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

lems with reality, ever since a spittoon fell like a piece of the … pity me:
I've even lost my spittoon. But I'mgoing wrong again, I wasn't intending to
ask for pity, I was going to say that perhaps I see it was I, not you, who
failed to understand what is happening. Incredible, children: we, who could
not talk for five minutes without disagreeing: we, who as children quarrelle
d fought divided distrusted broke apart, are suddenly together, united, as o
ne! O wondrous irony: the Widow, by bringing us here, to break us, has in fa
ct brought us together! O self fulfilling paranoia of tyrants… because what
can they do to us, now that we're all on the same side, no language rivalrie
s, no religious prejudices: after all, we are twenty nine now, I should not
be calling you children… ! Yes, here is optimism, like a disease: one day sh
e'll have to let us out and then, and then, wait and see, maybe we should fo
rm, I don't know, a new political party, yes, the Midnight Party, what chanc
e do politics have against people who can multiply fishes and turn base meta
ls into gold? Children, something is being born here, in this dark time of o
ur captivity; let Widows do their worst; unity is invincibility! Children: w
e've won!
Too painful. Optimism, growing like a rose in a dung heap: it hurts me to re
call it. Enough: I forget the rest. No! No, very well, I remember… What is w
orse than rods bar fetters candles against the skin? What beats nail tearing
and starvation? I reveal the Widow's finest, most delicate joke: instead of
torturing us, she gave us hope. Which meant she had something no, more than
something: the finest thing of all! to take away. And now, very soon now, I
shall have to describe how she cut it off.
Ectomy (from, I suppose, the Greek): a cutting out. To which medical scien
ce adds a number of prefixes: appendectomy tonsillectomy mastectomy tubect
omy vasectomy testectomy hysterectomy. Saieem would like to donate one fur
ther item, free gratis and for nothing, to this catalogue of excisions; it
is, however, a term which properly belongs to history, although medical s
cience is, was involved:
Sperectomy: the draining out of hope.
On New Year's Day, I had a visitor. Creak of door, rustle of expensive chif
fon. The pattern: green and black. Her glasses, green, her shoes were black
as black… In newspaper articles this woman has been called 'a gorgeous gir
l with big, rolling hips… she had run a jewellery boutique before she took
up social work… during the Emergency she was, semi ofncially, in charge of
sterilization'. But I have my own name for her: she was the Widow's Hand. W
hich one by one and children mmff and tearing tearing little balls go… gree
nly blackly, she sailed into my cell. Children: it begins. Prepare, childre
n. United we stand. Let Widow's Hand do Widow's work but after, after… thin