Midnight's Children (54 page)

Ahmed and Amina Sinai were amongst the worst victims of the renewed disease of optimism; having already contracted it through the medium of their new-born love, they entered into the public enthusiasm with a will. When Morarji Desai, the urine-drinking Finance Minister, launched his “Ornaments for Armaments” appeal, my mother handed over gold bangles and emerald ear-rings; when Morarji floated an issue of defense bonds, Ahmed Sinai bought them in bushels. War, it seemed, had brought a new dawn to India; in the
Times of India
, a cartoon captioned “War with China” showed Nehru looking at graphs labelled “Emotional Integration,” “Industrial Peace” and “People’s Faith in Government” and crying, “We never had it so good!” Adrift in the sea of optimism, we—the nation, my parents, I—floated blindly towards the reefs.

As a people, we are obsessed with correspondences. Similarities between this and that, between apparently unconnected things, make us clap our hands delightedly when we find them out. It is a sort of national longing for form—or perhaps simply an expression of our deep belief that forms lie hidden within reality; that meaning reveals itself only in flashes. Hence our vulnerability to omens … when the Indian flag was first raised, for instance, a rainbow appeared above that Delhi field, a rainbow of saffron and green; and we felt blessed. Born amidst correspondence, I have found it continuing to hound me … while Indians headed blindly towards a military débâcle, I, too, was nearing (and entirely without knowing it) a catastrophe of my own.

Times of India
cartoons spoke of “Emotional Integration”; in Buckingham Villa, last remnant of Methwold’s Estate, emotions had never been so integrated. Ahmed and Amina spent their days like just-courting youngsters; and while the Peking
People’s Daily
complained, “The Nehru Government has finally shed its cloak of non-alignment,” neither my sister nor I were complaining, because for the first time in years we did not have to pretend we were non-aligned in the war between our parents; what war had done for India, the cessation of hostilities had achieved on our two-storey hillock. Ahmed Sinai had even given up his nightly battle with the djinns.

By November 1st
—INDIANS ATTACK UNDER COVER OF ARTILLERY
—my nasal passages were in a state of acute crisis. Although my mother subjected me to daily torture by Vick’s Inhaler and steaming bowls of Vick’s ointment dissolved in water, which, blanket over head, I was obliged to try and inhale, my sinuses refused to respond to treatment. This was the day on which my father held out his arms to me and said, “Come, son—come here and let me love you.” In a frenzy of happiness (maybe the optimism disease had got to me, after all) I allowed myself to be smothered in his squashy belly; but when he let me go, nose-goo had stained his bush-shirt. I think that’s what finally doomed me; because that afternoon, my mother went on to the attack. Pretending to me that she was telephoning a friend, she made a certain telephone call. While Indians attacked under cover of artillery, Amina Sinai planned my downfall, protected by a lie.

Before I describe my entry into the desert of my later years, however, I must admit the possibility that I have grievously wronged my parents. Never once, to my knowledge, never once in all the time since Mary Pereira’s revelations, did they set out to look for the true son of their blood; and I have, at several points in this narrative, ascribed this failure to a certain lack of imagination—I have said, more or less, that I remained their son because they could not imagine me out of the role. And there are worse interpretations possible, too—such as their reluctance to accept into their bosom an urchin who had spent eleven years in the gutter; but I wish to suggest a nobler motive: maybe, despite everything, despite cucumber-nose stainface chinlessness horn-temples bandy-legs finger-loss monk’s-tonsure and my (admittedly unknown to them) bad left ear, despite even the midnight baby-swap of Mary Pereira … maybe, I say, in spite of all these provocations, my parents loved me. I withdrew from them into my secret world; fearing their hatred, I did not admit the possibility that their love was stronger than ugliness, stronger even than blood. It is certainly likely that what a telephone call arranged, what finally took place on November 21st, 1962, was done for the highest of reasons; that my parents ruined me for love.

The day of November 20th was a terrible day; the night was a terrible night … six days earlier, on Nehru’s seventy-third birthday, the great confrontation with the Chinese forces had begun; the Indian army—
JAWANS SWING INTO ACTION!
—had attacked the Chinese at Walong. News of the disaster of Walong, and the rout of General Kaul and four battalions, reached Nehru on Saturday 18th; on Monday 20th, it flooded through radio and press and arrived at Methwold’s Estate.
ULTIMATE PANIC IN NEW DELHI! INDIAN FORCES IN TATTERS!
That day—the last day of my old life—I sat huddled with my sister and parents around our Telefunken radiogram, while telecommunications struck the fear of God and China into our hearts. And my father now said a fateful thing: “Wife,” he intoned gravely, while Jamila and I shook with fear, “Begum Sahiba, this country is finished. Bankrupt. Funtoosh.” The evening paper proclaimed the end of the optimism disease:
PUBLIC MORALE DRAINS AWAY
. And after that end, there were others to come; other things would also drain away.

I went to bed with my head full of Chinese faces guns tanks … but at midnight, my head was empty and quiet, because the midnight Conference had drained away as well; the only one of the magic children who was willing to talk to me was Parvati-the-witch, and we, dejected utterly by what Nussie-the-duck would have called “the end of the world,” were unable to do more than simply commune in silence.

And other, more mundane drainages: a crack appeared in the mighty Bhakra Nangal Hydro-Electric Dam, and the great reservoir behind it flooded through the fissure … and the Narlikar women’s reclamation consortium, impervious to optimism or defeat or anything except the lure of wealth, continued to draw land out of the depths of the seas … but the final evacuation, the one which truly gives this episode its title, took place the next morning, just when I had relaxed and thought that something, after all, might turn out all right … because in the morning we heard the improbably joyous news that the Chinese had suddenly, without needing to, stopped advancing; having gained control of the Himalayan heights, they were apparently content;
CEASEFIRE
! the newspapers screamed, and my mother almost fainted in relief. (There was talk that General Kaul had been taken prisoner; the President of India, Dr. Radhakrishnan, commented, “Unfortunately, this report is completely untrue.”)

Despite streaming eyes and puffed-up sinuses, I was happy; despite even the end of the Children’s Conference, I was basking in the new glow of happiness which permeated Buckingham Villa; so when my mother suggested, “Let’s go and celebrate! A picnic, children, you’d like that?” I naturally agreed with alacrity. It was the morning of November 21st; we helped make sandwiches and parathas; we stopped at a fizzy-drinks shop and loaded ice in a tin tub and Cokes in a crate into the boot of our Rover; parents in the front, children in the back, we set off. Jamila Singer sang for us as we drove.

Through inflamed sinuses, I asked: “Where are we going? Juhu? Elephanta? Marvé? Where?” And my mother, smiling awkwardly: “Surprise; wait and see.” Through streets filled with relieved, rejoicing crowds we drove … “This is the wrong way,” I exclaimed; “This isn’t the way to a beach?” My parents both spoke at once, reassuringly, brightly: “Just one stop first, and then we’re off; promise.”

Telegrams recalled me; radiograms frightened me; but it was a telephone which booked the date time place of my undoing … and my parents lied to me.

… We halted in front of an unfamiliar building in Carnac Road. Exterior: crumbling. All its windows: blind. “You coming with me, son?” Ahmed Sinai got out of the car; I, happy to be accompanying my father on his business, walked jauntily beside him. A brass plate on the doorway:
Ear Nose Throat Clinic
. And I, suddenly alarmed: “What’s this, Abba? Why have we come …” And my father’s hand, tightening on my shoulder—and then a man in a white coat—and nurses—and “Ah yes Mr. Sinai so this is young Saleem—right on time—fine, fine”; while I, “Abba, no—what about the picnic—”; but doctors are steering me along now, my father is dropping back, the man in the coat calls to him, “Shan’t be long—damn good news about the war, no?” And the nurse, “Please accompany me for dressing and anesthesia.”

Tricked! Tricked, Padma! I told you: once, picnics tricked me; and then there was a hospital and a room with a hard bed and bright hanging lamps and me crying, “No no no,” and the nurse, “Don’t be stupid now, you’re almost a grown man, lie down,” and I, remembering how nasal passages had started everything in my head, how nasal fluid had been sniffed upupup into somewhere-that-nosefluid-shouldn’t-go, how the connection had been made which released my voices, was kicking yelling so that they had to hold me down, “Honestly,” the nurse said, “such a baby, I never saw.”

And so what began in a washing-chest ended on an operating table, because I was held down hand-and-foot and a man saying “You won’t feel a thing, easier than having your tonsils out, get those sinuses fixed in no time, complete clear-out,” and me “No please no,” but the voice continued, “I’ll put this mask on you now, just count to ten.”

Count. The numbers marching one two three.

Hiss of released gas. The numbers crushing me four five six.

Faces swimming in fog. And still the tumultuous numbers, I was crying, I think, the numbers pounding seven eight nine.

Ten.

“Good God, the boy’s still conscious. Extraordinary. We’d better try another—can you hear me? Saleem, isn’t it? Good chap, just give me another ten!” Can’t catch me. Multitudes have teemed inside my head. The master of the numbers, me. Here they go again ’leven twelve.

But they’ll never let me up until … thirteen fourteen fifteen … O God O God the fog dizzy and falling back back back, sixteen, beyond war and pepperpots, back back, seventeen eighteen nineteen.

Twen

There was a washing-chest and a boy who sniffed too hard. His mother undressed and revealed a Black Mango. Voices came, which were not the voices of Archangels. A hand, deafening the left ear. And what grew best in the heat: fantasy, irrationality, lust. There was a clocktower refuge, and cheatery-in-class. And love in Bombay caused a bicycle-accident; horn-temples entered forcep-hollows, and five hundred and eighty-one children visited my head. Midnight’s children: who may have been the embodiment of the hope of freedom, who may also have been freaks-who-ought-to-be-finished-off. Parvati-the-witch, most loyal of all, and Shiva, who became a principle of life. There was the question of purpose, and the debate between ideas and things. There were knees and nose and nose and knees.

Quarrels began, and the adult world infiltrated the children’s; there was selfishness and snobbishness and hate. And the impossibility of a third principle; the fear of coming-to-nothing-after-all began to grow. And what nobody said: that the purpose of the five hundred and eighty-one lay in their destruction; that they had come, in order to come to nothing. Prophecies were ignored when they spoke to this effect.

And revelations, and the closing of a mind; and exile, and four-years-after return; suspicions growing, dissension breeding, departures in twenties and tens. And, at the end, just one voice left; but optimism lingered—what-we-had-in-common retained the possibility of overpowering what-forced-us-apart.

Until:

Silence outside me. A dark room (blinds down). Can’t see anything (nothing there to see).

Silence inside me. A connection broken (for ever). Can’t hear anything (nothing there to hear).

Silence, like a desert. And a clear, free nose (nasal passages full of air). Air, like a vandal, invading my private places.

Drained. I have been drained. The parahamsa, grounded. (For good.)

O, spell it out, spell it out: the operation whose ostensible purpose was the draining of my inflamed sinuses and the once-and-for-all clearing of my nasal passages had the effect of breaking whatever connection had been made in a washing-chest; of depriving me of nose-given telepathy; of banishing me from the possibility of midnight children.

Our names contain our fates; living as we do in a place where names have not acquired the meaninglessness of the West, and are still more than mere sounds, we are also the victims of our titles.
Sinai
contains Ibn Sina, master magician, Sufi adept; and also Sin the moon, the ancient god of Hadhramaut, with his own mode of connection, his powers of action-at-a-distance upon the tides of the world. But Sin is also the letter S, as sinuous as a snake; serpents lie coiled within the name. And there is also the accident of transliteration—Sinai, when in Roman script, though not in Nastaliq, is also the name of the place-of-revelation, of put-off-thy-shoes, of commandments and golden calves; but when all that is said and done; when Ibn Sina is forgotten and the moon has set; when snakes lie hidden and revelations end, it is the name of the desert—of barrenness, infertility, dust; the name of the end.

In Arabia—
Arabia Deserta
—at the time of the prophet Muhammad, other prophets also preached: Maslama of the tribe of the Banu Hanifa in the Yamama, the very heart of Arabia; and Hanzala ibn Safwan; and Khalid ibn Sinan. Maslama’s God was ar-Rahman, “the Merciful”; today Muslims pray to Allah, ar-Rahman. Khalid ibn Sinan was sent to the tribe of ’Abs; for a time, he was followed, but then he was lost. Prophets are not always false simply because they are overtaken, and swallowed up, by history. Men of worth have always roamed the desert.

“Wife,” Ahmed Sinai said, “this country is finished.” After ceasefire and drainage, these words returned to haunt him; and Amina began to persuade him to emigrate to Pakistan, where her surviving sisters already were, and to which her mother would go after her father’s death. “A fresh start,” she suggested, “Janum, it would be lovely. What is left for us on this God-forsaken hill?”