What is waiting to be told: the return of ticktock. But now time is counting down to an end, not a birth; there is, too, a weariness to be mentioned, a general fatigue1 so profound that the end, when it comes, will be the only solution, because human beings, like nations and fictional2 characters, can simply run out of steam, and then there's nothing for it but to finish with them.
How a piece fell out of the moon, and Saleem achieved purity ... the clock is ticking now; and because all countdowns require a zero, let me state that the end came on September 22nd, 1965; and that the precise instant of the arrival-at-zero was, inevitably3, the stroke of midnight. Although the old grandfather clock in my aunt Alia's house, which kept accurate time but always chimed two minutes late, never had a chance to strike.
My grandmother Naseem Aziz arrived in Pakistan in mid-1964, leaving behind an India in which Nehru's death had precipitated4 a bitter power struggle. Morarji Desai, the Finance Minister, and Jagjivan Ram5, most powerful of the untouchables, united in their determination to prevent the establishment of a Nehru dynasty; so Indira Gandhi was denied the leadership. The new Prime Minister was Lal Bahadur Shastri, another member of that generation of politicians who seemed to have been pickled in immortality7; in the case of Shastri, however, this was only maya, illusion. Nehru and Shastri have both fully8 proved their mortality; but there are still plenty of the others left, clutching Time in their mummified fingers and refusing to let it move ... in Pakistan, however, the clocks ticked and locked.
Reverend Mother did not overtly9 approve of my sister's career; it smacked10 too much of film-stardom. 'My family, whatsitsname,' she sighed to Pia mumani, 'is even less controllable than the price of gas.' Secretly, however, she may have been impressed, because she respected power and position and Jamila was now so exalted11 as to be welcome in the most powerful and best-placed houses in the land ... my grandmother settled in Rawalpindi; however, with a strange show of independence, she chose not to live in the house of General Zulfikar. She and my aunt Pia moved into a modest bungalow12 in the old part of town; and by pooling their savings13, purchased a concession14 on the long-dreamed-of petrol pump.
Naseem never mentioned Aadam Aziz, nor would she grieve over him; it was almost as though she were relieved that my querulous grandfather, who had in his youth despised the Pakistan movement, and who in all probability blamed the Muslim League for the death of his friend Mian Abdullah, had by dying permitted her to go alone into the Land of the Pure. Setting her face against the past, Reverend Mother concentrated on gasoline and oil. The pump was on a prime site, near the Rawalpindi-Lahore grand trunk road-it did very well. Pia and Naseem took it in turns to spend the day in the manager's glass booth while attendants filled up cars and Army trucks. They proved a magical combination. Pia attracted customers with the beacon16 of a beauty which obstinately17 refused to fade; while Reverend Mother, who had been transformed by bereave18, ment into a woman who was more interested in other people's lives than her own, took to inviting19 the pump's customers into her glass booth for cups of pink Kashmiri tea; they would accept with some trepidation20, but when they realized that the old lady did not propose to bore them with endless reminiscences, they relaxed, loosened collars and tongues, and Reverend Mother was able to bathe in the blessed oblivion of other people's lives. The pump rapidly became famous in those parts, drivers began to go out of their way to use it - often on two consecutive21 days, so that they could both feast their eyes on my divine aunt and tell their woes22 to my eternally patient grandmother, who had developed the absorbent properties of a sponge, and always waited until her guests had completely finished before squeezing out of her own lips a few drops of simple, firm advice - while their cars were filled up with petrol and polished by pump-attendants, my grandmother would re-charge and polish their lives. She sat in her glass confessional and solved the problems of the world; her own family, however, seemed to have lost importance in her eyes.
Moustachioed, matriarchal, proud: Naseem Aziz had found her own way of coping with tragedy; but in finding it had become the first victim of that spirit of detached fatigue which made the end the only possible solution. (Tick, tock.)
... However, on the face of it, she appeared to have not the slightest intention of following her husband into the camphor garden reserved for the righteous; she seemed to have more in common with the methuselah leaders of her abandoned India. She grew, with alarming rapidity, wider and wider; until builders were summoned to expand her glassed-in booth. 'Make it big big,' she instructed them, with a rare flash of humour, 'Maybe I'll still be here after a century, whatsitsname, and Allah knows how big I'll have become; I don't want to be troubling you every ten-twelve years.'
Pia Aziz, however, was not content with 'pumpery-shumpery'. She began a series of liaisons23 with colonels cricketers polo-players diplomats24, which were easy to conceal25 from a Reverend Mother who had lost interest in the doings of everyone except strangers; but which were otherwise the talk of what was, after all, a small town. My aunt Emerald took Pia to task; she replied: 'You want me to be forever howling and pulling hair? I'm still young; young folk should gad26 a little.' Emerald, thin-lipped: 'But be a little respectable ... the family name ...' At which Pia tossed her head. 'You be respectable, sister,' she said, 'Me, I'll be alive.'
But it seems to me that there was something hollow in Pia's self-assertion; that she, too, felt her personality draining away with the years; that her feverish27 romancing was a last desperate attempt to behave 'in character' - in the way a woman like her was supposed to do. Her heart wasn't in it; somewhere inside, she, too, was waiting for an end ... In my family, we have always been vulnerable to things which fall from the skies, ever since Ahmed Sinai was slapped by a vulture-dropped hand; and bolts from the blue were only a year away.
After the news of my grandfather's death and the arrival of Reverend Mother in Pakistan, I began to dream repeatedly of Kashmir; although I had never walked in Shalimar-bagh, I did so at night; I floated in shikaras and climbed Sankara Acharya's hill as my grandfather had; I saw lotus-roots and mountains like angry jaws28. This, too, may be seen as an aspect of the detachment which came to afflict29 us all (except Jamila, who had God and country to keep her going) - a reminder30 of my family's separateness from both India and Pakistan. In Rawalpindi, my grandmother drank pink Kashmiri tea; in Karachi, her grandson was washed by the waters of a lake he had never seen. It would not be long before the dream of Kashmir spilled over into the minds of the rest of the population of Pakistan; connection-to-history refused to abandon me, and I found my dream becoming, in 1965, the common property of the nation, and a factor of prime importance in the coming end, when all manner of things fell from the skies, and I was purified at last.
Saleem could sink no lower: I could smell, on myself, the cess-pit stink31 of my iniquities32. I had come to the Land of the Pure, and sought the company of whores - when I should have been forging a new, upright life for myself, I gave birth, instead, to an unspeakable (and also unrequited) love. Possessed33 by the beginnings of the great fatalism which was to overwhelm me, I rode the city streets on my Lambretta; Jamila and I avoided each, other as much as possible, unable, for the first time in our lives, to say a word to one another.
Purity - that highest of ideals! - that angelic virtue34 for which Pakistan was named, and which dripped from every note of my sister's songs! - seemed very far away; how could I have known that history - which has the power of pardoning sinners - was at that moment counting down towards a moment in which it would manage, at one stroke, to cleanse35 me from head to foot?
In the meantime, other forces were spending themselves; Alia Aziz had begun to wreak36 her awful spinster's revenge.
Guru Mandir days: paan-smells, cooking-smells, the languorous37 odour of the shadow of the minaret38, the mosque39's long pointing finger: while my aunt Alia's hatred40 of the man who had abandoned her and of the sister who had married him grew into a tangible41, visible thing, it sat on her living-room rug like a great gecko, reeking42 of vomit43; but it seemed I was the only one to smell it, because Alia's skill at dissimulation44 had grown as rapidly as the hairiness of her chin and her adeptness45 with the plasters with which, each evening, she ripped her beard out by the roots.
My aunt Alia's contribution to the fate of nations - through her school and college - must not be minimized. Having allowed her old-maid frustrations46 to leak into the curricula, the bricks and also the students at her twin educational establishments, she had raised a tribe of children and young adults who felt themselves possessed by an ancient vengefulness, without fully knowing why. O omnipresent aridity47 of maiden48 aunts! It soured the paintwork of her home; her furniture was made lumpy by the harsh stuffing of bitterness; old-maid repressions49 were sewn into curtain-seams. As once long ago into baby things of.
Bitterness, issuing through the fissures50 of the earth.
What my aunt Alia took pleasure in: cooking. What she had, during the lonely madness of the years, raised to the level of an art-form: the impregnation of food with emotions. To whom she remained second in her achievements in this field: my old ayah, Mary Pereira. By whom, today, both old cooks have been outdone: Saleem Sinai, pickler-in-chief at the Braganza pickle6 works ...
nevertheless, while we lived in her Guru Mandir mansion51, she fed us the birianis of dissension and the nargisi koftas of discord52; and little by little, even the harmonies of my parents' autumnal love went out of tune53.
But good things must also be said about my aunt. In politics, she spoke54 out vociferously55 against government-by-military-say-so; if she had not had a General for a brother-in-law, her school and college might well have been taken out of her hands. Let me not show her entirely56 through the dark glass of my private despondency: she had given lecture-tours in the Soviet57 Union and America. Also, her food tasted good. (Despite its hidden content.)
But the air and the food in that mosque-shadowed house began to take its toll58 ... Saleem, under the doubly dislocating influence of his awful love and Alia's food, began to blush like a beetroot whenever his sister appeared in his thoughts; while Jamila, unconsciously seized by a longing59 for fresh air and food unseasoned by dark emotions, began to spend less and less time there, travelling instead up and down the country (but never to the East Wing) to give her concerts. On those increasingly rare occasions when brother and sister found themselves in the same room they would jump, startled, half an inch off the floor, and then, landing, stare furiously at the spot over which they had leaped, as if it had suddenly become as hot as a bread-oven. At other times, too, they indulged in behaviour whose meaning would have been transparently60 obvious, were it not for the fact that each occupant of the house had other things on his or her mind: Jamila, for instance, took to keeping on her gold-and-white travelling veil indoors until she was sure her brother was out, even if she was dizzy with heat; while Saleem - who continued, slave-fashion, to fetch leavened61 bread from the nunnery of Santa Ignacia - avoided handing her the loaves himself; on occasion he asked his poisonous aunt to act as intermediary.
Alia looked at him with amusement and asked, 'What's wrong with you, boy - you haven't got an infectious disease?' Saleem blushed furiously, fearing that his aunt had guessed about his encounters with paid women; and maybe she had, but she was after bigger fish.
... He also developed a penchant62 for lapsing63 into long broody silences, which he interrupted by bursting out suddenly with a meaningless word: 'No!' or, 'But!'
or even more arcane64 exclamations66, such as 'Bang!' or 'Whaam!' Nonsense words amidst clouded silences: as if Saleem were conducting some inner dialogue of such intensity67 that fragments of it, or its pain, boiled up from time to time past the surface of his lips. This inner discord was undoubtedly68 worsened by the curries69 of disquiet70 which we were obliged to eat; and at the end, when Amina was reduced to talking to invisible washing-chests and Ahmed, in the desolation of his stroke, was capable of little more than dribbles71 and giggles72, while I glowered73 silently in my own private withdrawal74, my aunt must have been well-pleased with the effectiveness of her revenge upon the Sinai clan75; unless she, too, was drained by the fulfilment of her long-nurtured ambition; in which case she, too, had run out of possibilities, and there were hollow overtones in her footsteps as she stalked through the insane asylum76 of her home with her chin covered in hair-plasters, while her niece jumped over suddenly-hot patches of floor and her nephew yelled 'Yaa!' out of nowhere and her erstwhile suitor sent spittle down his chin and Amina greeted the resurgent ghosts of her past: 'So it's you again; well, why not? Nothing ever seems to go away.'
Tick, tock ... In January 1965, my mother Amina Sinai discovered that she was pregnant again, after a gap of seventeen years. When she was sure, she told her good news to her big sister Alia, giving my aunt the opportunity of perfecting her revenge. What Alia said to my mother is not known; what she stirred into her cooking must remain a matter for conjecture77; but the effect on Amina was devastating78. She was plagued by dreams of a monster child with a cauliflower instead of a brain; she was beset79 by phantoms80 of Ramram Seth, and the old prophecy of a child with two heads began to drive her wild all over again. My mother was forty-two years old; and the fears (both natural and Alia-induced) of bearing a child at such an age tarnished82 the brilliant aura which had hung around her ever since she nursed her husband into his loving autumn; under the influence of the kormas of my aunt's vengeance83 - spiced with forebodings as well as cardamoms - my mother became afraid of her child. As the months passed, her forty-two years began to take a terrible toll; the weight of her four decades grew daily, crushing her beneath her age. In her second month, her hair went white. By the third, her face had shrivelled like a rotting mango. In her fourth month she was already an old woman, lined and thick, plagued by verrucas once again, with the inevitability85 of hair sprouting86 all over her face; she seemed shrouded87 once more in a fog of shame, as though the baby were a scandal in a lady of her evident antiquity88. As the child of those confused days grew within her, the contrast between its youth and her age increased; it was at this point that she collapsed89 into an old cane65 chair and received visits from the spectres of her past. The disintegration90 of my mother was appalling91 in its suddenness; Ahmed Sinai, observing helplessly, found himself, all of a sudden, unnerved, adrift, unmanned.
Even now, I find it hard to write about those days of the end of possibility, when my father found his towel factory crumbling92 in his hands. The effects of Alia's culinary witchcraft93 (which operated both through his stomach, when he ate, and his eyes, when he saw his wife) were now all too apparent in him: he became slack at factory management, and irritable94 with his work-force.
To sum up the ruination of Amina Brand Towels: Ahmed Sinai began treating his workers as peremptorily95 as once, in Bombay, he had mis-treated servants, and sought to inculcate, in master weavers96 and assistant packers alike, the eternal verities97 of the master-servant relationship. As a result his work-force walked out on him in droves, explaining, for instance, 'I am not your latrine-cleaner, sahib; I am qualified98 Grade One weaver,' and in general refusing to show proper gratitude99 for his beneficence in having employed them. In the grip of the befuddling100 wrath101 of my aunt's packed lunches, he let them all go, and hired a bunch of ill-favoured slackers who pilfered102 cotton spools103 and machine parts but were willing to bow and scrape whenever required to do so; and the percentage of defective104 towels rocketed alarmingly, contracts were not fulfilled, re-orders shrank alarmingly. Ahmed Sinai began bringing home mountains - Himalayas! - of reject towelling, because the factory warehouse105 was full to overflowing106 of the sub-standard product of his mismanagement; he took to drink again, and by the summer of that year the house in Guru Mandir was awash in the old obscenities of his battle against the djinns, and we had to squeeze sideways past the Everests and Nanga-Parbats of badly-made terrycloth which lined the passages and hall.
We had delivered ourselves into the lap of my fat aunt's long-simmered wrath; with the single exception of Jamila, who was least affected108 owing to her long absences, we all ended up with our geese well and truly cooked. It was a painful and bewildering time, in which the love of my parents disintegrated109 under the joint110 weight of their new baby and of my aunt's age-old grievances111; and gradually the confusion and ruin seeped112 out through the windows of the house and took over the hearts and minds of the nation, so that war, when it came, was wrapped in the same fuddled haze113 of unreality in which we had begun to live.
My father was heading steadily114 towards his stroke; but before the bomb went off in his brain, another fuse was lit: in April 1965, we heard about the peculiar115 incidents in the Rann of Kutch.
While we thrashed like flies in the webs of my aunt's revenge, the mill of history continued to grind. President Ayub's reputation was in decline: rumours116 of malpractice in the 1964 election buzzed about, refusing to be swatted. There was, too, the matter of the President's son: Gauhar Ayub, whose enigmatic Gandhara Industries made him a 'multi-multi' overnight. O endless sequence of nefarious117 sons-of-the-great! Gauhar, with his bullyings and ran tings; and later, in India, Sanjay Gandhi and his Maruti Car Company and his Congress Youth; and most recently of all, Kami Lal Desai ... the sons of the great unmake their parents. But I, too, have a son; Aadam Sinai, flying in the face of precedent118, will reverse the trend. Sons can be better than their fathers, as well as worse ... in April 1965, however, the air buzzed with the fallibility of sons. And whose son was it who scaled the walls of President House on April 1st - what unknown father spawned119 the foul-smelling fellow who ran up to the President and fired a pistol at his stomach? Some fathers remain mercifully unknown to history; at any rate, the assassin failed, because his gun miraculously120 jammed. Somebody's son was taken away by police to have his teeth pulled out one by one, to have his nails set on fire; burning cigarette-ends were no doubt pressed against the tip of his penis, so it would probably not be much consolation121 for that nameless, would-be assassin to know that he had simply been carried away by a tide of history in which sons (high and low) were frequently observed to behave exceptionally badly. (No: I do not exempt122 myself.)
Divorce between news and reality: newspapers quoted foreign economists123 - PAKISTAN A MODEL FOR EMERGING NATIONS - while peasants (unreported) cursed the so-called 'green revolution', claiming that most of the newly-drilled water-wells had been useless, poisoned, and in the wrong places anyway; while editorials praised the probity124 of the nation's leadership, rumours, thick as flies, mentioned Swiss bank accounts and the new American motor-cars of the President's son. The Karachi Dawn spoke of another dawn - GOOD INDO-PAK RELATIONS JUST AROUND THE CORNER? - but, in the Rann of Kutch, yet another inadequate125 son was discovering a different story.
In the cities, mirages126 and lies; to the north, in the high mountains, the Chinese were building roads and planning nuclear blasts; but it is time to revert127 from the general to the particular; or, to be more exact, to the General's son, my cousin, the enuretic Zafar Zulfikar. Who became, between April and July, the archetype of all the many disappointing sons in the land; history, working through him, was also pointing its finger at Gauhar, at future-Sanjay and Kanti-Lal-to-come; and, naturally, at me.
So - cousin Zafar. With whom I had much in common at that time ... my heart was full of forbidden love; his trousers, despite all his efforts, filled continually with something rather more tangible, but equally forbidden. I dreamed of mythical128 lovers, both happy and star-crossed - Shah Jehan and Mumtaz Mahal, but also Montague-and-Capulet; he dreamed of his Kifi fiancee, whose failure to arrive at puberty even after her sixteenth birthday must have made her seem, in his thoughts, a fantasy of an unattainable future ... in April 1965, Zafar was sent on manoeuvres to the Pakistan-controlled zone of the Rann of Kutch.
Cruelty of the continent towards the loose-bladdered: Zafar, although a Lieutenant129, was the laughing-stock of the Abbottabad military base. There was a story that he had been instructed to wear a rubber undergarment like a balloon around his genitals, so that the glorious uniform of the Pak Army should not be desecrated130; mere107 jawans, when he passed, would make a blowing movement of their cheeks, as if they were puffing131 up the balloon. (All this became public later, in the statement he made, in floods of tears, after his arrest for murder.) It is possible that Zafar's assignment to the Rann of Kutch was thought up by a tactful superior, who was only trying to get him out of the firing-line of Abbottabad humour ... Incontinence doomed132 Zafar Zulfikar to a crime as heinous133 as my own. I loved my sister; while he ... but let me tell the story the right way up.
Ever since Partition, the Rann had been 'disputed territory.'; although, in practice, neither side had much heart for the dispute. On the hillocks along the 23rd parallel, the unofficial frontier, the Pakistan Government had built a string of border posts, each with its lonely garrison134 of six men and one beacon-light. Several of these posts were occupied on April 9th, 1965, by troops of the Indian Army; a Pakistani force, including my cousin Zafar, which had been in the area on manoeuvres, engaged in an eighty-two-day struggle for the frontier. The war in the Rann lasted until July 1st. That much is fact; but everything else lies concealed135 beneath the doubly hazy136 air of unreality and make-believe which affected all goings-on in those days, and especially all events in the phantasmagoric Rann ... so that the story I am going to tell, which is substantially that told by my cousin Zafar, is as likely to be true as anything; as anything, that is to say, except what we were officially told.
... As the young Pakistani soldiers entered the marshy137 terrain138 of the Rann, a cold clammy perspiration139 broke out on their foreheads, and they were unnerved by the greeny sea-bed quality of the light; they recounted stories which frightened them even more, legends of terrible things which happened in this amphibious zone, of demonic sea-beasts with glowing eyes, of fish-women who lay with their fishy140 heads underwater, breathing, while their perfectly-formed and naked human lower halves lay on the shore, tempting141 the unwary into fatal sexual acts, because it is well known that nobody may love a fish-woman and live ... so that by the time they reached the border posts and went to war, they were a scared rabble142 of seventeen-year-old boys, and would certainly have been annihilated143, except that the opposing Indians had been subjected to the green air of the Rann even longer than they; so in that sorcerers' world a crazy war was fought in which each side thought it saw apparitions144 of devils fighting alongside its foes145; but in the end the Indian forces yielded; many of them collapsed in floods of tears and wept, Thank God, it's over; they told about the great blubbery things which slithered around the border posts at night, and the floating-in-air spirits of drowned men with seaweed wreaths and seashells in their navels. What the surrendering Indian soldiers said, within my cousin's hearing: 'Anyway, these border posts were unmanned; we just saw them empty and came inside.'
The mystery of the deserted147 border posts did not, at first, seem like a puzzle to the young Pakistani soldiers who were required to occupy them until new border guards were sent; my cousin Lieutenant Zafar found his bladder and bowels148 voiding themselves with hysterical149 frequency for the seven nights he spent occupying one of the posts with only five jawans for company. During nights filled with the shrieks150 of witches and the nameless slithery shufflings of the dark, the six youngsters were reduced to so abject151 a state that nobody laughed at my cousin any more, they were all too busy wetting their own pants. One of the jawans whispered in terror during the ghostly evil of their last-but-one night: 'Listen, boys, if I had to sit here for a living, I'd bloody152 well run away, too!'
In a state of utter jelly-like breakdown153 the soldiers sweated in the Rann; and then on the last night their worst fears came true, they saw an army of ghosts coming out of the darkness towards them; they were in the border post nearest the sea-shore, and in the greeny moonlight they could see the sails of ghost-ships, of phantom81 dhows; and the ghost-army approached, relentlessly154, despite the screams of the soldiers, spectres bearing moss-covered chests and strange shrouded litters piled high with unseen things; and when the ghost-army came in through the door, my cousin Zafar fell at their feet and began to gibber horribly.
The first phantom to enter the outpost had several missing teeth and a curved knife stuck in his belt; when he saw the soldiers in the hut his eyes blazed with a vermilion fury. 'God's pity!' the ghost chieftain said, 'What are you mother-sleepers here for? Didn't you all get properly paid off?'
Not ghosts; smugglers. The six young soldiers found themselves in absurd postures155 of abject terror, and although they tried to redeem156 themselves, their shame was engulfingly complete ... and now we come to it. In whose name were the smugglers operating? Whose name fell from the lips of the smuggler-chief, and made my cousin's eyes open in horror? Whose fortune, built originally on the miseries157 of fleeing Hindu families in 1947, was now augmented158 by these spring-and-summer smugglers' convoys159 through the unguarded Rann and thence into the cities of Pakistan? Which Punch-faced General, with a voice as thin as a razor-blade, commanded the phantom troops? ... But I shall concentrate on facts.
In July 1965, my cousin Zafar returned on leave to his father's house in Rawalpindi; and one morning he began to walk slowly towards his father's bedroom, bearing on his shoulders not only the memory of a thousand childhood humiliations and blows; not only the shame of his lifelong enuresis; but also the knowledge that his own father had been responsible for what-happened-at-the-Rann, when Zafar Zulfikar was reduced to gibbering on a floor. My cousin found his father in his bedside bath, and slit146 his' throat with a long, curved smuggler's knife.
Hidden behind newspaper reports - DASTARDLY INDIAN INVASION REPELLED160 BY OUR GALLANT161 BOYS-the truth about General Zulfikar became a ghostly, uncertain thing; the paying-off of border guards became, in the papers, INNOCENT SOLDIERS MASSACRED BY INDIAN FAUJ; and who would spread the story of my uncle's vast smuggling162 activities? What General, what politician did not possess the transistor163 radios of my uncle's illegality, the air-conditioning units and the imported watches of his sins? General Zulfikar died; cousin Zafar went to prison and was spared marriage to a Kifi princess who obstinately refused to menstruate precisely164 in order to be spared marriage to him; and the incidents in the Rann of Kutch became the tinder, so to speak, of the larger fire that broke out in August, the fire of the end, in which Saleem finally, and in spite of himself, achieved his elusive165 purity.
As for my aunt Emerald: she was given permission to emigrate; she had made preparations to do so, intending to leave for Suffolk in England, where she was to stay with her husband's old commanding officer, Brigadier Dodson, who had begun, in his dotage166, to spend his time in the company of equally old India hands, watching old films of the Delhi Durbar and the arrival of George V at the Gateway167 of India... she was looking forward to the empty oblivion of nostalgia168 and the English winter when the war came and settled all our problems.
On the first day of the 'false peace' which would last a mere thirty-seven days, the stroke hit Ahmed Sinai. It left him paralysed all the way down his left side, and restored him to the dribbles and giggles of his infancy169; he, too, mouthed nonsense-words, showing a marked preference for the naughty childhood names of excreta. Giggling170 'Caeca!' and 'Soo-soo!' my father came to the end of his chequered career, having once more, and for the last time, lost his way, and also his battle with the djinns. He sat, stunned171 and cackling, amid the faulty towels of his life; amid faulty towels, my mother, crushed beneath the weight of her monstrous172 pregnancy173, inclined her head gravely as she was visited by Lila Sabarmati's pianola, or the ghost of her brother Hanif, or a pair of hands which danced, moths-around-a-flame, around and around her own... Commander Sabarmati came to see her with his curious baton174 in his hand, and Nussie-the-duck whispered, "The end, Amina sister! The end of the world!' in my mother's withering175 ear ... and now, having fought my way through the diseased reality of my Pakistan years, having struggled to make a little sense out of what seemed (through the mist of my aunt Alia's revenge) like a terrible, occult series of reprisals176 for tearing up our Bombay roots, I have reached the point at which I must tell you about ends.
Let me state this quite unequivocally: it is my firm conviction that the hidden purpose of the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965 was nothing more nor less than the elimination177 of my benighted178 family from the face of the earth. In order to understand the recent history of our times, it is only necessary to examine the bombing-pattern of that war with an analytical179, unprejudiced eye.
Even ends have beginnings; everything must be told in sequence. (I have Padma, after all, squashing all my attempts to put the cart before the bullock.) By August 8th, 1965, my family history had got itself into a condition from which what-.was-achieved-by-bombing-patterns provided a merciful relief. No: let me use the important word: if we were to be purified, something on the scale of what followed was probably necessary.
Alia Aziz, sated with her terrible revenge; my aunt Emerald, widowed and awaiting exile; the hollow lasciviousness180 of my aunt Pia and the glass-boothed withdrawal of my grandmother Naseem Aziz; my cousin Zafar, with his eternally pre-pubertal princess and his future of wetting mattresses181 in jail-cells; the retreat into childishness of my father and the haunted, accelerated ageing of pregnant Amina Sinai ... all these terrible conditions were to be cured as a result of the adoption182, by the Government, of my dream of visiting Kashmir. In the meantime, the flinty refusals of my sister to countenance183 my love had driven me into a deeply fatalistic frame of mind; in the grip of my new carelessness about my future I told Uncle Puffs184 that I was willing to marry any one of the Puffias he chose for me. (By doing so, I doomed them all; everyone who attempts to forge ties with our household ends up by sharing our fate.)
I am trying to stop being mystifying. Important to concentrate on good hard facts. But which facts? One week before my eighteenth birthday, on August 8th, did Pakistani troops in civilian185 clothing cross the cease-fire line in Kashmir and infiltrate186 the Indian sector187, or did they not? In Delhi, Prime Minister Shastri announced 'massive infiltration188 ... to subvert189 the state'; but here is Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's Foreign Minister, with his riposte: 'We categorically deny any involvement in the rising against tyranny by the indigenous190 people of Kashmir.'
If it happened, what were the motives191? Again, a rash of possible explanations: the continuing anger which had been stirred up by the Rann of Kutch; the desire to settle, once-and-for-all, the old issue of who-should-possess-the-Perfect-Valley?... Or one which didn't get into the papers: the pressures of internal political troubles in Pakistan - Ayub's government was tottering192, and a war works wonders at such times. This reason or that or the other? To simplify matters, I present two of my own: the war happened because I dreamed Kashmir into the fantasies of our rulers; furthermore, I remained impure193, and the war was to separate me from my sins.
Jehad, Padma! Holy war! But who attacked? Who defended? On my eighteenth birthday, reality took another terrible beating. From the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi, an Indian prime minister (not the same one who wrote me a long-ago letter) sent me this birthday greeting: 'We promise that force will be met with force, and aggression194 against us will never be allowed to succeed!' While jeeps with loud-hailers saluted195 me in Guru Mandir, reassuring196 me: 'The Indian aggressors will be utterly197 overthrown198! We are a race of warriors199! One Pathan; one Punjabi Muslim is worth ten of those babus-in-arms!'
Jamila Singer was called north, to serenade our worth-ten jawans. A servant paints blackout on the windows; at night, my father, in the stupidity of his second childhood, opens the windows and turns on the lights. Bricks and stones fly through the apertures200: my eighteenth-birthday presents. And still events grow more and more confused: on August soth, did Indian troops cross the cease-fire line near Uri to 'chase out the Pakistan raiders' - or to initiate201 an attack? When, on September 1st, our ten-times-better soldiers crossed the line at Chhamb, were they aggressors or were they not?
Some certainties: that the voice of Jamila Singer sang Pakistani troops to their deaths; and that muezzins from their minarets202 - yes, even on Clayton Road - promised us that anyone who died in battle went straight to the camphor garden.
The mujahid philosophy of Syed Ahmad Barilwi ruled the air; we were invited to make sacrifices 'as never before'.
And on the radio, what destruction, what mayhem! In the first five days of the war Voice of Pakistan announced the destruction of more aircraft than India had ever possessed; in eight days, All-India Radio massacred the Pakistan Army down to, and considerably203 beyond, the last man. Utterly distracted by the double insanity204 of the war and my private life, I began to think desperate thoughts ...
Great sacrifices: for instance, at the battle for Lahore? - On September 6th, Indian troops crossed the Wagah border, thus hugely broadening the front of the war, which was no longer limited to Kashmir; and did great sacrifices take place, or not? Was it true that the city was virtually defenceless, because the Pak Army and Air Force were ail84 in the Kashmir sector? Voice of Pakistan said: O memorable205 day! O unarguable lesson in the fatality206 of delay! The Indians, confident of capturing the city, stopped for breakfast. All-India Radio announced the fall of Lahore; meanwhile, a private aircraft spotted207 the breakfasting invaders208. While the B.B.C. picked up the A.I.R. story, the Lahore militia209 was mobilized. Hear the Voice of Pakistan! - old men, young boys, irate210 grandmothers fought the Indian Army; bridge by bridge they battled, with any available weapons! Lame15 men loaded their pockets with grenades, pulled out the pins, flung themselves beneath advancing Indian tanks; toothless old ladies disembowelled Indian babus with pitchforks! Down to the last man and child, they died: but they saved the city, holding off the Indians until air support arrived! Martyrs211, Padma! Heroes, bound for the perfumed garden! Where the men would be given four beauteous houris, untouched by man or djinn; and the women, four equally virile212 males! Which of your Lord's blessings213 would you deny? What a thing this holy war is, in which with one supreme214 sacrifice men may atone215 for all their evils! No wonder Lahore was defended; what did the Indians have to look forward to? Only re-incarnation - as cockroaches216, maybe, or scorpions217, or green-medicine-wallahs - there's really no comparison.
But did it or didn't it? Was that how it happened? Or was All-India Radio -great tank battle, huge Pak losses, 450 tanks destroyed- telling the truth?
Nothing was real; nothing certain. Uncle Puffs came to visit the Clayton Road house, and there were no teeth in his mouth. (During India's China war, when our loyalties218 were different, my mother had given gold bangles and jewelled ear-rings to the 'Ornaments219 for Armaments' campaign; but what was that when set against the sacrifice of an entire mouthful of gold?) 'The nation,' he said indistinctly through his untoothed gums, 'must not, darn it, be short of funds on account of one man's vanity!' - But did he or didn't he? Were teeth truly sacrificed in the name of holy war, or were they sitting in a cupboard at home?
'I'm afraid,' Uncle Puffs said gummily, 'you'll have to wait for that special dowry I promised.' - Nationalism or meanness? Was his baring of gums a supreme proof of his patriotism220, or a slimy ruse221 to avoid filling a Puffna-mouth with gold?
And were there parachutists or were there not? '... have been dropped on every major city,' Voice of Pakistan announced. 'All able-bodied persons are to stay up with weapons; shoot on sight after dusk curfew.' But in India, 'Despite Pakistani air-raid provocation,' the radio claimed, 'we have not responded!' Who to believe? Did Pakistani fighter-bombers truly make that 'daring raid' which caught one-third of the Indian Air Force helplessly grounded on tarmac? Did they didn't they? And those night-dances in the sky, Pakistani Mirages and Mysteres against India's less romantically-titled MiGs: did Islamic mirages and mysteries do battle with Hindu invaders, or was it all some kind of astonishing illusion?
Did bombs fall? Were explosions true? Could even a death be said to be the case?
And Saleem? What did he do in the war?
This: waiting to be drafted, I went in search of friendly, obliterating222, sleep-giving, Paradise-bringing bombs.
The terrible fatalism which had overcome me of late had taken on an even more terrible form; drowning in the disintegration of family, of both countries to which I had belonged, of everything which can sanely223 be called real, lost in the sorrow of my filthy224 unrequited love, I sought out the oblivion of- I'm making it sound too noble; no orotund225 phrases must be used. Baldly, then: I rode the night-streets of the city, looking for death.
Who died in the holy war? Who, while I in bright white kurta and pajamas226 went Lambretta-borne into the curfewed streets, found what I was looking for? Who, martyred by war, went straight to a perfumed garden? Study the bombing pattern; learn the secrets of rifle-shots.
On the night of September 22nd, air-raids took place over every Pakistani city.
(Although All-India Radio ...) Aircraft, real or fictional, dropped actual or mythical bombs. It is, accordingly, either a matter of fact or a figment of a diseased imagination that of the only three bombs to hit Rawalpindi and explode, the first landed on the bungalow in which my grandmother Naseem Aziz and my aunty Pia were hiding under a table; the second tore a wing off the city jail, and spared my cousin Zafar a life of captivity227; the third destroyed a large darkling mansion surrounded by a sentried wall; sentries228 were at their posts, but could not prevent Emerald Zolfikar from being carried off to a more distant place than Suffolk. She was being visited, that night, by the Nawab of Kif and his mulishly unmaturing daughter; who was also spared the necessity of becoming an adult woman. In Karachi, three bombs were also enough. The Indian planes, reluctant to come down low, bombed from a great height; the vast majority of their missiles fell harmlessly into the sea. One bomb, however, annihilated Major (Retired) Alauddin Latif and all his seven Puffias, thus releasing me from my promise for ever; and there were two last bombs. Meanwhile, at the front, Mutasim the Handsome emerged from his tent to go to the toilet; a noise like a mosquito whizzed (or did not whiz) towards him, and he died with a full bladder under the impact of a sniper's bullet.
And still I must tell you about two-last-bombs.
Who survived? Jamila Singer, whom bombs were unable to find; in India, the family of my uncle Mustapha, with whom bombs could not be bothered; but my father's forgotten distant relative Zohra and her husband had moved to Amritsar, and a bomb sought them out as well.
And two-more-bombs demand to be told.
... While I, unaware229 of the intimate connection between the war and myself, went foolishly in search of bombs; after the curfew-hour I rode, but vigilante bullets failed to find their target ... and sheets of flame rose from a Rawalpindi bungalow, perforated sheets at whose centre hung a mysterious dark hole, which grew into the smoke-image of an old wide woman with moles230 on her cheeks ... and one by one the war eliminated my drained, hopeless family from the earth.
But now the countdown was at an end.
And at last I turned my Lambretta homewards, so that I was at the Guru Mandir roundabout with the roar of aircraft overhead, mirages and mysteries, while my father in the idiocy231 of his stroke was switching on lights and opening windows even though a Civil Defence official had just visited them to make sure the blackout was complete; and when Amina Sinai was saying to the wraith232 of an old white washing-chest, 'Go away now - I've seen enough of you,' I was scooting past Civil Defence jeeps from which angry fists saluted me; and before bricks and stones could extinguish the lights in my aunt Alia's house, the whining233 came, and I should have known there was no need to go looking elsewhere for death, but I was still in the street in the midnight shadow of the mosque when it came, plummeting234 towards the illuminated235 windows of my father's idiocy, death whining like pie-dogs, transforming itself into falling masonry236 and sheets of flame and a wave of force so great that it sent me spinning off my Lambretta, while within the house of my aunt's great bitterness my father mother aunt and unborn brother or sister who was only a week away from starting life, all of them all of them all squashed flatter than rice-pancakes, the house crashing in on their heads like a waffle-iron, while over on Korangi Road a last bomb, meant for the oil-refinery, landed instead on a split-level American-style residence which an umbilical cord had not quite managed to complete; but at Guru Mandir many stories were coming to an end, the story of Amina and her long-ago underworld husband and her assiduity and public announcement and her son-who-was-not-her-son and her luck with horses and verrucas and dancing hands in the pioneer Cafe and last defeat by her sister, and of Ahmed who always lost his way and had a lower lip which stuck out and a squashy belly237 and went white in a freeze and succumbed238 to abstraction and burst dogs open in the street and fell in love too late and died because of his vulnerability of what-falls-out-of-the-sky; flatter than pancakes now, and around them the house exploding collapsing239, an instant of destruction of such vehemence240 that things which had been buried deep in forgotten tin trunks flew upward into the air while other things people memories were buried under rubble241 beyond hope of salvation242; the fingers of the explosion reaching down down to the bottom of an almirah and unlocking a green tin trunk, the clutching hand of the explosion flinging trunk-contents into air, and now something which has hidden unseen for many years is circling in the night like a whirligig piece of the moon, something catching243 the light of the moon and falling now falling as I pick myself up dizzily after the blast, something twisting turning somersaulting down, silver as moonlight, a wondrously244 worked silver spittoon inlaid with lapis lazuli, the past plummeting towards me like a vulture-dropped hand to become what-purifies-and-sets-me-free, because now as I look up there is a feeling at the back of my head and after that there is only a tiny but infinite moment of utter clarity while I tumble forwards to prostrate245 myself before my parents'
funeral pyre, a minuscule246 but endless instant of knowing, before I am stripped of past present memory time shame and love, a fleeting247, but also timeless explosion in which I bow my head yes I acquiesce248 yes in the necessity of the blow, and then I am empty and free, because all the Saleems go pouring out of me, from the baby who appeared in jumbo-sized frontpage baby-snaps to the eighteen-year-old with his filthy dirty love, pouring out goes shame and guilt249 and wanting-to-please and needing-to-be-loved and determined-to-find-a-historical-role and growing-too-fast, I am free of Snotnose and Stainface and Baldy and Sniffer and Mapface and washing-chests and Evie Burns and language marches, liberated250 from Kolynos Kid and the breasts of Pia mumani and Alpha-and-Omega, absolved251 of the multiple murders of Homi Catrack and Hanif and Aadam Aziz and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, I have shaken off five-hundred-year-old whores and confessions252 of love at dead of night, free now, beyond caring, crashing on to tarmac, restored to innocence253 and purity by a tumbling piece of the moon, wiped clean as a wooden writing-chest, brained (just as prophesied) by my mother's silver spittoon.
On the morning of September 23rd, the United Nations announced the end of hostilities254 between India and Pakistan. India had occupied less than 500 square miles of Pakistani soil; Pakistan had conquered just 340 square miles of its Kashmiri dream. It was said that the ceasefire came because both sides had run out of ammunition255, more or less simultaneously256; thus the exigencies257 of international diplomacy258, and the politically-motivated manipulations of arms suppliers, prevented the wholesale259 annihilation of my family. Some of us survived, because nobody sold our would-be assassins the bombs bullets aircraft necessary for the completion of our destruction. Six years later, however, there was another war.
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1
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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fictional
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| adj.小说的，虚构的 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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precipitated
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| v.（突如其来地）使发生( precipitate的过去式和过去分词 )；促成；猛然摔下；使沉淀 | |
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ram
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| (random access memory)随机存取存储器 | |
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pickle
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| n.腌汁，泡菜；v.腌，泡 | |
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immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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overtly
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| ad.公开地 | |
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smacked
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| 拍，打，掴( smack的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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bungalow
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| n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房 | |
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savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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beacon
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| n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔 | |
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obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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bereave
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| v.使痛失(亲人等)，剥夺，使丧失 | |
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inviting
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| adj.诱人的，引人注目的 | |
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trepidation
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| n.惊恐，惶恐 | |
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consecutive
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| adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的 | |
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woes
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| 困境( woe的名词复数 )； 悲伤； 我好苦哇； 某人就要倒霉 | |
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liaisons
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| n.联络( liaison的名词复数 )；联络人；（尤指一方或双方已婚的）私通；组织单位间的交流与合作 | |
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diplomats
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| n.外交官( diplomat的名词复数 )；有手腕的人，善于交际的人 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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gad
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| n.闲逛；v.闲逛 | |
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feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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afflict
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| vt.使身体或精神受痛苦，折磨 | |
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reminder
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| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
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31
stink
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| vi.发出恶臭；糟透，招人厌恶；n.恶臭 | |
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iniquities
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| n.邪恶( iniquity的名词复数 )；极不公正 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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cleanse
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| vt.使清洁，使纯洁，清洗 | |
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wreak
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| v.发泄；报复 | |
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languorous
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| adj.怠惰的，没精打采的 | |
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minaret
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| n.（回教寺院的）尖塔 | |
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mosque
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| n.清真寺 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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42
reeking
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的现在分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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43
vomit
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| v.呕吐，作呕；n.呕吐物，吐出物 | |
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dissimulation
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| n.掩饰，虚伪，装糊涂 | |
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adeptness
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| n.熟练，老练 | |
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frustrations
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| 挫折( frustration的名词复数 )； 失败； 挫败； 失意 | |
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aridity
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| n.干旱，乏味；干燥性；荒芜 | |
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48
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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repressions
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| n.压抑( repression的名词复数 )；约束；抑制；镇压 | |
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fissures
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| n.狭长裂缝或裂隙( fissure的名词复数 )；裂伤；分歧；分裂v.裂开( fissure的第三人称单数 ) | |
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mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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52
discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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53
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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54
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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vociferously
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| adv.喊叫地，吵闹地 | |
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56
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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Soviet
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| adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃 | |
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toll
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| n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟) | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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transparently
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| 明亮地，显然地，易觉察地 | |
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61
leavened
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| adj.加酵母的v.使（面团）发酵( leaven的过去式和过去分词 )；在…中掺入改变的因素 | |
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penchant
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| n.爱好，嗜好；（强烈的）倾向 | |
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lapsing
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| v.退步( lapse的现在分词 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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arcane
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| adj.神秘的，秘密的 | |
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cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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66
exclamations
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| n.呼喊( exclamation的名词复数 )；感叹；感叹语；感叹词 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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69
curries
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| n.咖喱食品( curry的名词复数 ) | |
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disquiet
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| n.担心，焦虑 | |
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dribbles
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| n.涓滴( dribble的名词复数 )；细滴；少量（液体）v.流口水( dribble的第三人称单数 )；（使液体）滴下或作细流；运球，带球 | |
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72
giggles
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| n.咯咯的笑( giggle的名词复数 )；傻笑；玩笑；the giggles 止不住的格格笑v.咯咯地笑( giggle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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73
glowered
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| v.怒视( glower的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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74
withdrawal
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| n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销 | |
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75
clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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76
asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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77
conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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78
devastating
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| adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的 | |
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79
beset
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| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
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80
phantoms
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| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
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81
phantom
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|
| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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82
tarnished
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| （通常指金属）（使）失去光泽，（使）变灰暗( tarnish的过去式和过去分词 )； 玷污，败坏 | |
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83
vengeance
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| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
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84
ail
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| v.生病，折磨，苦恼 | |
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85
inevitability
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| n.必然性 | |
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86
sprouting
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| v.发芽( sprout的现在分词 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出 | |
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87
shrouded
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| v.隐瞒( shroud的过去式和过去分词 )；保密 | |
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88
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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89
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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90
disintegration
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| n.分散，解体 | |
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91
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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92
crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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93
witchcraft
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| n.魔法，巫术 | |
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94
irritable
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|
| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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95
peremptorily
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| adv.紧急地，不容分说地，专横地 | |
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96
weavers
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| 织工，编织者( weaver的名词复数 ) | |
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97
verities
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| n.真实( verity的名词复数 )；事实；真理；真实的陈述 | |
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98
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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99
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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100
befuddling
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| v.使烂醉( befuddle的现在分词 )；使迷惑不解 | |
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101
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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102
pilfered
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| v.偷窃（小东西），小偷( pilfer的过去式和过去分词 )；偷窃（一般指小偷小摸） | |
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103
spools
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| n.（绕线、铁线、照相软片等的）管( spool的名词复数 )；络纱；纺纱机；绕圈轴工人v.把…绕到线轴上（或从线轴上绕下来）( spool的第三人称单数 )；假脱机（输出或输入） | |
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104
defective
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|
| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
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105
warehouse
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| n.仓库；vt.存入仓库 | |
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106
overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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107
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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108
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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109
disintegrated
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| v.（使）破裂[分裂，粉碎]，（使）崩溃( disintegrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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110
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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111
grievances
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| n.委屈( grievance的名词复数 )；苦衷；不满；牢骚 | |
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112
seeped
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| v.（液体）渗( seep的过去式和过去分词 )；渗透；渗出；漏出 | |
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113
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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114
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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115
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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116
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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117
nefarious
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| adj.恶毒的，极坏的 | |
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118
precedent
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| n.先例，前例；惯例；adj.在前的，在先的 | |
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119
spawned
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| （鱼、蛙等）大量产（卵）( spawn的过去式和过去分词 )； 大量生产 | |
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120
miraculously
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| ad.奇迹般地 | |
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121
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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122
exempt
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| adj.免除的；v.使免除；n.免税者，被免除义务者 | |
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123
economists
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| n.经济学家，经济专家( economist的名词复数 ) | |
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124
probity
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| n.刚直；廉洁，正直 | |
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125
inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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126
mirages
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| n.海市蜃楼，幻景( mirage的名词复数 ) | |
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127
revert
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| v.恢复，复归，回到 | |
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128
mythical
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| adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的 | |
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129
lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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130
desecrated
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| 毁坏或亵渎( desecrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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131
puffing
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| v.使喷出( puff的现在分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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132
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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133
heinous
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| adj.可憎的，十恶不赦的 | |
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134
garrison
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| n.卫戍部队；驻地，卫戍区；vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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135
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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136
hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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137
marshy
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| adj.沼泽的 | |
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138
terrain
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| n.地面，地形，地图 | |
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139
perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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140
fishy
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|
| adj. 值得怀疑的 | |
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141
tempting
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| a.诱人的, 吸引人的 | |
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142
rabble
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| n.乌合之众，暴民；下等人 | |
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143
annihilated
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| v.（彻底）消灭( annihilate的过去式和过去分词 )；使无效；废止；彻底击溃 | |
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144
apparitions
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| n.特异景象( apparition的名词复数 )；幽灵；鬼；（特异景象等的）出现 | |
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145
foes
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| 敌人，仇敌( foe的名词复数 ) | |
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146
slit
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| n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂 | |
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147
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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148
bowels
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| n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处 | |
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149
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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150
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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151
abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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152
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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153
breakdown
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| n.垮，衰竭；损坏，故障，倒塌 | |
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154
relentlessly
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| adv.不屈不挠地；残酷地；不间断 | |
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155
postures
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| 姿势( posture的名词复数 )； 看法； 态度； 立场 | |
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156
redeem
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| v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等） | |
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157
miseries
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| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
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158
Augmented
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| adj.增音的 动词augment的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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159
convoys
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| n.（有护航的）船队( convoy的名词复数 )；车队；护航（队）；护送队 | |
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160
repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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161
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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162
smuggling
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| n.走私 | |
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163
transistor
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| n.晶体管，晶体管收音机 | |
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164
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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165
elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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166
dotage
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| n.年老体衰；年老昏聩 | |
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167
gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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168
nostalgia
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| n.怀乡病，留恋过去，怀旧 | |
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169
infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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170
giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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171
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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172
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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173
pregnancy
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| n.怀孕，怀孕期 | |
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174
baton
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| n.乐队用指挥杖 | |
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175
withering
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| 使人畏缩的，使人害羞的，使人难堪的 | |
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176
reprisals
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| n.报复（行为）( reprisal的名词复数 ) | |
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177
elimination
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| n.排除，消除，消灭 | |
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178
benighted
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| adj.蒙昧的 | |
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179
analytical
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| adj.分析的；用分析法的 | |
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180
lasciviousness
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181
mattresses
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| 褥垫，床垫( mattress的名词复数 ) | |
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182
adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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183
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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184
puffs
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| n.吸( puff的名词复数 )；（烟斗或香烟的）一吸；一缕（烟、蒸汽等）；（呼吸或风的）呼v.使喷出( puff的第三人称单数 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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185
civilian
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| adj.平民的，民用的，民众的 | |
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186
infiltrate
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| vt./vi.渗入，透过；浸润 | |
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187
sector
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| n.部门，部分；防御地段，防区；扇形 | |
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188
infiltration
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| n.渗透；下渗；渗滤；入渗 | |
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189
subvert
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| v.推翻；暗中破坏；搅乱 | |
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190
indigenous
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| adj.土产的，土生土长的，本地的 | |
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191
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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192
tottering
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| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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193
impure
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| adj.不纯净的，不洁的；不道德的，下流的 | |
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194
aggression
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| n.进攻，侵略，侵犯，侵害 | |
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195
saluted
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| v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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196
reassuring
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| a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的 | |
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197
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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198
overthrown
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| adj. 打翻的，推倒的，倾覆的 动词overthrow的过去分词 | |
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199
warriors
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| 武士，勇士，战士( warrior的名词复数 ) | |
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apertures
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| n.孔( aperture的名词复数 )；隙缝；（照相机的）光圈；孔径 | |
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201
initiate
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| vt.开始，创始，发动；启蒙，使入门；引入 | |
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202
minarets
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| n.（清真寺旁由报告祈祷时刻的人使用的）光塔( minaret的名词复数 ) | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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insanity
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| n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐 | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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fatality
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| n.不幸，灾祸，天命 | |
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spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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invaders
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| 入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 ) | |
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militia
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| n.民兵，民兵组织 | |
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irate
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| adj.发怒的，生气 | |
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martyrs
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| n.martyr的复数形式；烈士( martyr的名词复数 )；殉道者；殉教者；乞怜者（向人诉苦以博取同情） | |
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212
virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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213
blessings
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| n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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atone
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| v.赎罪，补偿 | |
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cockroaches
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| n.蟑螂( cockroach的名词复数 ) | |
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scorpions
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| n.蝎子( scorpion的名词复数 ) | |
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loyalties
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| n.忠诚( loyalty的名词复数 )；忠心；忠于…感情；要忠于…的强烈感情 | |
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219
ornaments
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| n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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220
patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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221
ruse
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| n.诡计，计策；诡计 | |
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222
obliterating
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| v.除去( obliterate的现在分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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sanely
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| ad.神志清楚地 | |
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224
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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225
orotund
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| adj.宏亮的，宏壮的；浮夸的 | |
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226
pajamas
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| n.睡衣裤 | |
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227
captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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228
sentries
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| 哨兵，步兵( sentry的名词复数 ) | |
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229
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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230
moles
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| 防波堤( mole的名词复数 )； 鼹鼠； 痣； 间谍 | |
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231
idiocy
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| n.愚蠢 | |
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232
wraith
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| n.幽灵；骨瘦如柴的人 | |
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233
whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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plummeting
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| v.垂直落下，骤然跌落( plummet的现在分词 ) | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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236
masonry
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| n.砖土建筑；砖石 | |
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belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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collapsing
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| 压扁[平]，毁坏，断裂 | |
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240
vehemence
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| n.热切；激烈；愤怒 | |
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241
rubble
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| n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾 | |
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242
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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243
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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244
wondrously
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| adv.惊奇地，非常，极其 | |
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245
prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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246
minuscule
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| adj.非常小的；极不重要的 | |
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247
fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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248
acquiesce
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| vi.默许，顺从，同意 | |
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249
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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250
liberated
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| a.无拘束的，放纵的 | |
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251
absolved
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| 宣告…无罪，赦免…的罪行，宽恕…的罪行( absolve的过去式和过去分词 )； 不受责难，免除责任 [义务] ,开脱（罪责） | |
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252
confessions
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| n.承认( confession的名词复数 )；自首；声明；（向神父的）忏悔 | |
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253
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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254
hostilities
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| n.战争；敌意(hostility的复数)；敌对状态；战事 | |
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255
ammunition
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| n.军火，弹药 | |
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256
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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257
exigencies
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| n.急切需要 | |
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258
diplomacy
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| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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259
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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