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By Root 20201 0

“See, my little piece-of-the-moon!” Amina cried cutting a cake covered with candied farmyard animals, “So chweet! Never takes out one tear!” Sandbagging down the floods of tears lurking just beneath my eyes, the tears of heat discomfort and the absence of One Yard Of Chocolates in my pile of presents, I took a slice of cake to Reverend Mother, who was ill in bed. I had been given a doctor’s stethoscope; it was around my neck. She gave me permission to examine her; I prescribed more exercise. “You must walk across the room, to the almirah and back, once a day. You may lean on me; I am the doctor.” Stethoscoped English milord guided witchmoled grandmother across the room; hobblingly, creakingly, she obeyed. After three months of this treatment, she made a full recovery. The neighbors came to celebrate, bearing rasgullas and gulab-jamans and other sweets. Reverend Mother, seated regally on a takht in the living-room, announced: “See my grandson? He cured me, whatsitsname. Genius! Genius, whatsitsname: it is a gift from God.” Was that it, then? Should I stop worrying? Was genius something utterly unconnected with wanting, or learning how, or knowing about, or being able to? Something which, at the appointed hour, would float down around my shoulders like an immaculate, delicately worked pashmina shawl? Greatness as a falling mantle: which never needed to be sent to the dhobi. One does not beat genius upon a stone … That one clue, my grandmother’s one chance sentence, was my only hope; and, as it turned out, she wasn’t very far wrong. (The accident is almost upon me; and the children of midnight are waiting.)

Years later, in Pakistan, on the very night when the roof was to fall in on her head and squash her flatter than a rice-pancake, Amina Sinai saw the old washing-chest in a vision. When it popped up inside her eyelids, she greeted it like a not-particularly-welcome cousin. “So it’s you again,” she told it, “Well, why not? Things keep coming back to me these days. Seems you just can’t leave anything behind.” She had grown prematurely old like all the women in our family; the chest reminded her of the year in which old age had first begun creeping up on her. The great heat of 1956—which Mary Pereira told me was caused by little blazing invisible insects—buzzed in her ears once again. “My corns began killing me then,” she said aloud, and the Civil Defense official who had called to enforce the blackout smiled sadly to himself and thought, Old people shroud themselves in the past during a war, that way they’re ready to die whenever required. He crept away past the mountains of defective terry towels which filled most of the house, and left Amina to discuss her dirty laundry in private … Nussie Ibrahim—Nussie-the-duck—used to admire Amina: “Such posture, my dear, that you’ve got! Such tone! I swear it’s a wonder to me: you glide about like you’re on an invisible trolley!” But in the summer of the heat insects, my elegant mother finally lost her battle against verrucas, because the sadhu Purushottam suddenly lost his magic. Water had worn a bald patch in his hair; the steady dripping of the years had worn him down. Was he disillusioned with his blessed child, his Mubarak? Was it my fault that his mantras lost their power? With an air of great trouble, he told my mother, “Never mind; wait only; I’ll fix your feet for sure.” But Amina’s corns grew worse; she went to doctors who froze them with carbon dioxide at absolute zero; but that only brought them back with redoubled vigor, so that she began to hobble, her gliding days done for ever; and she recognized the unmistakable greeting of old age. (Chock-full of fantasy, I transformed her into a silkie—“Amma, maybe you’re a mermaid really, taking human form for the love of a man—so every step is like walking on razor blades!” My mother smiled, but did not laugh.)

1956. Ahmed Sinai and Doctor Narlikar played chess and argued—my father was a bitter opponent of Nasser, while Narlikar admired him openly. “The man is bad for business,” Ahmed said: “But he’s got style,” Narlikar responded, glowing passionately,