Midnights Children, Salman Rushdie (1981)
Silences Long Gone, Anson Cameron (1998)
Midnights Children, Salman Rushdie
(1981)
One Kashmiri morning in the early spring of 1915, my grandfather Aadam Aziz hit his nose against a frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to pray. Three
drops of blood plopped out of his left nostril, hardened instantly in the brittle air and lay before his eyes on the prayer-mat, transformed into rubies. Lurching back until
he knelt with his head once more upright, he found that the tears which had sprung into his eyes had solidified, too; and at that moment, as he brushed diamonds
contemptuously from his lashes, he resolved never again to kiss earth for any god or man. This decision, however, made a hole in him, a vacancy in a vital inner chamber,
leaving him vulnerable to women and history. Unaware of this at first, despite his recently completed medical training, he stood up, rolled the prayer-mat into a thick
cheroot, and holding it under his right arm surveyed the valley through clear, diamond-free eyes.
The world was new again. After a winter's gestation in its eggshell of ice, the valley had beaked its way out into the open, moist and yellow. The new grass bided its time
underground; the mountains were retreating to their hill-stations for the warm season. (In the winter, when the valley shrank under the ice, the mountains closed in and
snarled like angry jaws around the city on the lake.)
In those days the radio mast had not been built and the temple of Sankara Acharya, a little black blister on a khaki hill, still dominated the streets and lake of Srinagar. In
those days there was no army camp at the lakeside, no endless snakes of camouflaged trucks and jeeps clogged the narrow mountain roads, no soldiers hid behind the
crests of the mountains past Baramulla and Gulmarg. In those days travellers were not shot as spies if they took photographs of bridges, and apart from the Englishmen's
houseboats on the lake, the valley had hardly changed since the Mughal Empire, for all its springtime renewals; but my grandfather's eyes – which were, like the rest of
him, twenty-five years old – saw things differently … and his nose had started to itch.
To reveal the secret of my grandfather's altered vision: he had spent five years, five springs, away from home. (The tussock of earth, crucial though its presence was as it
crouched under a chance wrinkle of the prayer-mat, was at bottom no more than a catalyst.) Now, returning, he saw through travelled eyes. Instead of the beauty of
the tiny valley circled by giant teeth, he noticed the narrowness, the proximity of the horizon; and felt sad, to be at home and feel so utterly enclosed. He also felt –
inexplicably – as though the old place resented his educated, stethoscoped return. Beneath the winter ice, it had been coldly neutral, but now there was no doubt; the
years in Germany had returned him to a hostile environment. Many years later, when the hole inside him had been clogged up with hate, and he came to sacrifice
himself at the shrine of the black stone god in the temple on the hill, he would try and recall his childhood springs in Paradise, the way it was before travel and tussocks
and army tanks messed everything up.
On the morning when the valley, gloved in a prayer-mat, punched him on the nose, he had been trying, absurdly, to pretend that nothing had changed. So he had risen
in the bitter cold of four-fifteen, washed himself in the prescribed fashion, dressed and put on his father's astrakhan cap; after which he had carried the rolled cheroot of
the prayer-mat into the small lakeside garden in front of their old dark house and unrolled it over the waiting tussock. The ground felt deceptively soft under his feet and
made him simultaneously uncertain and unwary. "In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful…" – the exordium, spoken with hands joined before him like a
book, comforted a part of him, made another, larger part feel uneasy – "… Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Creation…" – but now Heidelberg invaded his head; here was
Ingrid, briefly his Ingrid, her face scorning him for this Mecca-turned parroting; here, their friends Oskar and Ilse Lubin the anarchists, mocking his prayer with their antiideologies – "… The Compassionate, the Merciful, King of the Last Judgement!…" – Heidelberg, in which, along with medicine and politics, he learned that India – like
radium – had been 'discovered' by Europeans; even Oskar was filled with admiration for Vasco da Gama, and this was what finally separated Aadam Aziz from his friends,
this belief of theirs that he was somehow the invention of their ancestors – "… You alone we worship, and to You alone we pray for help…" – so here he was, despite their
presence in his head, attempting to re-unite himself with an earlier self which ignored their influence but knew everything it ought to have known, about submission for
example, about what he was doing now, as his hands, guided by old memories, fluttered upwards, thumbs pressed to ears, fingers spread, as he sank to his knees – "…
Guide us to the straight path, The path of those whom You have favoured…" But it was no good, he was caught in a strange middle ground, trapped between belief and
disbelief, and this was only a charade after all – "… Not of those who have incurred Your wrath, Nor of those who have gone astray." My grandfather bent his forehead
towards the earth. Forward he bent, and the earth, prayer-mat covered, curved up towards him. And now it was the tussock's time. At one and the same time a rebuke
from Ilse-Oskar-Ingrid-Heidelberg as well as valley-and-God, it smote him upon the point of his nose. Three drops fell. There were rubies and diamonds. And my
grandfather, lurching upright, made a resolve. Stood. Rolled cheroot. Stared across the lake. And was knocked forever into that middle place, unable to worship a God
in whose existence he could not wholly disbelieve. Permanent alteration: a hole.
Silences Long Gone, Anson Cameron
(1998)
Below us is the red line of the Great Northern Highway cutting north through country dusted yellow with spinifex. Here and there rock erupts pure red out of the yellow dusted landscape. The whole run of land is jolted with airpocket and tilted with thermal updraught.
Every ten minutes or so there is a tiny shine of corrugated iron returning the sun. Homesteads surrounded by home paddocks overgrazed red by cattle mustered and ready for trucking up north and slaughtering and fractioning
shrink-wrapped for shipping to first- or third-world Asia, depending on how the season was and what the quality of the beef is. Only one year in five is it good enough for the Japanese. The North Koreans will eat it straight out of a
boiling red drought.
I ask the pilot to drop us down low, drop us down to a thousand feet, where we can see what we can see. Because also below us, uncoiled into a thousand kilometre string of buildings along the Great Northern Highway is my home
town. Buildings joined now only by the CB radio chatter of the truckies arranging rendezvous for burgers and sleep along the road south. Hannah Civic Centre on the back of a Mack maybe parking next to Hannah High School
assembly hall on the back of a Kenworth outside a roadhouse in Meekatharra. Or maybe on the back of a Ford in a rest area is the Hannah Courthouse parked alongside a Bedford with the jail on its back the courthouse filled for four
decades. The Hannah brothel is maybe dropping its lace in a petrol station alongside the Hannah Walkabout Hotel that filled it for three.
The whole town, all its timber parts and all its tin parts and all its fibro parts, which is nearly all its parts, is driving south towards permanent green, to become outskirts of sandstone and brick towns with reasons to live.
Hannah was an iron-mining town. But now the iron ore is turned into cars that are hunkered low on flat tyres rusting into shitboxes worldwide and everyone who lived in the town has been moved on. Superannuated and retired. Or
unemployed and waiting. Wondering where the next iron town will grow.
The pilot tells me okay he'll lose some altitude, but with us travelling north at six-hundred kph and them south in dust at one-twenty kph and most of the buildings somewhat reconstructed for the journey I’ll need a real gift for
reminiscence to get any kind of buzz out of it. He drops the Lear Gulfstream fast enough to lift my stomach and intestines and Margot Dwyer's stomach and intestines and his own stomach and intestines, which is all the stomachs and
intestines on heard, hard up against whatever it is keeps stomachs and intestines coming out throats and fast enough to make Margot groan in her sleep.
When we're under a thousand feet he points out front of us at a small weatherboard church heading south out of the tropics on a semitrailer with its aisle along the spine of the truck and its steeple sheared off for the journey. Its
stained-glass windows hive been hid out at auction and red dust is boiling up through its floor and out the empty window frames like it's on fire. The Church of England.
What I remember of this church is if you sat third pew back from the pulpit you could look between the sandal straps and out through the transparent foot of a leadlight Jesus and see the thirteen-year-old girls of our town get
themselves into states of undress before getting into their bathers ready for swim training in the town pool on a Sunday morning in summer. The under-fourteen freestyle class. Joking about the newfound danger of bikini-top
fragility and feeling the novelty of first waxings and exposing brave illicit tans. Them not knowing anyone could see them in this corner of the pool yard. Not imagining anyone would take advantage of the transparency of the instep
of our Saviour as commissioned by the Church of England to spy on them naked.
The other memory I take out of this church before it's under us and behind us and south of us is of my last Sunday in it. The day I yelled a highly joyous Blasphemy' and then an outraged 'Fuck'. The day Susannah Walter's two-yearold daughter Taylor started me yelling by yelling a `Fuck' of her own in a most amazing poignant pause the minister was staring down on us from the pulpit. Fuck wasn't a sentiment anyone had expected from a little girl in a green
velvet dress that everyone who didn't have a little girl to compete for it agreed had a townwide monopoly on what they called sweetness. Iwas nine and I didn't expect it so much I jumped off my pew, arms raised and shouted
`Blasphemy' and Mum ear-clipped me right out of the pew into the aisle not because of the fact I shouted in church, she explained later, or for what I shouted, but because of the highly joyous way I shouted it.
Me then shouting my `Fuck' after the ear-clipping and the aisle-flopping because it had already been yelled once and was stuck in my mind.
Coming from a kid like me who didn't have much Sweetness about me, they say, and certainly was never in green velvet, people shouldn't have been as surprised at my Fuck as they were at the Fuck of Taylor Walters. But they were.
Surprised. Outraged probably. And I was frog-marched out of that church and banned for what Mum called a probationary period but turned out to be forever.
`That all you had for a church?' the pilot asks like I’m an exposed heathen. I see myself angry twice in miniature in his Top Gun Raybans.
'There was Catholic,' I tell him. `But they're not portable.' The Catholics, like the third little pig, had built in brick. Which made their church the only brick building in Hannah. As kids we'd sometimes come and watch their church be
brick because we'd only ever seen other buildings be weatherboard and corrugated iron and fibro. And we'd knock on it with our knuckles to feel it be brick and to feel how even soft knocking on a Catholic church could hurt. And
we'd wonder at it and wonder what an amazing thing was a Catholic that he would bring his own actual bricks to keep away a devil and to keep away a wolf and to keep away a cyclone that the rest of us could keep away with only
weatherboard and fibro and corrugated iron. Dad told us one time the Catholic devil was a more fierce competitor than our devil and that probably explained it. It wasn't until we were much older we realised that church was brick
just for the flat-out grandeur of brick.
That church probably has a wrecker's ball taking a bite out of it right now because it wasn't made for any sort of journey. Would have bled its stained-glass onto the roadside and shaken itself back to bricks before it got to the
WELCOME TO HANNAH, HEART OF IRON COUNTRY. POPULATION 3000 sign.
Several more buildings run the highway below us before I recognise a schoolroom I did first, second and third grades in. A portable where Miss Scott taught us left from right and which I still conjure up in my mind's eye to orientate
myself when I'm asked which side of something something's on.
The next structure I recognise: is moving slow on a low-loader with a car out front with an orange light flashing advertising a wide load. It's the Hannah football pavilion. OPTHALMIA GRANDSTAND the sign at the apex of its
hoomerang-shaped roof said.
I remember the sounds of the football games my father watched from that pavilion every Saturday morning for four years and that came to me across town to wherever I vas that wasn't at the football. The dames of under ten, then
under eleven, then under twelve and under thirteen football he coached and that he desperately wanted me to he part of. I remember he sat with his friends in that pavilion and told encouraging lies to them about their sons. Their
leap, their anticipation, their pace, their general footy nous and potential.
Nowhere in town could I escape those boy-shrill calls of `SmithySmithySmithy' for a handball or of `GregGregGreg' for a stab-pass or loudest of all the `Yeees' of high mark tailed off by umpires' whistle and dead silence before the
`Yeees' of goal and the honking of car horns when my father was being mock-jocular in that pavilion with his friends while he watched their sons run, jump, kick, and learn lore he was desperate to teach me and was wondering what
could be happening in my mind that could keep me from this. A boy would have to walk three miles out into the desert to escape those noises. And even out there the car horns of goal could set up a conversation with galah and crow
and corella.
`We're a half-hour out of Hannah,' the pilot tells us. The temperature upon arrival ...will be bloody hot.' He grins at his impersonation of a commercial pilot. Margot wakes and stretches and asks has she been asleep and supposes she
has drifted off, what with the jet-hiss and all.
Margot is with BBK. The company that owns the town. Owned the town. In a legal capacity she tells me. She's a lawyer. She's met me at Essendon Airport and shaken my hand and ushered me into this jet and told me she's so glad to
meet me and she hopes they haven't interrupted my week too much and told me thank you for helping out, but she knows I want to be involved anyway, and told me between us she's sure we can come up with a solution that's hest
for all concerned. All concerned in this case being the company she works for and the mother I'm estranged from.
Author and Context
Anson Cameron the author of Silence Long Gone was born in 1961
and lives in Melbourne and writes a column for the newspaper
along with 4 other novels and a collection of short stories. Salman
Rushdie the author of Midnights Children born 1947 is an Indian
novelist, a Muslim and of Kashmiri decent. From his background it
sounds as if he is the grandchild who narrates the story.
Midnight’s Children is set in India in a secluded Mountain range
similar Silence Long Gone which depicts an iron mining town in the
middle of nowhere in the Australian outback. Both use these
isolated areas to act as a parallel of their own feelings about the
emotions of separation to a place that they once knew.
Summary and Purpose of Text
Midnight’s Children is about a man returning to the Himalayas where
he grew up and the hole that has been left in him regarding his
religious beliefs. He has studied first aid in Germany and had his eyes
open to the flaws in religion and is unable to return and “worship a
God in whose existence he could not wholly disbelieve”.
Silences Long Gone also depicts a man flying over the top of his old
town in a helicopter and sharing his thoughts and memories about his
childhood and life while living there. It is at the end of this piece we
find he has since become estranged to his mother and is returning with
a lawyer to come up with a solution that’s best for all involved.
Both texts appear to be personal recounts and individual stories that
they have drawn on to write their stories.
Narrative Point of View
While both texts are sharing a story of their past they have
very different narratives. Midnights Children is told from the
perspective of the grandchild although his grandfather is 25
at the time of the story and is therefore retelling it as he has
been told. Silences Long Gone however is told from first
person perspective and reads as though we are listening into
his thoughts.
Structure
Both narratives begin with one or two paragraphs setting the
scene and telling the basic story and then fill in the details
after and explain specifically what they are talking about.
After they have finished clarifying they return to tell the
reader the reason they are sharing the tale in the first place.
For example in Midnights Children it begins depicting a man
on his knees praying in the mountains of India. We are then
told why he is there and where he comes from and finally we
are told reasoning behind the story being the fact that he
feels he cannot worship as he once did now that he is an
educated man.
Images and Colours
Both use visual images of the landscape. Midnights Children
depicts mountains, a valley and a lake contrasting the bleak
open spaces of the Australian outback where the red line of
the Great Northern Highway cuts through the yellow dusted
plains.
While Silence Long Gone uses colour to describe the stark
land Midnights Children used it to describe frozen drops of
blood as rubies which is a symbol in the narrative.
Tone
The narrator in Midnights Children sounds as if he is
retelling a story that he has been told perhaps to share it
with younger generations as is has been shared with him.
Whereas Silence Long Gone seems more erratic with its story
line as we are meant to perceive it as the narrators’ thoughts.
Although very different styles both have an overwhelming
feeling of separation from the place to which they are
returning to and feel less connected than what they once did.
Methods to Involve the Reader
Both narratives left the reasoning behind the story until the
end forcing the reader to have questions about the character
and what was happening which were slowly answered as
they continued to read.
Figurative Language
Both authors use inanimate objects not usually found in the
settings to emphasize a feeling. The cold temperature is highlighted
in Midnights Children by the frozen drops of blood and tears
represented with the imagery of rubies and diamonds; considering
he is in the Himalayas it is unlikely these would be present. Silence
Long Gone also depicts the church and the fascination of the
children towards the building as it is the only brick structure in the
whole town. The fact that a brick building gets specific attention is
to emphasize how out of place it is and how relying the town is on
its iron industry as everything else is made of corrugated iron.