Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [176]
The valley lay hidden in an eggshell of ice; the mountains had closed in, to snarl like angry jaws around the city on the lake … winter in Srinagar; winter in Kashmir. On Friday, December 27th, a man answering to my grandfather’s description was seen, chugha-coated, drooling, in the vicinity of the Hazratbal Mosque. At four forty-five on Saturday morning, Haji Muhammad Khalil Ghanai noticed the theft, from the Mosque’s inner sanctum, of the valley’s most treasured relic: the holy hair of the Prophet Muhammad.
Did he? Didn’t he? If it was him, why did he not enter the Mosque, stick in hand, to belabor the faithful as he had become accustomed to doing? If not him, then why? There were rumors of a Central Government plot to “demoralize the Kashmiri Muslims,” by stealing their sacred hair; and counter-rumors about Pakistani agents provocateurs, who supposedly stole the relic to foment unrest … did they? Or not? Was this bizarre incident truly political, or was it the penultimate attempt at revenge upon God by a father who had lost his son? For ten days, no food was cooked in any Muslim home; there were riots and burnings of cars; but my grandfather was above politics now, and is not known to have joined in any processions. He was a man with a single mission; and what is known is that on January 1st, 1964 (a Wednesday, just one week after his departure from Agra), he set his face towards the hill which Muslims erroneously called the Takht-e-Sulaiman, Solomon’s seat, atop which stood a radio mast, but also the black blister of the temple of Sankara Acharya. Ignoring the distress of the city, my grandfather climbed; while the cracking sickness within him gnawed patiently through his bones. He was not recognized.
Doctor Aadam Aziz (Heidelberg-returned) died five days before the government announced that its massive search for the single hair of the Prophet’s head had been successful. When the State’s holiest saints assembled to authenticate the hair, my grandfather was unable to tell them the truth. (If they were wrong … but I can’t answer the questions I’ve asked.) Arrested for the crime—and later released on grounds of ill-health—was one Abdul Rahim Bande; but perhaps my grandfather, had he lived, could have shed a stranger light on the affair … at midday on January 1st, Aadam Aziz arrived outside the temple of Sankara Acharya. He was seen to raise his walking-stick; inside the temple, women performing the rite of puja at the Shiva-lingam shrunk back—as women had once shrank from the wrath of another, tetra-pod-obsessed doctor; and then the cracks claimed him, and his legs gave way beneath him as the bones disintegrated, and the effect of his fall was to shatter the rest of his skeleton beyond all hope of repair. He was identified by the papers in the pocket of his chugha-coat: a photograph of his son, and a half-completed (and fortunately, correctly addressed) letter to his wife. The body, too fragile to be transported, was buried in the valley of his birth.
I am watching Padma; her muscles have begun to twitch distractedly. “Consider this,” I say. “Is what happened to my grandfather so very strange? Compare it with the mere fact of the holy fuss over the theft of a hair; because every last detail of that is true, and by comparison, an old man’s death is surely perfectly normal.” Padma relaxes; her muscles give me the go-ahead. Because I’ve spent too long on Aadam Aziz; perhaps I’m afraid of what must be told next; but the revelation will not be denied.
One last fact: after the death of my grandfather, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru fell ill and never recovered his health. This fatal sickness finally killed him on May 27th, 1964.