The Rushdie-fication of my Dad (Or, How I Got Him to Read My Favorite Novel)

The last novel my dad ever read was Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. He didn't finish--in fact, he only made it to page 75. But I'll never forget that he started to read my very favorite novel by an author I talk about far too often. Even if he didn't have time to finish it.

Over the past couple of years, my dad had read a few of my postcolonial African or Indian novels. He preferred to read nonfiction, because, as he told me whenever we jokingly argued about fiction vs. nonfiction, "there is just too much to learn about, and too little time!" He could most often be found making his way through thick tomes about the history of Africa or economics or astrophysics. That's when he wasn't working, or doing yardwork, or bicycling, or watching the game, or (somewhere in there) sleeping. But lately, he'd been making an effort to read "my" books, so that we could talk about my literary interests. He read Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer and Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. The last book he did finish was Atlas Shrugged, which is also technically mine, though I've never gotten around to reading it.

But a few weeks before he died, he asked to borrow my copy of Midnight's Children. The copy I bought in Blackwells bookshop, in Oxford. The copy I carried with me everywhere as I desperately tried to get through it in a week. The copy I underlined and highlighted and dog-eared. The copy I spilled tea on. The copy where the binding is splitting right at the midnight moment when India becomes independent and Saleem is born (how fitting!).

One of our last conversations over dinner Sunday night--the night before his stroke--was about Midnight's Children. He asked if it could be considered "stream-of-consciousness," I rambled on a bit about how it wasn't but it was written to seem like he was telling his story aloud. We talked about how his experience of visiting the Taj Mahal in 1979 wasn't anything like Rushdie's description of it: "whose outdoor corridors stink of urine and whose walls are covered in graffiti and whose echoes are tested for visitors by guides although there are signs in three languages pleading for silence" (Rushdie 73). I laughed and said, I guess they'd cleaned it up a bit by then. We talked about that scene in Slumdog Millionaire when Jamal and his brother (Salim!) took rich Americans on tours around the Taj and then stole their shoes. He talked about how much he was enjoying reading a book about India, how it reminded him of being there.

It wasn't a profound discussion, but it was real. I was blessed to have a dad so eager to share in and understand my passions, even if they weren't exactly his own. I'll never forget that we shared that book, and that moment, right before he passed away.

"Now Salahuddin found better words, his Urdu returning to him after a long absence. We're all beside you, Abba. We all love you very much. Changez could not speak, but that was--was it not?--yes, it must have been--a little nod of recognition. He heard me."

Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses