Midnights Children

Iltutmish and the Mughals? Even in Kif itself, the Nawab had noticed C.O.P. stickers appearing in curious places; someone had even had the cheek to affix one to the boot of the Rolls. “Bad days,” the Nawab told his son. Mutasim replied, “That’s what elections get you—latrine-cleaners and cheap tailors must vote to elect a ruler?”
    But today was a day for happiness; in the zenana chambers, women were patterning the Nawab’s daughter’s hands and feet with delicate traceries of henna; soon General Zulfikar and his son Zafar would arrive. The rulers of Kif put the election out of their heads, refusing to think of the crumbling figure of Fatima Jinnah, the mader-i-millat or mother of the nation who had so callously chosen to confuse her children’s choosing.
    In the quarters of Jamila Singer’s party, too, happiness reigned supreme. Her father, a towel-manufacturer who could not seem to relinquish the soft hand of his wife, cried, “You see? Whose daughter is performing here? Is it a Haroon girl? A Valika woman? Is it a Dawood or Saigol wench? Like hell!” … But his son Saleem, an unfortunate fellow with a face like a cartoon, seemed to be gripped by some deep malaise, perhaps overwhelmed by his presence at the scene of great historical events; he glanced towards his gifted sister with something in his eyes which looked like shame.
    That afternoon, Mutasim the Handsome took Jamila’s brother Saleem to one side and tried hard to make friends; he showed Saleem the peacocks imported from Rajasthan before Partition and the Nawab’s precious collection of books of spells, from which he extracted such talismans and incantations as would help him rule with sagacity; and while Mutasim (who was not the most intelligent or cautious of youths) was escorting Saleem around the polo-field, he confessed that he had written out a love-charm on a piece of parchment, in the hope of pressing it against the hand of the famous Jamila Singer and making her fall in love. At this point Saleem acquired the air of a bad-tempered dog and tried to turn away; but Mutasim now begged to know what Jamila Singer really looked like. Saleem, however, kept his silence; until Mutasim, in the grip of a wild obsession, asked to be brought close enough to Jamila to press his charm against her hand. Now Saleem, whose sly look did not register on love-struck Mutasim, said, “Give me the parchment”; and Mutasim, who, though expert in the geography of European cities, was innocent in things magical, yielded his charm to Saleem, thinking it would still work on his behalf, even if applied by another.
    Evening approached at the palace; the convoy of cars bringing General and Begum Zulfikar, their son Zafar, and friends, approached, too. But now the wind changed, and began to blow from the north: a cold wind, and also an intoxicating one, because in the north of Kif were the best hashish fields in the land, and at this time of year the female plants were ripe and in heat. The air was filled with the perfume of the heady lust of the plants, and all who breathed it became doped to some extent. The vacuous beatitude of the plants affected the drivers in the convoy, which only reached the palace by great good fortune, having overturned a number of street-side barber-stalls and invaded at least one tea-shop, leaving the Kifis wondering whether the new horseless carriages, having stolen the streets, were now going to capture their homes as well.
    The wind from the north entered the enormous and highly sensitive nose of Saleem, Jamila’s brother, and made him so drowsy that he fell asleep in his room; so that he missed the events of an evening during which, he afterwards learned, the hashashin wind had transformed the behavior of the guests at the engagement ceremony, making them giggle convulsively and gaze provocatively at one another through heavy-lidded eyes; braided Generals sat splay-legged on gilded chairs and dreamed of Paradise. The mehndi ceremony took place amid a sleepy contentment so profound that nobody noticed when the bridegroom relaxed so completely that he wet his pants; and even the quarreling badmaashes from the C.O.P. linked arms and sang a folk-song. And when Mutasim the Handsome, possessed by the lustiness of hashish-plants, attempted to plunge behind the great gold-and-silken sheet with its single hole, Major Alauddin Latif restrained him with beatific good humor, preventing him from seeing Jamila Singer’s face without even