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Ayah’s assault. “Are you angry?”
    â€œThen what?” Ayah retorts. “You have no sense and no shame!”
    Grinning sheepishly, groveling and wriggling in the grass to
touch the hem of Ayah’s sari, he says, “I’m sorry, forgive me. I won’t do it again ... Forgive me.”
    â€œWhat for?” snaps Ayah. “You’ll never change!”
    Ice-candy-man coils forward to squat and, threading his supple arms through his calves from the back, latches on to his earlobes. It is a punishing posture called “the cock,” used in lower-class schools to discipline urchins. He looks so ridiculous that Ayah and I laugh.
    But Adi, his face grim, dispenses a totally mirthless and vicious kick to his ankle.
    Ice-candy-man stands up so abruptly that his movements are a blur.
    And, my eyes popping, I stare at Adi dangling in the air at the end of his rangy arm. Ice-candy-man has a firm grip on the waistband of Adi’s woolen trousers and Adi looks like an astonished and stocky spider plucked out of his web and suspended above the level of my eyes.
    â€œI’m going to drop him,” Ice-candy-man says calmly. He takes a loping step and, holding Adi directly above the brick paving skirting the grass, raises his arm. “If you don’t go to the cinema with me I’ll drop him.”
    I can’t believe he means it.
    But Adi does. His face scarlet, he lets out a terrified yell and howls: “He’ll drop me! Save me ... someone save me!”
    â€œI’m going to drop him,” repeats Ice-candy-man.
    Ayah’s round mouth opens in an “O,” her eyes stare. Seeing her expression, my wiggly hair curls tighter. I look in horror upon the distance separating Adi from the brick. Adi kicks, crawls and squirms in the air and yells: “Save me! Save me! Bachao! Bachao!”
    And Ayah shouts: “Put him down at once, oye, badmash! I will go to the cinema.”
    Ice-candy-man carefully lowers Adi—face down and dribbling spit—on the grass.
    Ayah deftly pulls off a sandal and, lunging wildly, strikes Ice-candy-man wherever she can. Ice-candy-man cowers; and gathering his lungi above his knees, snatching up his slippers, manages to move out of her reach. Ayah chases him right out of the gate.

Chapter 5
    Rich men’s wives and children soar to the Simla or Kashmir Hills in summer. We also soar, but to the lesser Murree Hills at the foot of the Himalayas.
    Adi is perched on a tall pony. I am on a donkey. My donkey trots alongside and I perceive just how short it is. My legs stick out beneath the safety ring on the saddle. I grip the ring resentfully. The donkey-man holds the reins. I am not spared even this indignity ! My donkey perch is ludicrous.
    I am about to shake heaven and earth to set things right when an astonishing tidal wave of relief and frivolity barrels over the world. Shopkeepers on the Murree Mall have picked out a few words from the static of their 1944 radios and happiness strikes all hearts. Men, women, beast, mountain, tall pony and short donkey all exult. Simultaneously we know that the war is over. We have won! Victory! The war is over! Faces around me are wreathed in smiles. Incredibly Father is blowing a whistle that uncoils a foot-long paper tongue. God! I have never been so happy. I who have subversively hoped that the defector Bose and the Japanese enemy win the war. All the same I am swept by a sense of relief so unburdening that I realize I was born with an awareness of the war: and I recall the dim, faraway fear of bombs that tinged with bitterness my mother’s milk. No wonder I was a colicky baby.
    The gaiety on people’s faces is infectious. My mother’s face swims up with a smile I never again see; and plucking paper cups, streamers and whistles from the air she gives them to Adi and me.
    Father seldom visits Murree for more than two or three days at a time. He returns to Lahore. A week later we catch