I was obliged to come to the conclusion that Shiva, my rival, my changeling brother, could no longer be admitted into the forum of my mind; for reasons which were, I admit, ignoble. I was afraid he would discover what I was sure I could not conceal from him - the secrets of our birth. Shiva, for whom the world was things, for whom history could only be explained as the continuing struggle of oneself-against-the-crowd, would certainly insist on claiming his birthright; and, aghast at the very notion of my knock-kneed antagonist replacing me in the blue room of my childhood while I, perforce, walked morosely off the two-storey hillock to enter the northern slums; refusing to accept that the prophecy of Ramram Seth had been intended for Winkie's boy, that it was to Shiva that Prime Ministers had written, and for Shiva that fishermen pointed out to sea ...
placing, in short, a far higher value on my eleven-year-old sonship than on mere blood, I resolved that my destructive, violent alter ego should never again enter the increasingly fractious councils of the Midnight Children's Conference; that I would guard my secret -which had once been Mary's - with my very life.
There were nights, at this time, when I avoided convening the Conference at all - not because of the unsatisfactory turn it had taken, but simply because I knew it would take time, and cool blood, to erect a barrier around my new knowledge which could deny it to the Children; eventually, I was confident, I would manage this ... but I was afraid of Shiva. Most ferocious and powerful of the Children, he would penetrate where others could not go ... At any rate, I avoided my fellow-Children; and then suddenly it was too late, because, having exiled Shiva, I found myself hurled into an exile from which I was incapable of contacting my more-than-five-hundred colleagues: I was flung across the Partition-created frontier into Pakistan.
Late in September 1958, the mourning period for my uncle Hanif Aziz came to an end; and, miraculously, the dust-cloud which had enveloped us was settled by a merciful shower of rain. When we had bathed and put on newly-washed clothes and switched on the ceiling-fans, we emerged from bathrooms filled, briefly, with the illusory optimism of freshly-soaped cleanliness; to discover a dusty, unwashed Ahmed Sinai, whisky-bottle in his hand, his eyes rimmed with blood, swaying upstairs from his office in the manic grip of djinns. He had been wrestling, in his private world of abstraction, with the unthinkable realities which Mary's revelations had unleashed; and owing to some cockeyed functioning of the alcohol, had been seized by an indescribable rage which he directed, neither at Mary's departed back, not at the changeling in his midst, but at my mother - at, I should say, Amina Sinai. Perhaps because he knew he should beg her forgiveness, and would not, Ahmed ranted at her for hours within the shocked hearing of her family; I will not repeat the names he called her, nor the vile courses of action he recommended she should take with her life. But in the end it was Reverend Mother who intervened.
Once before, my daughter,' she said, ignoring Ahmed's continuing ravings, 'your father and I, whatsitsname, said there was no shame in leaving an inadequate husband. Now I say again: you have, whatsitsname, a man of unspeakable vileness.
Go from him; go today, and take your children, whatsitsname, away from these oaths which he spews from his lips like an animal, whatsitsname, of the gutter.
Take your children, I say, whatsitsname - both your children,' she said, clutching me to her bosom. Once Reverend Mother had legitimized me, there was no one to oppose her; it seems to me now, across the years, that even my cursing father was affected by her support of the eleven-year-old snotnosed child.
Reverend Mother fixed everything; my mother was like putty- like potter's clay! - in her omnipotent hands. At that time, my grandmother (I must continue to call her that) still believed that she and Aadam Aziz would shortly be emigrating to Pakistan; so she instructed my aunt Emerald to take us all with her - Amina, the Monkey, myself, even my aunty Pia - and await her coming. 'Sisters must care for sisters, whatsitsname,' Reverend Mother said, 'in times of trouble.' My aunt Emerald looked highly displeased; but both she and General Zulfikar acquiesced.
And, since my father was in a lunatic temper which made us fear for our safety, and the Zulfikars had already booked themselves on a ship which was to sail that night, I left my lifelong home that very day, leaving Ahmed Sinai alone with Alice Pereira; because when my mother left her second husband, all the other servants walked out, too.
In Pakistan, my second period of hurtling growth came to an end. And, in Pakistan, I discovered that somehow the existence of a frontier 'jammed' my thought-transmissions to the more-than-five-hundred; so that, exiled once more from my home, I was also exiled from the gift which was my truest birthright: the gift of the midnight children.
We lay anchored off the Rann of Kutch on a heat-soaked afternoon. Heat buzzed in my bad left ear; but I chose to remain on deck, watching as small, vaguely ominous rowing boats and fishermen's dhows ran a ferry service between our ship and the Rann, transporting objects veiled in canvas back and forth, back and forth. Below decks, the adults were playing housie-housie; I had no idea where the Monkey was. It was the first time I had ever been on a real ship (occasional visits to American warships in Bombay harbour didn't count, being merely tourism; and there was always the embarrassment of being in the company of dozens of highly-pregnant ladies, who always came on these tour parties in the hope that they would enter labour and give birth to children who qualified, by virtue of their seaborne birth, for American citizenship). I stared through the heat-haze at the Rann. The Rann of Kutch ... I'd always thought it a magical name, and half-feared-half-longed to visit the place, that chameleon area which was land for half the year and sea for the other half, and on which, it was said, the receding ocean would abandon all manner of fabulous debris, such as treasure-chests, white ghostly jellyfish, and even the occasional gasping, freak-legendary figure of a merman. Gazing for the first time upon this amphibian terrain, this bog of nightmare, I should have felt excited; but the heat and recent events were weighing me down; my upper lip was still childishly wet with nose-goo, but I felt oppressed by a feeling of having moved directly from an overlong and dribbling childhood into a premature (though still leaky
old age. My voice had deepened; I had been forced to start shaving, and my face was spotted with blood where the razor had sliced off the heads of pimples ...
The ship's purser passed me and said, 'Better get below, son. It's the hottest time just now.' I asked about the ferrying boats. 'Just supplies,' he said and moved away, leaving me to contemplate a future in which there was little to look forward to except the grudging hospitality of General Zulfikar, the self-satisfied preening of my aunt Emerald, who would no doubt enjoy showing off her worldly success and status to her unhappy sister and bereaved sister-in-law, and the muscle-headed cockiness of their son Zafar ... 'Pakistan,' I said aloud, 'What a complete dump!' And we hadn't even arrived... I looked at the boats; they seemed to be swimming through a dizzying haze. The deck seemed to be swaying violently as well, although there was virtually no wind; and although I tried to grab the rails, the boards were too quick for me: they rushed up and hit me on the nose.
That was how I came to Pakistan, with a mild attack of sunstroke to add to the emptiness of my hands and the knowledge of my birth; and what was the name of the boat? What two sister-ships still plied between Bombay and Karachi in those days before politics ended their journeys? Our boat was the S.S. Sabarmati; its sister, which passed us just before we reached the Karachi harbour, was the Sarasvati. We steamed into exile aboard the Commander's namesake-ship, proving once again that there was no escape from recurrence.
We reached Rawalpindi by hot, dusty train. (The General and Emerald travelled in Air-Conditioned; they bought the rest of us ordinary first-class tickets.) But it was cool when we reached 'Pindi and I set foot, for the first time, in a northern city... I remember it as a low, anonymous town; army barracks, fruit-shops, a sports goods industry; tall military men in the streets; Jeeps; furniture carvers; polo. A town in which it was possible to be very, very cold.
And in a new and expensive housing development, a vast house surrounded by a high wall which was topped by barbed wire and patrolled by sentries: General Zulfikar's home. There was a bath next to the double bed in which the General slept; there was a house catch-phrase: 'Let's get organized!'; the servants wore green military jerseys and berets; in the evenings the odours of bhang and charas floated up from their quarters. The furniture was expensive and surprisingly beautiful; Emerald could not be faulted on her taste. It was a dull, lifeless house, for all its military airs; even the goldfish in the tank set in the dining-room wall seemed to bubble listlessly; perhaps its most interesting inhabitant was not even human. You will permit me, for a moment, to describe the General's dog Bonzo. Excuse me: the General's old beagle bitch.
This goitred creature of papery antiquity had been supremely indolent and useless all her life; but while I was still recovering from sunstroke she created the first furore of our stay - a sort of trailer for the 'revolution of the pepperpots'. General Zulfikar had taken her one day to a military training-camp, where he was to watch a team of mine-detectors at work in a specially-prepared minefield. (The General was anxious to mine the entire Indo-Pak border. 'Let's get organized!' he would exclaim. 'Let's give those Hindus something to worry! We'll blow their invaders into so many pieces, there'll be no damn thing left to reincarnate.' He was not, however, overly concerned about the frontiers of East Pakistan, being of the view that 'those damn blackies can look after themselves'.) ... And now Bonzo slipped her leash, and somehow evading the frantically clutching hands of young jawans, waddled out into the minefield.
Blind panic. Mine-detecting soldiers picking their way in frenzied slow-motion through the blasting zone. General Zulfikar and other Army brass diving for shelter behind their grandstand, awaiting the explosion ... But there was none; and when the flower of the Pakistan Army peeped out from inside dustbins or behind benches, it saw Bonzo picking her way daintily through the field of the lethal seeds, nose to ground, Bonzo-the-insouciant, quite at her ease. General Zulfikar flung his peaked cap in the air. 'Damn marvellous!' he cried in the thin voice which squeezed between his nose and chin, 'The old lady can smell the mines!' Bonzo was drafted forthwith into the armed forces as a four-legged mine-detector with the courtesy rank of sergeant-major.
I mention Bonzo's achievement because it gave the General a stick with which to beat us. We Sinais - and Pia Aziz - were helpless, non-productive members of the Zulfikar household, and the General did not wish us to forget it: 'Even a damn hundred-year-old beagle bitch can earn her damn living,' he was heard to mutter, 'but my house is full of people who can't get organized into one damn thing.
But before the end of October he would be grateful for (at least) my presence ... and the transformation of the Monkey was not far away.
We went to school with cousin Zafar, who seemed less anxious to marry my sister now that we were children of a broken home; but his worst deed came one weekend when we were taken to the General's mountain cottage in Nathia Gali, beyond Murree. I was in a state of high excitement (my illness had just been declared cured): mountains! The possibility of panthers! Cold, biting air! - so that I thought nothing of it when the General asked me if I'd mind sharing a bed with Zafar, and didn't even guess when they spread the rubber sheet over the mattress ... I awoke in the small hours in a large rancid pool of lukewarm liquid and began to yell blue murder. The General appeared at our bedside and began to thrash the living daylights out of his son. 'You're a big man now! Damn it to hell! Still, and still you do it! Get yourself organized! Good for nothing! Who behaves in this damn way? Cowards, that's who! Damn me if I'll have a coward for a son ...' The enuresis of my cousin Zafar continued, however, to be the shame of his family; despite thrashings, the liquid ran down his leg; and one day it happened when he was awake. But that was after certain movements had, with my assistance, been performed by pepperpots, proving to me that although the telepathic air-waves were jammed in this country, the modes of connection still seemed to function; active-literally as well as metaphorically, I helped change the fate of the Land of the Pure.
The Brass Monkey and I were helpless observers, in those days, of my wilting mother. She, who had always been assiduous in the heat, had begun to wither in the northern cold. Deprived of two husbands, she was also deprived (in her own eyes) of meaning; and there was also a relationship to rebuild, between mother and son. She held me tightly one night and said, 'Love, my child, is a thing that every mother learns; it is not born with a baby, but made; and for eleven years, I have learned to love you as my son.' But there was a distance behind her gentleness, as though she were trying to persuade herself ... a distance, too, in the Monkey's midnight whispers of, 'Hey, brother, why don't we go and pour water over Zafar - they'll only think he's wet his bed?' - and it was my sense of this gap which showed me that, despite their use of son and brother, their imaginations were working hard to assimilate Mary's confession; not knowing then that they would be unable to succeed in their re-imaginings of brother and son, I remained terrified of Shiva; and was accordingly driven even deeper into the illusory heart of my desire to prove myself worthy of their kinship. Despite Reverend Mother's recognition of me, I was never at my ease until, on a more-than-three-years-distant verandah, my father said, 'Come, son; come here and let me love you.' Perhaps that is why I behaved as I did on the night of October yth, 1958.
An eleven-year-old boy, Padma, knew very little about the internal affairs of Pakistan; but he could see, on that October day, that an unusual dinner-party was being planned. Saleem at eleven knew nothing about the Constitution of 1956 and its gradual erosion; but his eyes were keen enough to spot the Army security officers, the military police, who arrived that afternoon to lurk secretly behind every garden bush. Faction strife and the multiple incompetences of Mr Ghulam Mohammed were a mystery to him; but it was clear that his aunt Emerald was putting on her finest jewels. The farce of four-prime-ministers-in-two-years had never made him giggle; but he could sense, in the air of drama hanging over the General's house, that something like a final curtain was approaching.
Ignorant of the emergence of the Republican party, he was nevertheless curious about the guest-list for the Zulfikar party; although he was in a country where names meant nothing - who was Chaudhuri Muhammad Ali? Or Suhrawardy? Or Chundrigar, or Noon? - the anonymity of the dinner-guests, which was carefully preserved by his uncle and aunt, was a puzzling thing. Even though he had once cut Pakistani headlines out of newspapers - FURNITURE HURLING SLAYS DEPUTYE-PAK SPEAKER - he had no idea why, at six p.m., a long line of black limousines came through the sentried walls of- the Zulfikar Estate; why flags waved on their bonnets; why their occupants refused to smile; or why Emerald and Pia and my mother stood behind General Zulfikar with expressions on their faces which would have seemed more appropriate at a funeral than a social gathering. Who what was dying? Who why were the limousine arrivals? - I had no idea; but I was on my toes behind my mother, staring at the smoked-glass windows of the enigmatic cars.
Car-doors opened; equerries, adjutants, leaped out of vehicles and opened rear doors, saluted stiffly; a small muscle began to tic in my aunt Emerald's cheek.
And then, who descended from the flag-waving motors? What names should be put to the fabulous array of moustaches, swagger-sticks, gimlet-eyes, medals and shoulder-pips which emerged? Saleem knew neither names nor serial numbers; ranks, however, could be discerned. Gongs and pips, proudly worn on chests and shoulders, announced the arrival of very top brass indeed. And out of the last car came a tall man with an astonishingly round head, round as a tin globe although unmarked by lines of longitude and latitude; planet-headed, he was not labelled like the orb which the Monkey had once squashed; not MADE AS ENGLAND (although certainly Sandhurst-trained) he moved through saluting gongs-and-pips; arrived at my aunt Emerald; and added his own salute to the rest.
Mr Commander-in-Chief,' my aunt said, 'be welcome in our home.
Emerald, Emerald,' came from the mouth set in the earth-shaped head - the mouth positioned immediately beneath a neat moustache, 'Why such formality, such takalluf?' Whereupon she embraced him with, 'Well then, Ayub, you're looking wonderful.
He was a General then, though Field-Marshalship was not far away ... we followed him into the house; we watched him drink (water) and laugh (loudly); at dinner we watched him again?saw how he ate like a peasant, so that his moustache became stained with gravy ... 'Listen, Em,' he said, 'Always such preparations when I come! But I'm only a simple soldier; dal and rice from your kitchens would be a feast for me.
A soldier, sir,' my aunt replied, 'but simple - never! Not once
Long trousers qualified me to sit at table, next to cousin Zafar, surrounded by gongs-and-pips; tender years, however, placed us both under an obligation to be silent. (General Zulfikar told' me in a military hiss, 'One peep out of you and you're off to the guardhouse. If you want to stay, stay mum. Got it?' Staying mum, Zafar and I were free to look and listen. But Zafar, unlike me, was not trying to prove himself worthy of his name ...
What did eleven-year-olds hear at dinner? What did they understand by jocund military references to 'that Suhrawardy, who always opposed the Pakistan Idea' - or to Noon, 'who should have been called Sunset, what?' And through discussions of election-rigging and black-money, what undercurrent of danger permeated their skins, making the downy hairs on their arms stand on end? And when the Commander-in-Chief quoted the Quran, how much of its meaning was understood by eleven-year-old ears
It is written,' said the round-headed man, and the gongs-and-pips fell silent, 'Aad and Thamoud we also destroyed. Satan had made their foul deeds seem fair to them, keen-sighted though they were.
It was as though a cue had been given; a wave of my aunt's hands dismissed the servants. She rose to go herself; my mother and Pia went with her. Zafar and I, too, rose from our seats; but he, he himself, called down the length of the sumptuous table: 'The little men should stay. It is their future, after all.
The little men, frightened but also proud, sat and stayed mum, following orders.
Just men now. A change in the roundhead's face; something darker, something mottled and desperate has occupied it... 'Twelve months ago,' he says, 'I spoke to all of you. Give the politicians one year - is that not what I said?' Heads nod; murmurs of assent. 'Gentlemen, we have given them a year; the situation has become intolerable, and I am not prepared to tolerate it any longer
Gongs-and-pips assume stern, statesmanlike expressions. Jaws are set, eyes gaze keenly into the future. 'Tonight, therefore,' - yes! I was there! A few yards from him! - General Ayub and I, myself and old Ayub Khan! - 'I am assuming control of the State.
How do eleven-year-olds react to the announcement of a coup? Hearing the words, '... national finances in frightening disarray ... corruption and impurity are everywhere ...' do their jaws stiffen, too? Do their eyes focus on brighter tomorrows? Eleven-year-olds listen as a General cries, 'The Constitution is hereby abrogated! Central and Provincial legislatures are dissolved! Political parties are forthwith abolished!' - how do you think they feel
When General Ayub Khan said, 'Martial Law is now imposed,' both cousin Zafar and I understood that his voice - that voice filled with power and decision and the rich timbre of my aunt's finest cooking - was speaking a thing for which we knew only one word: treason. I'm proud to say I kept my head; but Zafar lost control of a more embarrassing organ. Moisture stained his trouser-fronts; the yellow moisture of fear trickled down his leg to stain Persian carpets; gongs-and-pips smelled something, and turned upon him with looks of infinite distaste; and then (worst of all) came laughter.
General Zulfikar had just begun saying, 'If you permit, sir, I shall map out tonight's procedures,' when his son wet his pants. In cold fury my uncle hurled his son from the room; 'Pimp! Woman!' followed Zafar out of the dining-chamber, in his father's thin sharp voice; 'Coward! Homosexual! Hindu!' leaped from Punchinello-face to chase his son up the stairs ... Zulnkar's eyes settled on me. There was a plea in them. Save the honour of the family. Redeem me from the incontinence of my son. 'You, boy!' my uncle said, 'You want to come up here and help me
Of course, I nodded. Proving my manhood, my fitness for sonship, I assisted my uncle as he made the revolution. And in so doing, in earning his gratitude, in stilling the sniggers of the assembled gongs-and-pips, I created a new father for myself; General Zulfikar became the latest in the line of men who have been willing to call me 'sonny', or 'sonny Jim', or even simply 'my son'.
How we made the revolution: General Zulfikar described troop movements; I moved pepperpots symbolically while he spoke. In the clutches of the active-metaphorical mode of connection, I shifted salt-cellars and bowls of chutney: This mustard-jar is Company A occupying Head Post Office; there are two pepperpots surrounding a serving-spoon, which means Company ?has seized the airport. With the fate of the nation in my hands, I shifted condiments and cutlery, capturing empty biriani-dishes with water-glasses, stationing saltcellars, on guard, around water-jugs. And when General Zulfikar stopped talking, the march of the table-service also came to an end. Ayub Khan seemed to settle down in his chair; was the wink he gave me just my imagination? - at any rate, the Commander-in-Chief said, 'Very good, Zulfikar; good show.
In the movements performed by pepperpots etcetera, one table-ornament remained uncaptured: a cream-jug in solid silver, which, in our table-top coup, represented the Head of State, President Iskander Mirza; for three weeks, Mirza remained President.
An eleven-year-old boy cannot judge whether a President is truly corrupt, even if gongs-and-pips say he is; it is not for eleven-year-olds to say whether Mirza's association with the feeble Republican Party should have disqualified him from high office under the new regime. Saleem Sinai made no political judgments; but when, inevitably at midnight, on November 1st, my uncle shook me awake and whispered, 'Come on, sonny, it's time you got a taste of the real thing!', I leaped out of bed smartly; I dressed and went out into the night, proudly aware that my uncle had preferred my company to that of his own son.
Midnight. Rawalpindi speeding past us at seventy m.p.h. Motorcycles in front of us beside us behind us. 'Where are we going Zulfy - uncle?' Wait and see. Black smoked-windowed limousine pausing at darkened house. Sentries guard the door with crossed rifles; which part, to let us through. I am marching at my uncle's side, in step, through half-lit corridors; until we burst into a dark room with a shaft of moonlight spotlighting a four-poster bed. A mosquito net hangs over the bed like a shroud.
There is a man waking up, startled, what the hell is going ... But General Zulfikar has a long-barrelled revolver; the tip of the gun is forced mmff between the man's parted teeth. 'Shut up,' my uncle says, superfluously. 'Come with us.' Naked overweight man stumbling from his bed. His eyes, asking: Are you going to shoot me? Sweat rolls down ample belly, catching moonlight, dribbling on to his soo-soo; but it is bitterly cold; he is not perspiring from the heat.
He looks like a white Laughing Buddha; but not laughing. Shivering. My uncle's pistol is extracted from his mouth. 'Turn. Quick march!' ... And gun-barrel pushed between the cheeks of an overfed rump. The man cries, 'For God's sake be careful; that thing has the safety off!' Jawans giggle as naked flesh emerges into moonlight, is pushed into black limousine ... That night, I sat with a naked man as my uncle drove him to a military airfield; I stood and watched as the waiting aircraft taxied, accelerated, flew. What began, active-metaphorically, with pepperpots, ended then; not only did I overthrow a government - I also consigned a president to exile.
Midnight has many children; the offspring of Independence were not all human.
Violence, corruption, poverty, generals, chaos, greed and pepperpots ... I had to go into exile to learn that the children of midnight were more varied than I - even I - had dreamed.
Really truly?' Padma asks. 'You were truly there?' Really truly. 'They say that Ayub was a good man before he became bad,' Padma says; it is a question. But Saleem, at eleven, made no such judgments. The movement of pepperpots does not necessitate moral choices. What Saleem was concerned with: not public upheaval, but personal rehabilitation. You see the paradox - my most crucial foray into history up to that moment was inspired by the most parochial of motives. Anyway, it was not 'my' country - or not then. Not my country, although I stayed in it - as refugee, not citizen; entered on my mother's Indian passport, I would have come in for a good deal of suspicion, maybe even deported or arrested as a spy, had it not been for my tender years and the power of my guardian with the Punch-like features - for four long years.
Four years of nothing.
Except growing into a teenager. Except watching my mother as she fell apart.
Except observing the Monkey, who was a crucial year younger than me, fall under the insidious spell of that God-ridden country; the Monkey, once so rebellious and wild, adopting expressions of demureness and submission which must, at first, have seemed false even to her; the Monkey, learning how to cook and keep house, how to buy spices in the market; the Monkey, making the final break with the legacy of her grandfather, by learning prayers in Arabic and saying them at all prescribed times; the Monkey, revealing the streak of puritan fanaticism which she had hinted at when she asked for a nun's outfit; she, who spurned all offers of worldly love, was seduced by the love of that God who had been named after a carved idol in a pagan shrine built around a giant meteorite: Al-Lah, in the Qa'aba, the shrine of the great Black Stone.
But nothing else.
Four years away from the midnight children; four years without Warden Road and Breach Candy and Scandal Point and the lures of One Yard of Chocolates; away from the Cathedral School and the equestrian statue of Sivaji and melon-sellers at the Gateway of India: away from Divali and Ganesh Chaturthi and Coconut Day; four years of separation from a father who sat alone in a house he would not sell; alone, except for Professor Schaapsteker, who stayed in his apartment and shunned the company of men.
Can nothing really happen for four years? Obviously, not quite. My cousin Zafar, who had never been forgiven by his father for wetting his pants in the presence of history, was given to understand that he would be joining the Army as soon as he was of age. 'I want to see you prove you're not a woman,' his father told him.
And Bonzo died; General Zulfikar shed manly tears.
And Mary's confession faded until, because nobody spoke of it, it came to feel like a bad dream; to everyone except'me.
And (without any assistance from me) relations between India and Pakistan grew worse; entirely without my help, India conquered Goa - 'the Portuguese pimple on the face of Mother India'; I sat on the sidelines and played no part in the acquisition of large-scale U.S. aid for Pakistan, nor was I to blame for Sino-India border skirmishes in the Aksai Chin region of Ladakh; the Indian census of 1961 revealed a literacy level of 23.7 per cent, but I was not entered in its records. The untouchable problem remained acute; I did nothing to alleviate it; and in the elections of 1962, the All-India Congress won 361 out of 494 seats in the Lok Sabha, and over 61 per cent of all State Assembly seats. Not even in this could my unseen hand be said to have moved; except, perhaps, metaphorically: the status quo was preserved in India; in my life, nothing changed either.
Then, on September 1st, 1962, we celebrated the Monkey's fourteenth birthday. By this time (and despite my uncle's continued fondness for me) we were well-established as social inferiors, the hapless poor relations of the great Zulfikars; so the party was a skimpy affair. The Monkey, however, gave every appearance of enjoying herself. 'It's my duty, brother,' she told me. I could
hardly believe my ears ... but perhaps my sister had an intuition of her fate; perhaps she knew the transformation which lay in store for her; why should I assume that I alone have had the powers of secret knowledge
Perhaps, then, she guessed that when the hired musicians began to play (shehnai and vina were present; sarangi and sarod had their turns; tabla and sitar performed their virtuosic cross-examinations) , Emerald Zulfikar would descend on her with callous elegance, demanding, 'Come on, Jamila, don't sit there like a melon, sing us a song like any good girl would
And that with this sentence my emerald-icy aunt would have begun, quite unwittingly, my sister's transformation from monkey into singer; because although she protested with the sullen clumsiness of fourteen-year-olds, she was hauled unceremoniously on to the musicians' dais by my organizing aunt; and although she looked as if she wished the floor would open up beneath her feet, she clasped her hands together; seeing no escape, the Monkey began to sing.
I have not, I think, been good at describing emotions - believing my audience to be capable of joining in; of imagining for themselves what I have been unable to re-imagine, so that my story becomes yours as well ... but when my sister began to sing, I was certainly assailed by an emotion of such force that I was unable to understand it until, much later, it was explained to me by the oldest whore in the world. Because, with her first note, the Brass Monkey sloughed off her nick-name; she, who had talked to birds (just as, long ago in a mountain valley, her great-grandfather used to do), must have learned from songbirds the arts of song. With one good ear and one bad ear, I listened to her faultless voice, which at fourteen was the voice of a grown woman, filled with the purity of wings and the pain of exile and the flying of eagles and the lovelessness of life and the melody of bulbuls and the glorious omnipresence of God; a voice which was afterwards compared to that of Muhammed's muezzin Bilal, issuing from the lips of a somewhat scrawny girl.
What I did not understand must wait to be told; let me record here that my sister earned her name at her fourteenth birthday party, and was known after that as Jamila Singer; and that I knew, as I listened to 'My Red Dupatta Of Muslin' and 'Shahbaz Qalandar', that the process which had begun during my first exile was nearing completion in my second; that, from now on, Jamila was the child who mattered, and that I must take second place to her talent for ever.
Jamila sang - I, humbly, bowed my head. But before she could enter fully into her kingdom, something else had to happen: I had to be properly finished off.
