loo
se, voice pleading screaming, while the scythed avenger stumbles through dr
owned rice, covered from head to foot in water and mud. Ayooba roars with n
ervous relief: 'The old billy goat! Couldn't keep his hands off the local w
omen! Come on, buddha, don't let him catch you, he'll slice off both your c
ucumbers!' And Farooq, 'But then what? If the buddha is sliced, what then?'
And now Ayooba the tank is pulling a pistol out of its holster. Ayooba aim
ing: both hands held out in front, trying not to shake, Ayooba squeezing: a
scythe curves up into the air. And slowly slowly the arms of a peasant ris
e up as though in prayer; knees kneel in paddy water; a face plunges below
the water level to touch its forehead to the earth. On the dyke a woman wai
ling. And Ayooba tells the buddha: 'Next time I'll shoot you instead.' Ayoo
ba the tank shaking like a leaf. And Time lies dead in a rice paddy.
But there is still the meaningless chase, the enemy who will never be seen,
and the buddha, 'Go that way,' and the four of them row on, south south sout
h, they have murdered the hours and forgotten the date, they no longer know
if they are chasing after or running from, but whichever it is that pushes t
hem is bringing them closer closer to the impossible green wall, 'That way,'
the buddha insists, and then they are inside it, the jungle which is so thi
ck that history has hardly ever found the way in. The Sundarbans: it swallow
s them up.
In the Sundarbans
I'll own up: there was no last, elusive quarry, driving us south south sout
h. To all my readers, I should like to make this naked breasted admission: