Duty Free (3 page)

Just as I was about to tell the bearer to tell him that I was out, I heard Jonkers’ shy little cough and there he was behind my sofa.

“Haw, Jonkers!”
I squealed. “What a lovely surprise!”

“Hello, Apa,” he said quietly. I wish he wouldn’t call me Apa. I know I’m his sort of elder sister but he’s only three years younger than me even though he looks ten years elder with his bald head, skinny little neck and big, square General-Zia-type glasses.

“May I?” he asked, looking at the sofa.

“Jonkers,
yaar
, don’t be formal.”

He twitched up his neatly pressed khaki trousers over his knees and sat down.

“I hear, Apa—”

“Don’t call me Apa, okay? People will think I’m fifty if I’m
your
elder sister.”

“Sorry. My mother tells me you’re going to help her find a wife for me?”

“Something like.”

“But the sort of girls my mother is after want Porsche-driving, stinking-rich hunks, not losers like me.”

“
Haw
, Jonkers, how you can say that? After all,
mashallah
, you have everything—name, house, property.”

“I know you all thought Shumaila was downmarket, but you know something? She actually
liked
me.”

“If she liked you so much why did she run away then,
haan
?”

“Because everyone looked down on her and my mother made her life hell.”

“I’m sorry, Jonkers,” I said, “but she was
tau
a total no-no. Couldn’t even speak English properly and ate her omlette with a spoon and had pointed toenails. And those tight, tight shirts and loose, loose morals. And no deodrant also. No, I’m sorry. She was just after your money. Look at the way she cleaned you out. And that also in four months only.” As soon as I said it I saw Jonkers’ face fall down. I felt bad, so I said, “I’m not saying she didn’t like you. Don’t get me wrong,
haan
? But honestly, she wasn’t suitable. There was too much of difference in you both.”

“Aren’t the two of you different?”

“Who two? Me and Janoo? Of course we are. He is serious and I am fun. I have friends and he doesn’t. I am sophisty, socialist-type and he is bore, serious-type. I like fashion and gossip and parties and all he, poor thing, knows about is world affairs and crops and his bore charity school that he runs in his village. But at least we know the same people and have the same sort of baggrounds. Okay, he’s landed and I’m not but if he went to Aitchison College, I went to Kinnaird College.
And okay, I spent more time gossiping and getting my eyebrows threaded by my friends in the front lawn than going to bore lectures at college, but at least I went to same place as his sisters for my BA so you know, we are from same bagground. And that’s what matters, Jonkers. Not what you like and don’t like, not what you do and don’t do but where you’re from. Can you say that about you and Shumaila? That you were from same sort of baggrounds?”

Jonkers shook his head. And then he said, with a sloppy-type, sad smile, “She used to make me feel alive. I’d take her for a spin in the car and she’d lower the window right down and sing along with Bollywood songs on the radio at the top of her voice. ‘It’s the Time to Disco’ from
Main Hoon Na
was her all-time favourite.”

“No, stuppid. It’s from
Kal Ho Naa Ho
with Preety Zinda and Shahrukh and Saif.”

“And she loved Kit Kat. And she wasn’t insect-thin and she didn’t turn up her nose at clothes without labels and she didn’t moan about the servants or the air conditioning and she could cook. She made the best
biryani
. Mummy said it just proved she was servant class.”

I felt sorry for him and also a little bit guilty, but why I don’t know, because it wasn’t me who pushed her out. Also a small voice inside my heart said that a fat diamond ring, two pairs of hairloom earrings, a big gold necklace, and a brand new Toyota salon car isn’t too bad for four months of Kit Kat eating and driving up and down the canal road singing “It’s the Time to Disco.”

So I gritted my teeth and asked him if he wanted her back. Seeing he missed her and her
biryani
. But inside I was praying that he would say no because she
did
have pointy toenails, you know. And she said “tap” instead of “type” and “toash” instead of toast. A total uneducated she was. And also, I’m sorry to say, low-class.

He shook his head. Thanks God.

“She got remarried a couple of weeks ago. To the manager of a
tandoori
restaurant in Dubai. She
so
wanted to visit Dubai. I was going to take her for her birthday. But she ran away the week before.”

“Look at the bright sides. At least you saved on the tickets.”

He took out his handkerchief and wiped his glasses. Then he asked me such a stuppid-type question.

“Apa, are you happy? Happily married, I mean?”

“
Haw
, crack,” I laughed. “What cracked things you ask!”

“I’m serious, Apa. Are you happily married?”

“Don’t call me Apa.”

“Sorry. Are you?”

“Honestly, Jonkers!” I said. I mean what stuppid question, no?
Am I happily married?
What does he mean? Can’t he see? Is he blind or something? By grace of Allah, I have a husband, a child, a big house, servants, social life, status, cars, cupboards full of designer
joras
and jewellery, and so on and so fourth. Everyone is always saying what a nice life I have. What else is happiness,
haan
? Stuppid.

So I waved my arms around my nice cluttered-type lounge, at the walls full of paintings and vases full of flowers and
Janoo’s bursting bookcases and Kulchoo’s tittering stacks of DVDs and my piles of
Good Times
and
Vogue
and the huge colour photo taken by Lahore’s best photographer, Zaidi, of me and Janoo and Kulchoo when he was a baby and before that of me and Janoo as new weds and I said, “Look at all this. See? It’s a full house. With family and servants and comings and goings and phones ringing and droppings in of guests and everyone lively and busy and everything. I have a full house, Jonkers, a full house.”

Jonkers stared at the carpet and nodded and went on nodding as if the carpet was asking him questions. Then he coughed, put his glasses on and said, “So you recommend an arranged marriage?”

“What else?”

“But what about love?”

“
Haw
, who says you can’t have both together? Take me only. I didn’t know Janoo at all before we got engaged but I fell in love as soon as my engagement was announced. Maybe you’re not knowing all this, Jonkers, because you were in Dull then—”

“Hull,” he said, “not Dull.”

“What? Oh yes. Du—, I mean, Hull. But Janoo was in love with an English girl, a real little
memsaab
with blue eyes and yellow hair, who’d been with him in Oxford. He wanted to marry her. Stuppid, he thought she’d come and settle in Sharkpur with him and go ooh and aah over the sunset and the fields and do bore NGO-type things with him like building clinics and toilets and things for his precious villagers. But
when she came and visited and saw Sharkpur with its mud houses and big black cows and little black people and the Old Bag, I mean, his mother and all, she told him then and there only that if he wanted to marry her, he’d have to move to London, because no way was she going to live in that holehell. She even turned up her nose at Lahore. Imagine! Her ears and graces! So, anyways after she left, for a year or two Janoo went mooning about the place. Very depressed and all he was. But then Janoo’s older sister, Cobra—”

“You mean Kubra, Apa?”

“Cobra is my little pet name for her. Because she speaks with split tongue. Anyways, Cobra then suggested me because I was one of the most illegible girls of my year at Kinnaird College,
na
. And so it was done. And the minute our engagement was announced, I fell in love. Didn’t think I should fall in love before because what if engagement didn’t take place? Then I would become a laughing stop. One has to think of oneself also, na. But you wait and see. It will be exact same for you.”

“For a thirty-seven-year-old heap of soiled goods like me?”

“Men are never soiled, Jonkers, only women.”

He folded his hanky neatly and replaced it in his shirt pocket.

“But I’m not rich. I make a small living running my business and looking after my father’s property but I’m not, you know, stinking-rich. I’m also not a double for George Clooney and—”

“And also your clothes, they are not right.”

He looked down at his shirt that was buttoned all the way up to his chin.

“My clothes?”

“They are not, you know, fashiony.”

“They’re not?”

“They make you look like a countant.”

“But I
am
one.”

“Okay, okay, forget.”

“Thing is, I don’t know what to say to these society girls. They look snooty and bored. They find me dull and to them, I probably
am
dull. That was the thing with Shumi. Talking to her was so easy …”

“At least you can change your glasses. Best is, get your eyes lasered. It’s become very cheap. Even the poors, like teachers and all are doing laser nowdays.”

“She was chatty and friendly and
genuinely
interested in me.”

I’d forgotten he’s so stuppid. It’s total time-waste to tell him about make-outs like they do on TV where they take really ugly, old people and in one hour flat make them young and beautiful. Jonkers is so behind everything. And then he asked me if I would go along with Aunty Pussy when she went girl-hunting and made sure she didn’t go chasing the wrong types. He told me to stare her in the right direction. So I told him that she’s not a donkey and that I wasn’t sitting on her back with a stick to make her go this way and that way, like I wanted.

“I know, I know,” he said. “But she listens to you more than she does to me. She thinks I’m an idiot. And that my views
don’t matter. After Shumaila left the way she did, she feels she can say whatever she wants to me. I can’t open my mouth without her jumping down my throat. Please go and see the girls with her.”

“And then?”

“Then just tell her the ones you think are unsuitable.”

“But what type of girl do you want, Jonkers? I don’t know that even.” Well I know he likes the cheapster Typhoon and Shumaila types but he’d better not say that to me. Or I’ll slap him.

“I don’t want a glamour puss. Nor a spoilt, rich doll. Just someone who is friendly and kind and speaks to people right and is normal, I guess.”

“So you want plain, quiet, mediocre-type.”

“I want someone who’s easy to live with.”

“
Uff Allah!
It’s not like girls are exams, Jonkers. Hard or easy. Girls are girls. Some are nice and some are not so nice because they are not from good baggrounds. That’s all.”

He asked me what a good bagground was and I said it was when they had same-to-same money as you and knew the same people and went to same places. Stuppid. Doesn’t even know that much. God knows what they taught him in Dull. But then I reminded myself that he may look like a loser but one thing Jonkers has never done is bitch about that bitch Shumaila. Even after she made him into a joke in front of all of Lahore by running off with her
tandoor-wallah
, he never said one word against her. It would have been so easy. Everyone would believe him because he’s one of us and she isn’t. And here
tau
men
say such dirty, filthy things about girls who haven’t even done anything to them and they ruin their reputations just like that and Jonkers didn’t even say a word. Not a single thing. Not even to me. His Apa.

“Okay, okay,” I sighed, “I’ll go and see your prospectus brides. But one thing you tell your mother. She’s not to make any wishes inside her head without telling me first, okay? Otherwise I’m not coming.”

“What wishes? I don’t follow.”

“Just tell her like I said.
She’ll
follow.”

So Aunty Pussy came round with Mummy in toe and brought lemon tarts from Punjab Club and a big buffet of roses for me and a get-well present for Kulchoo who’d already got well and gone to school. I think so she was trying to do make up with me. I wanted to tell her what she’d done was mean, mean, mean and how could she think such bad things for her own cousin’s daughter’s son like that but then I caught Mummy’s eye and she gave a small shake of her head and so I let buygones be buygones. Because I’m like that only.

We sat in the sitting room and made plans. Over samosas and lemon tarts Aunty Pussy said that she still gives thousand, thousand thanks to Allah that He saved her poor innocent Jonkers from that slutty secretary, that poisonous she-snake, Miss Shumaila. Inside my heart I thought it would have been nicer if He could have saved the diamond ring, hairloom earrings, one necklace, and a Toyota salon car also. But something’s better than nothing. And besides you can’t expect so much from Someone who’s so busy.

“I still can’t see what Jonkers saw in her,” said Mummy.

“Oh, Malika,” said Aunty Pussy, flinging down her napkin. “She was making sex appeals to him. Of the dirty kind. Girls like that have no pride, you know, no shame.”