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

ubjected to such interrogations, either; but in their case this was because
they failed to stay alive long enough for any questions to be asked.
… In an entirely deserted village of thatched huts with dung plastered mud
walls in an abandoned community from which even the chickens had fled Ayo
oba Shaheed Farooq bemoaned their fate. Rendered deaf by the poisonous mud
of the rain forest, a disability which had begun to upset them a good dea
l now that the taunting voices of the jungle were no longer hanging in the
air, they wailed their several wails, all talking at once, none hearing t
he other; the buddha, however, was obliged to listen to them all: to Ayoob
a, who stood facing a corner inside a naked room, his hair enmeshed in a s
pider's web, crying 'My ears my ears, like bees buzzing inside,' to Farooq
who, petulantly, shouted, 'Whose fault, anyway? Who, with his nose that c
ould sniff out any bloody thing? Who said That way, and that way? And who,
who will believe? About jungles and temples and transparent serpents? Wha
t a story, Allah, buddha, we should shoot you here and now!' While Shaheed
, softly, 'I'm hungry.' Out once more in the real world, they were forgett
ing the lessons of the jungle, and Ayooba, 'My arm! Allah, man, my withere
d arm! The ghost, leaking fluid…!' And Shaheed, 'Deserters, they'll say em
pty handed, no prisoner, after so many months! Allah, a court martial, may
be, what do you think, buddha?' And Farooq, 'You bastard, see what you mad
e us do! O God, too much, our uniforms! See, our uniforms, buddha rags and
tatters like a beggar boy's! Think of what the Brigadier and that Najmudd
in on my mother's head I swear I didn't I'm not a coward! Not!' And Shahee
d, who is killing ants and licking them off his palm, 'How to rejoin, anyw
ay? Who knows where they are or if? And haven't we seen and heard how Mukt
i Bahini thai! thai! they shoot from their hiding holes, and you're dead!
Dead, like an ant!' But Farooq is also talking, 'And not just the uniforms
, man, the hair! Is this military hair cut? This, so long, falling over ea
rs like worms? This woman's hair? Allah, they'll kill us dead up against t
he wall and thai! thai! you see if they don't!' But now Ayooba the tank is calming dow
nd; Ayooba saying softly to himself, 'O man, O man. I came to fight those
damn vegetarian Hindus, man. And here is something too different, man. S
omething too bad.'
It is somewhere in November; they have been making their way slowly, north
north north, past fluttering newspapers in curious curlicued script, throug
h empty fields and abandoned settlements, occasionally passing a crone with
a bundle on a stick over her shoulder, or a group of eight year olds with
shifty starvation in their eyes and the threat of knives in their pockets,
hearing how the Mukti Bahini are moving invisibly through the smoking land,
how bullets come buzzing like bees from nowhere… and now a breaking point
has been reached, and Farooq, 'If it wasn't for you, buddha Allah, you frea