Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [50]
But today there is something hysterical in the air; something brittle and menacing has settled on the muhalla as the cloud of cremated Indiabikes hangs overhead … and now it slips its leash, as this girl with her one continuous eyebrow squeals, her voice lisping with an innocence it does not possess, “Me firtht! Out of my way … let me thee! I can’t thee!” Because there are already eyes at the holes in the box, there are already children absorbed in the progression of postcards, and Lifafa Das says (without pausing in his work—he goes right on turning the knob which keeps the postcards moving inside the box), “A few minutes, bibi; everyone will have his turn; wait only.” To which the one-eyebrowed midget queen replies, “No! No! I want to be firtht!” Lifafa stops smiling—becomes invisible—shrugs. Unbridled fury appears on the face of the midget queen. And now an insult rises; a deadly barb trembles on her lips. “You’ve got a nerve, coming into thith muhalla! I know you: my father knows you: everyone knows you’re a Hindu!!”
Lifafa Das stands silently, turning the handles of his box; but now the pony-tailed one-eyebrowed valkyrie is chanting, pointing with pudgy fingers, and the boys in their school whites and snake-buckles are joining in, “Hindu! Hindu! Hindu!” And chick-blinds are flying up; and from his window the girl’s father leans out and joins in, hurling abuse at a new target, and the Bengali joins in in Bengali … “Mother raper! Violator of our daughters!” … and remember the papers have been talking about assaults on Muslim children, so suddenly a voice screams out—a woman’s voice, maybe even silly Zohra’s, “Rapist! Arré my God they found the badmaash! There he is!” And now the insanity of the cloud like a pointing finger and the whole disjointed unreality of the times seizes the muhalla, and the screams are echoing from every window, and the schoolboys have begun to chant, “Ra-pist! Ra-pist! Ra-ray-ray-pist!” without really knowing what 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