Repetition is a dominant theme throughout Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Practically from the beginning of the story, Saleem nearly gets carried away in his narration whilst reflecting on the almost obscene amount of repetitions to come. He notes, “(… And already I can see the repetitions beginning; because didn’t my grandmother also find enormous… and the stroke, too, was not the only… and the Brass Monkey had her birds… the curse begins already, and we haven’t even got to the noses yet!).” This sentence was quite confusing when first read, as we did not yet know who the Brass Monkey was, nor about the stroke that would later befall Saleem’s father. A few other common recurrences are the subject of noses, various hauntings, Saleem’s “giving birth” to new parental figures, and of course, the perforated sheet. Saleem openly addresses the recurrences again at the start of his second exile, “We steamed into exile aboard the Commander’s namesake-ship, proving once again that there was no escape from recurrence.” The twisted irony of the ship’s name hangs among Saleem’s casual reference to recurrences. A more in-your-face repetition though would definitely be the perforated sheet used in the Brass Monkey’s (now dubbed Jamila Singer) concerts. This new version of the sheet is described to us, “At its very centre, the Major had cut a hole. Diameter: three inches. Circumference: embroidered in finest gold thread. That was how the history of our family once again became the fate of a nation, because when Jamila sang with her lips pressed against the brocaded aperture, Pakistan fell in love with a fifteen-year-old girl whom it only ever glimpsed through a gold-and-white perforated sheet.” These repetitions serve to reinforce the idea of just how interconnected these events can be, and in turn, opens the door for Saleem’s theory of his family’s history being tied to the nation’s history.