Midnights Children

they’re saying; the children have edged away from Lifafa Das and he’s moved, too, dragging his box on wheels, trying to get away, but now he is surrounded by voices filled with blood, and the street loafers are moving towards him, men are getting off bicycles, a pot flies through the air and shatters on a wall beside him; he has his back against a doorway as a fellow with a quiff of oily hair grins sweetly at him and says, “So, mister: it is you? Mister Hindu, who defiles our daughters? Mister idolater, who sleeps with his sister?” And Lifafa Das, “No, for the love of …”, smiling like a fool … and then the door behind him opens and he falls backwards, landing in a dark cool corridor beside my mother Amina Sinai.
    She had spent the morning alone with giggling Zohra and the echoes of the name Ravana, not knowing what was happening out there at the industrial estate, letting her mind linger upon the way the whole world seemed to be going mad; and when the screaming started and Zohra—before she could be stopped—joined in, something hardened inside her, some realization that she was her father’s daughter, some ghost-memory of Nadir Khan hiding from crescent knives in a cornfield, some irritation of her nasal passages, and she went downstairs to the rescue, although Zohra screeched, “What you doing, sisterji, that mad beast, for God, don’t let him in here, have your brains gone raw?” … My mother opened the door and Lifafa Das fell in.
    Picture her that morning, a dark shadow between the mob and its prey, her womb bursting with its invisible untold secret: “Wah, wah,” she applauded the crowd. “What heroes! Heroes, I swear, absolutely! Only fifty of you against this terrible monster of a fellow! Allah, you make my eyes shine with pride.”
    … And Zohra, “Come back, sisterji!” And the oily quiff, “Why speak for this goonda, Begum Sahiba? This is not right acting.” And Amina, “I know this man. He is a decent type. Go, get out, none of you have anything to do? In a Muslim muhalla you would tear a man to pieces? Go, remove yourselves.” But the mob has stopped being surprised, and is moving forward again … and now. Now it comes.
    “Listen,”
my mother shouted,
“Listen well. I am with child. I am a mother who will have a child, and I am giving this man my shelter. Come on now, if you want to kill, kill a mother also and show the world what men you are!”
    That was how it came about that my arrival—the coming of Saleem Sinai—was announced to the assembled masses of the people before my father had heard about it. From the moment of my conception, it seems, I have been public property.
    But although my mother was right when she made her public announcement, she was also wrong. This is why: the baby she was carrying did not turn out to be her son.
    My mother came to Delhi; worked assiduously at loving her husband; was prevented by Zohra and khichri and clattering feet from telling her husband her news; heard screams; made a public announcement. And it worked. My annunciation saved a life.
    After the crowd dispersed, old Musa the bearer went into the street and rescued Lifafa Das’s peepshow, while Amina gave the young man with the beautiful smile glass after glass of fresh lime water. It seemed that his experience had drained him not only of liquid but also sweetness, because he put four spoonfuls of raw sugar into every glass, while Zohra cowered in pretty terror on a sofa. And, at length, Lifafa Das (rehydrated by lime water, sweetened by sugar) said: “Begum Sahiba, you are a great lady. If you allow, I bless your house; also your unborn child. But also—please permit—I will do one thing more for you.”
    “Thank you,” my mother said, “but you must do nothing at all.”
    But he continued (the sweetness of sugar coating his tongue). “My cousin, Shri Ramram Seth, is a great seer, Begum Sahiba. Palmist, astrologer, fortune-teller. You will please come to him, and he will reveal to you the future of your son.”
    Soothsayers prophesied me … in January 1947, my mother Amina Sinai was offered the gift of a prophecy in return for her gift of a life. And despite Zohra’s “It is madness to go with this one, Amina sister, do not even think of it for one sec, these are times to be careful”; despite her memories of her father’s scepticism and of his thumbandforefinger closing around a maulvi’s ear, the offer touched my mother in a place which answered Yes.