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

e day during my stay my aunt Sonia heard about a rishi from Hardwar who was
reputedly three hundred and ninety five years old and had memorized the ge
nealogies of every single Brahmin clan in the country. 'Even in that,' she
screeched at my uncle, 'you end up being number two!' The existence of the
Hardwar rishi completed her descent into insanity, so that her violence tow
ards her children increased to the point at which we lived in daily expecta
tion of murder, and in the end my uncle Mustapha was forced to have her loc
ked away, because her excesses were embarrassing him in his work.
This, then, was the family to which I had come. Their presence in Delhi cam
e to seem, in my eyes, like a desecration of my own past; in a city which,
for me, was forever possessed by the ghosts of the young Ahmed and Amina, t
his terrible Fly was crawling upon sacred soil.
But what can never be proved for certain is that, in the years ahead, my unc
le's genealogical obsession would be placed at the service of a government w
hich was falling increasingly beneath the twin spells of power and astrology
; so that what happened at the Widows' Hostel might never have happened with
out his help… but no, I have been a traitor, too; I do not condemn; all I am
saying is that I once saw, amongst his genealogical log books, a black leat
her folder labelled top secret, and titled project m.c.c.
The end is near, and cannot be escaped much longer; but while the Indira sark
ar, like her father's administration, consults daily with purveyors of occult
lore; while Benarsi seers help to shape the history of India, I must digress
into painful, personal recollections; because it was at Uncle Mustapha's tha
t I learned, for certain, about the deaths of my family in the war of '65; an
d also about the disappearance, just a few days before my arrival, of the fam
ous Pakistani singer Jamila Singer.
… When mad aunt Sonia heard that I had fought on the wrong side in the war,
she refused to feed me (we were at dinner), and screeched, 'God, you have
a cheek, you know that? Don't you have a brain to think with? You come to a
Senior Civil Servant's house an escaped war criminal, Allah! You want to l
ose your uncle his job? You want to put us all out on the street? Catch you
r ears for shame, boy! Go go, get out, or better, we should call the police
and hand you over just now! Go, be a prisoner of war, why should we care,
you are not even our departed sister's true born son…'
Thunderbolts, one after the other: Saleem fears for his safety, and simultan
eously learns the inescapable truth about his mother's death, and also that
his position is weaker than he thought, because in this part of his family t
he act of acceptance has not been made; Sonia, knowing what Mary Pereira con
fessed, is capable of anything!…
And I, feebly, 'My mother? Departed?' And now Uncle Mustapha, perhaps feel
ing that his wife has gone too far, says reluctantly, 'Never mind, Saleem,
of course you must stay he must, wife, what else to do? and poor fellow d