Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [203]
After my sixteenth birthday, I studied history at my aunt Alia’s college; but not even learning could make me feel a part of this country devoid of midnight children, in which my fellow-students took out processions to demand a stricter, more Islamic society—proving that they had contrived to become the antitheses of students everywhere else on earth, by demanding more-rules-not-less. My parents, however, were determined to put down roots; although Ayub Khan and Bhutto were forging an alliance with China (which had so recently been our enemy), Ahmed and Amina would listen to no criticisms of their new home; and my father bought a towel factory.
There was a new brilliance about my parents in those days; Amina had lost her guilt-fog, her verrucas seemed not to be playing up any more; while Ahmed, although still whitened, had felt the freeze of his loins thawing under the heat of his newfound love for his wife. On some mornings, Amina had toothmarks on her neck; she giggled uncontrollably at times, like a schoolgirl. “You two, honestly,” her sister Alia said, “Like honeymooners or I don’t know what.” But I could smell what was hidden behind Alia’s teeth; what stayed inside when the friendly words came out … Ahmed Sinai named his towels after his wife: Amina Brand.
“Who are these multi-multis? These Dawoods, Saigols, Haroons?” he cried gaily, dismissing the 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