Midnights Children

by her husband, three words long, six syllables, three exclamation marks:
    Talaaq! Talaaq! Talaaq!
    The English lacks the thunderclap sound of the Urdu, and anyway you know what it means. I divorce thee. I divorce thee. I divorce thee.
    Nadir Khan had done the decent thing.
    O awesome rage of Major Zulfy when he found the bird had flown! This was the color he saw: red. O anger fully comparable to my grandfather’s fury, though expressed in petty gestures! Major Zulfy, at first, hopped up and down in helpless fits of temper; controlled himself at last; and rushed out through bathroom, past throne, alongside cornfield, through perimeter gate. No sign of a running, plump, longhair, rhymeless poet. Looking left: nothing. And right: zero. Enraged Zulfy made his choice, pelted past the cycle-rickshaw rank. Old men were playing hit-the-spittoon and the spittoon was out in the street. Urchins, dodging in and out of the streams of betel-juice. Major Zulfy ran, ononon. Between the old men and their target, but he lacked the urchins’ skill. What an unfortunate moment: a low hard jet of red fluid caught him squarely in the crotch. A stain like a hand clutched at the groin of his battledress; squeezed; arrested his progress. Major Zulfy stopped in almighty wrath. O even more unfortunate; because a second player, assuming the mad soldier would keep on running, had unleashed a second jet. A second red hand clasped the first and completed Major Zulfy’s day … slowly, with deliberation, he went to the spittoon and kicked it over, into the dust. He jumped on it—once! twice! again!—flattening it, and refusing to show that it had hurt his foot. Then, with some dignity, he limped away, back to the car parked outside my grandfather’s house. The old ones retrieved their brutalized receptacle and began to knock it back into shape.
    “Now that I’m getting married,” Emerald told Mumtaz, “it’ll be very rude of you if you don’t even try to have a good time. And you should be giving me advice and everything.” At the time, although Mumtaz smiled at her younger sister, she had thought it a great cheek on Emerald’s part to say this; and, unintentionally perhaps, had increased the pressure of the pencil with which she was applying henna tracery to the soles of her sister’s feet. “Hey!” Emerald squealed, “No need to get mad! I just thought we should try to be friends.”
    Relations between the sisters had been somewhat strained since Nadir Khan’s disappearance; and Mumtaz hadn’t liked it when Major Zulfikar (who had chosen not to charge my grandfather with harboring a wanted man, and squared it with Brigadier Dodson) asked for, and received, permission to marry Emerald. “It’s like blackmail,” she thought. “And anyway, what about Alia? The eldest shouldn’t be married last, and look how patient she’s been with her merchant fellow.” But she said nothing, and smiled her forebearing smile, and devoted her gift of assiduity to the wedding preparations, and agreed to try and have a good time; while Alia went on waiting for Ahmed Sinai. (“She’ll wait for ever,” Padma guesses: correctly.)
    January 1946. Marquees, sweetmeats, guests, songs, fainting bride, stiff-at-attention groom: a beautiful wedding … at which the leather-cloth merchant, Ahmed Sinai, found himself deep in conversation with the newly-divorced Mumtaz. “You love children?—what a coincidence, so do I …” “And you didn’t have any, poor girl? Well, matter of fact, my wife couldn’t …” “Oh, no; how sad for you; and she must have been bad-tempered like anything!” “… Oh, like hell … excuse me. Strength of emotions carried me away.” “—Quite all right; don’t think about it. Did she throw dishes and all?” “Did she throw? In one month we had to eat out of newspaper!” “No, my goodness, what whoppers you tell!” “Oh, it’s no good, you’re too clever for me. But she did throw dishes all the same.” “You poor, poor man.” “No—you. Poor, poor you.” And thinking: “Such a charming chap, with Alia he always looked so bored . .” And, “… This girl, I never looked at her, but my goodness me …” And, “… You can tell he loves children; and for that I could …” And, “… Well, never mind about the skin …” It was noticeable that, when it was time to sing, Mumtaz found the spirit to join in all the songs; but Alia remained silent. She had been bruised even more badly than her