Duty Free (20 page)

“It’s Irum,” she cried. “She’s gone and fallen in love with a DVD-
wallah
and she says if I don’t agree to a marriage she will run away with him. With a DVD
-walla-a-a-h
! What have I done to deserve a DVD
-wallah
with a shop in Defence?
Haan?
I’ve kept my fasts, said my prayers, done my charity, even gone on Umra twice and this is how Allah repays me. With a DVD
-wallah
! He gives everyone else banker sons-in-law and feudals with thousands of acres and IT millionaires with green cards and I get a DVD
-wallah
!”

She picked up one of my hundred-dollar silk cushions that I got from Singapore last summers and pressed her face into it. I thought of her fat tears and her greasy hair and her running nose and I considered for a minute offering her a local cotton cushion instead but then I thought she might tear up my cushion, the mood she was in.

Otherwise I didn’t know what to say. If I said I knew from before only about the DVD
-wallah
, then she would say why
didn’t I tell and she would accuse me of laughing behind her back. And if I pretended I didn’t know and she found out later that I did, then?

So all I said was, “
Haw
, look at Irum,” while looking at my one unpainted foot. And then to make her feel better I said, “But you know, Mulloo, ever since all these bombs-shombs have been bursting all over the place, people have stopped going so much to cinemas. Instead everyone’s staying at home with DVDs to watch on their own private home cinemas. The DVD shop
-wallahs
must be making so much money. Who knows, this man might be a DVD millionaire even?
Haan?
”

“Don’t be stupid. There’s no such thing as a DVD millionaire.”

“You never know
yaar—
”

Suddenly she grabbed my knee. “You’ve got to save me!”

“
Haw
, Mulloo—”

“Please have a proposal sent for Irum. Only you can do it.”

“But from
who?
” I was
tau
non-pulsed.

“From your cousin.”

“Which cousin?”

“Jonkers.”

“Jonkers?”
I screeched. “Mulloo, he’s thirty-seven. Irum’s
sixteen
. And … and he’s bald and he’s sober-type and he’s die-vorced. And he’s not even that rich, you know.”

“But at least he’s not a DVD-
wallah
. And he’s foreign-returned and he is comfortable and he has his own business—”

“So does the DVD-
wallah
.”

“We know your aunt and uncle also.”

“You can also get to know DVD’s mummy and daddy.”

“So you want me to marry off my Irum to a DVD
-wallah
?” she asked coldly, flinging my Singapore cushion on to the floor.

“I’m only saying that just because you know someone’s mother and father or because they are foreign-returned you can’t marry your child off to them.” I picked up my cushion and put it back on the sofa out of Mulloo’s reach.

“And what,” she said, raising her eyebrows at me, “did
you
look at when you went searching for a wife for your cousin?
Haan?
Just that you knew the girls’ parents or, even worst, knew someone who knew their parents? Just that,
na
? You even went to look at Tanya Kuraishi. I know all about that so don’t try and deny,
ji
. And also you went to see a girl who’s in love with someone else. And by the way, both of them are in their early twenties so don’t give me lectures about age difference.”

“Is Tasbeeh in love with someone else?
Haw
, Mulloo, what a traitor you are! Imagine sending us to do a proposal and not even telling us this much.”

“So are you going to ask your aunt or not?”

“Who’s she in love with?”

“The DVD
-wallah
!”

“Even Tasbeeh?”

“No stupid. Irum! What do I care about Tasbeeh?”

I looked at Mulloo properly. Her eyes were crazy and her breaths were coming so fast that she looked like she’d just finished a ten-mile run. I knew then that she was not in her proper mind. So instead of arguing with her I began asking
her how she’d found out about the DVD
-wallah
and Irum. And she said that she first became suspicious when Irum’s phone bills became more than their electricity bills. And then she started listening at doors and things and before the week had finished she’d found out.

So then I gave her some tea and when she’d drunk two full cups and calmed down a bit, I said to her that Irum won’t marry anyone else as long as she was in love with her DVD-
wallah
. Mulloo asked what she should do and I told her if you don’t mind I’ll send for my Mummy. She knows answers to everything like this. Mulloo agreed to let me call her but only on one condition: that she has to swear on my head that she won’t tell anyone, not a single person. I wanted to tell her that she can’t attach strings like that to Mummy. But I said, don’t worry, my Mummy is tight as your fist.

So while Mulloo sat, I sent the driver for Mummy and she came and she also had two cups of tea while she listened to Mulloo’s story with narrow eyes and then she said best thing was not to get Irum married to another man but to get her to fall out of love with this one. And best way to do that was to invite him to their house all the time and start calling him
beta
dear and doing twenty-four-hour flattery of him which will make him very pleased with himself and Irum very irritated with him. And then she said, Mulloo and Tony should even start criticizing Irum in front of him. Saying things like, “
Beta
, please explain to Irum not to speak so much on her mobile phone.
Of course
, we don’t mind her talking to you. Of course you are like our own son, but all these friends of hers,
really is it necessary to waste so many hours on the phone with them?”

Mummy said Irum was only throwing herself at him because she wanted to annoy her parents. She said all children do this. He was forbidden fruit but if he became just an ordinary banana or a stinky little guava, then she would get bored of him in two months flat. And also if he started siding with them against her,
then
he would really start gettting on her nerves. Mulloo looked a little doubtful but Mummy spoke in her Kernel Klebb voice and said, “Don’t do as I say, Mulloo, and you will regret
all
your life.”

“No, Aunty, you are saying right,” she said.

“You wait and see, the minute he starts saying yes aunty and no aunty and whatever you say aunty, your daughter will go off him like this.” Mummy snapped her thin fingers.

“
Bilkull
, Aunty, you are right. I’ll go home and straight away call him for dinner.”

When she’d gone Mummy said, “Mulloo really should do something about her appearance. She looks like a sweepress.”

I didn’t answer because I was checking my Singapore cushion. Honestly! The sacrifices you have to make for friendship.

Jonkers took me out to Causa Nostra for lunch. On the way there he was wearing snazzy dark glasses, but Jonkers being Jonkers, they didn’t have a label. And he was sitting with an arm slung out of the window, like he never used to before. I swear he’s changed. Where he used to look all nervous and not-so-sure before, now he looks as if he knows what he’s doing and where he’s going.

At Causa Nostra on the table next to us were Raheela Hassun and Shazia Hameed. Raheela’s husband is Royal Tractors and Shazia’s father is Jub TV. Their hair was blow-dried into long blonde curtains and their Versace dark glasses, all studded with gold logos at the sides, were pushed on top of their heads like hairbands. Diamonds glinted inside their ears and on their fingers and their wrists. From the way their heads were joined together, and they were speaking without moving their lips, I knew at once that they were doing top-secret gossip. They looked at me and gave small, fake-type smiles. I also smiled back fakely and reaching behind me, pulled out my maroon Bootega Veneta bag and placed it on the table in full view. My father may not own a TV station and my husband may not be a tractor but still they should know I am not hungry-naked.

And anyways between you, me, and the four walls, everyone knows that Royal Tractors are Defaulters Number One who took such big, big loans from the guvmunt. For four months they didn’t give one
paisa
even to the poors who worked for them before they closed down their factories and told all those poors not to look at them for money but to go and find new jobs somewhere else and now they say they are hand in mouth and they can’t pay back the money of the loans. But we all know they’ve just bought two flats in Kensington and a villa in Dubai and if you don’t believe me just take a look at Raheela’s diamonds. And Janoo told me Shazia’s father hasn’t paid one
paisa
even in tax. And why? Because Shazia’s father says his TV channel is public service because all it shows are mullahs answering questions from the public. Questions like will women who wear nail polish go to hell and which side your bed should point so if you die in the night you go straight to heaven. But everyone knows that everyone tunes in and that it is Cobra and Psycho’s fave channel and that he gets so much adverts on it that don’t even ask.

I wanted to order a big juicy burger with cheese and French fries but then I looked at Shazia and Raheela and they both looked so thin in their skinny jeans, so I ordered a salad and diet Coke and wished they’d speak a bit louder so I could also hear their goss. All the time opposite me Jonkers was talking and talking. I think so Shazia must be doing bitching about her sister-in-law. She’s just got married to a hot-shot business typhoon in New York and has a twenty-room sweet in Trump Tower and Shazia is so jay, that don’t even ask.

“You’ll really like her, Apa,” said Jonker. “She’s independent and clever and kind. Would you like to visit her office with me?”

“Hmm,” I said, not really listening. I’m forgetting Shazia’s sister-in-law’s name now. She’s studied from some university in New York. I think so it’s called Columbo. Janoo says it’s good. Maybe we’ll send Kulchoo there also. But not if it’s going to make him a gay.

“Is tomorrow okay, then?” said Janoo. And Raheela, she comes from a not-so-good bagground herself. I think so her father was something in sewage. Anyways she had this
chukker
with this man who owns a sugar mill but when he refused to marry her—because he said girls who slept with men before they married them were bad-charactered—she aimed for his best friend whose father is Royal Tractors and because the friend was a bit simple-minded, she managed to trap him. They got married last year.

The waiter put my salad in front of me. Thanks God it had some cheese in it. Otherwise
tau
I would have had to go home and have lunch again. I think so these women, Shazia and all, they must be eating like snakes. Once a week.

“What time shall I collect you?” asked Jonkers.

“For what?”

“For Sana’s office.”

“Sana who?”

“
Sana
, Apa.
Sana Raheem
, the girl I’ve spent the last half-hour telling you about.”

“Who’s she?” I picked out and ate all the cheese and then
started on the two or three green beans doing
purda
behind the whole garden of leaves that they’d piled on my plate.

“Have you heard a single word I’ve said all afternoon?” Jonkers put his fork down and looked at me strangely.

“Of course,
yaar
. There’s this person called Sana Rehman—”

“Raheem.”

“Hmm? Yes. Sorry. Raheem. You know, Jonkers, this salad is all leaves and nothing else.”

“Salads tend to be leafy.”

“Look, Shazia and Raheela are leaving. Wonder where they’re going from here? Do you think I could have a burger now that they’ve gone? You know Raheela’s had so many injections put into her face, she’s started looking like the Buddhas in Lahore museum. All smooth and peaceful and stony.
Haan
, so this Sana Raheem, who is she exactly?”

“She’s the woman I’m going to marry.”

The leaf I was swallowing became like a cactus tree inside my throat. I coughed and choked and felt as if I was going to die. Jonkers came round to my side and trumped me on the back and then made me drink a glass of water. When I got my voice back I croaked, “Does Aunty Pussy know?”

“Not yet.”

“Who is she?”

“You never listen, do you?” He sighed and then started telling me about Sana all over again.

Apparently this Sana of his, she is twenty-eight years old and works in a travel agency. Her mother is a schoolteacher. Oh no, I thought inside my heart, why do you always have to
go for the poor types? She had a father also, but he died in a car crash seven years ago. Father, Jonkers said, was a bank manager but after his death they started becoming poor and so Sana, who was at college doing her MA in English, dropped out and took a job in a travel agency. And mother went to work in a school as art teacher and mother is still art teacher but Sana has become the manager of her agency.

“She’s doing really well. You should see her. She’s so efficient and calm and—”