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

oesn't even know…'
Then they told me.
It occurred to me, in the heart of that crazy Fly, that I owed the dead a n
umber of mourning periods; after I learned of the demise of my mother and f
ather and aunts Alia and Pia and Emerald, of cousin Zafar and his Kifi prin
cess, of Reverend Mother and my distant relative Zohra and her husband, I r
esolved to spend the next four hundred days in mourning, as was right and p
roper: ten mourning periods, of forty days each. And then, and then, there
was the matter of Jamila Singer…
She had heard about my disappearance in the turmoil of the war in Bangladesh
; she, who always showed her love when it was too late, had perhaps been dri
ven a little crazy by the news. Jamila, the Voice of Pakistan, Bulbul of the
Faith, had spoken out against the new rulers of truncated, moth eaten, war
divided Pakistan; while Mr Bhutto was telling the U.N. Security Council, 'We
will build a new Pakistan! A better Pakistan! My country hearkens for me!',
my sister was reviling him in public; she, purest of the pure, most patriot
ic of patriots, turned rebel when she heard about my death. (That, at least,
is how I see it; all I heard from my uncle were the bald facts; he had hear
d them through diplomatic channels, which do not go in for psychological the
orizing.) Two days after her tirade against the perpetrators of the war, my
sister had vanished off the face of the earth. Uncle Mustapha tried to speak
gently: 'Very bad things are happening over there, Saleem; people disappear
ing all the time; we must fear the worst.'
No! No no no! Padma: he was wrong! Jamila did not disappear into the clutche
s of the State; because that same night, I dreamed that she, in the shadows
of darkness and the secrecy of a simple veil, not the instantly recognizable
gold brocade tent of Uncle Puffs but a common black burqa, fled by air from
the capital city; and here she is, arriving in Karachi, unquestioned unarre
sted free, she is taking a taxi into the depths of the city, and now there i
s a high wall with bolted doors and a hatch through which, once, long ago, I
received bread, the leavened bread of my sister's weakness, she is asking t
o be let in, nuns are opening doors as she cries sanctuary, yes, there she i
s, safely inside, doors being bolted behind her, exchanging one kind of invi
sibility for another, there is another Reverend Mother now, as Jamila Singer
who once, as the Brass Monkey, flirted with Christianity, finds safety shel
ter peace in the midst of the hidden order of Santa Ignacia… yes, she is the
re, safe, not vanished, not in the grip of police who kick beat starve, but
at rest, not in an unmarked grave by the side of the Indus, but alive, bakin
g bread, singing sweetly to the secret nuns; I know, I know, I know. How do
I know? A brother knows; that's all.
Responsibility, assaulting me yet again: because there is no way out of it Jami
la's fall was, as usual, all my fault.