Midnights Children

richest families in the land. “Who are Valikas or Zulfikars? I could eat them ten at a time. You wait!”, he promised, “In two years the whole world will be wiping itself on an Amina Brand cloth. The finest terry-cloth! The most modern machines! We shall make the whole world clean and dry; Dawoods and Zulfikars will beg to know my secret; and I will say, yes, the towels are high-quality; but the secret is not in the manufacturing; it was love that conquered all.” (I discerned, in my father’s speech, the lingering effects of the optimism virus.)
    Did Amina Brand conquer the world in the name of cleanliness (which is next to …)? Did Valikas and Saigols come to ask Ahmed Sinai, “God, we’re stumped, yaar, how’d you do it?” Did high-quality terry-cloth, in patterns devised by Ahmed himself—a little gaudy, but never mind, they were born of love—wipe away the moistness of Pakistanis and export-markets alike? Did Russians Englishmen Americans wrap themselves in my mother’s immortalized name? … The story of Amina Brand must wait awhile; because the career of Jamila Singer is about to take off; the mosque-shadowed house on Clayton Road has been visited by Uncle Puffs.
    His real name was Major (Retired) Alauddin Latif; he had heard about my sister’s voice from “my darn good friend General Zulfikar; use to be with him in the Border Patrol Force back in ’47.” He turned up at Alia Aziz’s house shortly after Jamila’s fifteenth birthday, beaming and bouncing, revealing a mouth filled with solid gold teeth. “I’m a simple fellow,” he explained, “like our illustrious President. I keep my cash where it’s safe.” Like our illustrious President, the Major’s head was perfectly spherical; unlike Ayub Khan, Latif had left the Army and entered show-business. “Pakistan’s absolute number-one impresario, old man,” he told my father. “Nothing to it but organization; old Army habit, dies darn hard.” Major Latif had a proposition: he wanted to hear Jamila sing, “And if she’s two per cent as good as I’m told, my good sir, I’ll make her famous! Oh, yes, overnight, certainly! Contacts: that’s all it takes; contacts and organization; and yours truly Major (Retired) Latif has the lot.
Alauddin
Latif,” he stressed, flashing goldly at Ahmed Sinai, “Know the story? I just rub my jolly old lamp and out pops the genie bringing fame and fortune. Your girl will be in darn good hands.
Darn
good.”
    It is fortunate for Jamila Singer’s legion of fans that Ahmed Sinai was a man in love with his wife; mellowed by his own happiness, he failed to eject Major Latif on the spot. I also believe today that my parents had already come to the conclusion that their daughter’s gift was too extraordinary to keep to themselves; the sublime magic of her angel’s voice had begun to teach them the inevitable imperatives of talent. But Ahmed and Amina had one concern. “Our daughter,” Ahmed said—he was always the more old-fashioned of the two beneath the surface—“is from a good family; but you want to put her on a stage in front of God knows how many strange men … ?” The Major looked affronted. “Sir,” he said stiffly, “you think I am not a man of sensibility? Got daughters myself, old man. Seven, thank God. Set up a little travel agency business for them; strictly over the telephone, though. Wouldn’t dream of sitting them in an office-window. It’s the biggest telephonic travel agency in the place, actually. We send train-drivers to England, matter of fact; bus-wallahs, too. My point,” he added hastily, “is that your daughter would be given as much respect as mine. More, actually; she’s going to be a star!”
    Major Latif’s daughters—Safia and Rafia and five other -afias—were dubbed, collectively, “the Puffias” by the remaining Monkey in my sister; their father was nicknamed first “Father-Puffia” and then Uncle—a courtesy title—Puffs. He was as good as his word; in six months Jamila Singer was to have hit records, an army of admirers, everything; and all, as I’ll explain in a moment, without revealing her face.
    Uncle Puffs became a fixture in our lives; he visited the Clayton Road house most evenings, at what I used to think of as the cocktail hour, to sip pomegranate juice and ask Jamila to sing a little something. She, who was growing into the sweetest-natured of girls, always obliged … afterwards he would clear his throat as if something had got