Duty Free (9 page)

And also her children were crying because it had started snowing again and Mahnoor said that she was already up to her waste in it and that in another ten minutes she’d get totally buried and her son said he couldn’t feel his toes, his ears, or his nose any more and that he felt as if someone had put a steel headband over his head which they were tightening slowly and why hadn’t they left him behind in Lahore to play cricket and do Nintendo and he hated them all, but most of all her, Baby. And Baby with the camera and hands and lips all stuck together was shouting at them to shut up and start moving back towards the hotel but the kids couldn’t make head or tale of what she was saying of course because she couldn’t really move her lips at all and all the time Baby was also thinking of her two-hundred-dollar pink suede boots buried in the snow.

Finally, one hour later when they got back to the hotel and Baby’s fingers and face had melted off the camera and her son had got back his ears and his nose and his toes and her daughter had stopped weeping, they all swore that they’d rather die than go out in the snow again. So for the rest of the month that they were in Toronto they stayed in their hotel room only and watched TV and ate burgers and chips and fought with each other and said how much they hated Canada and how much they loved Lahore and Baby wept over her pink suede boots that had become all hard and grey like a donkey’s ears. And
inside she cursed the crooked lawyer for calling them there in the winters even though to his face she smiled at him and called him
“bhaijan.”
That’s why they are not going to Toronto for New Year’s. And, thanks God, nor am I. Imagine,
yaar
, what a place. The Canadians must be crack to live there, no?

Guess who came back today? Madam Jameela! Yes, her. That shameless, selfish, ungrateful, sex-mad liar. Strolled in cold as brass, wearing my three-season-old Kami
jora
with the pink embroidery on green bagground, which had cost me twenty thousand then. New shoes, pink heels if you please. And nail polish on her toes. Face all glowing, hair all shining.
Not
looking as if she’d been
near
a funeral.

“Assalam aleikum,”
she said.

“Get out,” I said.

“Okay,” she said.

I was dump-founded. What did she mean, “okay”?

“What do you mean
‘okay’?
How dare you say okay?”

“I’m doing like you want. You said go so I said okay.”

“After all I’ve done for you—given you job, given you designer clothes worth I don’t know how much, given you earrings worth sixty thou, given you leave every time your mother died—you just come in here and say okay?”

“I don’t need your job any more. I’m going to Abu Dhabi.”

“
Abu Dhabi?
Don’t be stuppid. Who do
you
know in Abu Dhabi?”

“I’m going to work for foreigners. They pay three, three, four, four times as much as you all.”

“Which foreigners? How do you know foreigners?”

Then she told me. Apparently, her husband’s older brother has worked in Abu Dhabi for six years as a driver for these foreigners. She doesn’t know where they are from but they don’t speak English among themselves and are tall with yellow hair. And they speak nicely, always saying please and if you don’t mind. And they are very happy with Jameela’s brother-in-law. They’ve given him TV, DVD, fridge, AC even, and fat pay on top. Now they’ve moved to a bigger house and they need a maid and a cook and they asked him if he knew anybody suitable and so he asked Jameela and her husband.

“So we’re going. Next week. Visas and everything is all done. Tickets also. Just came to pick up my clothes. And to tell you.”

That night when Janoo came back from Sharkpur, the minute he walked into the room, I told him it was all his fault. He was the one who was always going on about how smart Jameela was and how hard-working and how ambitious.
He
was the one who gave her so much of
phook
and now look what
he’d
done.

“Abu Dhabi, eh?” he chuckled. “Good for her. I always knew she’d go far.”

“Well, she has. All the way to air-conditioned Abu Dhabi where the electricity never goes and bombs never burst and servants speak English. And me? I’m stuck in dirty, filthy Lahore where electricity never comes and bombs burst ten, ten times
a day and the one thing, the
only
thing, I had was a maid and now even she’s gone!”

“You’ll find another maid.”

“And who’s going to train her? Teach her to knock before she comes in? And not call you ‘bhaijan’ and me ‘baji’ as if we were her older brother and sister? And get her to use a toothbrush instead of a tree? And not to tell people I’m sitting on the toilet when they call?
You?
”

“Look,” he said, switching on the TV and that also bore BBC news, “it’s not the end of the world. You should just wish her well and start looking for someone else.”

“She doesn’t need my wishes. That snake-in-the-grass. She’s going to be living it up with her white employers who say thank you thousand, thousand times and snatch our servants and spoil them forever with televisions and fridges. It’s not fair!”

“It’s hardly as if Jameela is going to Abu Dhabi to live it up in clubs and malls,” sighed Janoo. “She’s going to work as a domestic servant. And how do you know her white employers are going to shower her with goodies? From my experience, even bleeding-heart liberals revert pretty quick to colonial
sahibs
and
memsahibs
when they find themselves in places where help is cheap and has no rights. So if I were you I wouldn’t begrudge her Abu Dhabi. Believe me you wouldn’t want to change places with her.”

“So then why did she—?”

He put the volume high up to shut me up. I
knew
I shouldn’t have married him. At least he could have done some “look-at-her-what-a-back-stabber-may-she-rot-in-hell” talk with me. Like
Mummy did. Like Aunty Pussy did. But no. He has no feelings for me. Not even this much of sympathy. Even now after seventeen years of marriage, after everything I’ve done for him—working myself to the bones making sure nice, nice food is on the table, the generator is full of diesel, his computer, his TV, his everything is working first class, Kulchoo is having the best tuitions and our comings and goings are with the nice, rich, sophisty old-family-types of Lahore—and still, all he can think of is that snake Jameela’s wellfear. One thing I know, I shouldn’t have married him.

“You know something?” I said to his back. “You don’t deserve me.”

“Hmm?” he said, changing the channel.

“I said you don’t deserve me.”

“You can say
that
again!” he muttered to the TV screen.

“You should have married your Oxen
memsahib
. Both of you could have been good and holy together, always thinking of the wellfear of servants rather than your own families.”

“Oh for God’s sake! Is this tantrum because I expressed some sympathy for—”

“It’s
not
a tantrum, okay? And just because I’m not an Oxen doesn’t mean you can speak to me as if I was three years old. Tantrum, my shoe.”

“If I’d known that this was what was awaiting me in Lahore, I wouldn’t have bothered to drive three hours through horrendous traffic—”

“So who asked you to come? You should have stayed in your stinky, bore village. That’s where you are happiest anyways.
Why bother coming here at all? It’s hardly as if you come for my company. The second you come here you switch on the TV and that also to bore BBC. Do you ever ask me what I want to see? Or ask me about where-all I’ve gone, who-all I’ve met, what-all I’ve done? Never. Not for one second. And why? Because you don’t give two hoops about me. That’s why. You care more about the servants’ wellfear than you do about your wife’s. Admit it.”

“God almighty! I really don’t think I deserve this barrage of criticism—”

“No no, you can criticize me all day and all night and that’s fine. I don’t read newspapers, I don’t do work, I don’t know politics, I don’t know econmics, I buy too much jewellery, I do kittys, I am total time-waste. But I can’t say
one
word against you. If I’m such a time-waste why did you marry me then,
haan
?”

“It’s a question I’ve often asked myself.”

“You think I am happy with
you
? With your bore lectures and your stuppid village and the embarrassing fights you have with everyone everywhere. And over what? Iraq. Obama. Osama. America. Stuppid time-waste. As if you can change anything. A dead body is more fun than you.”

“All I want is to watch a bit of TV and then have a bite and go to sleep. Is that too much to ask?”

“No. No. Nothing is too much for you. It’s me who can’t do this and can’t do that. Can’t go to coffee parties, can’t find brides for Jonkers. But you’re right. I shouldn’t find brides for Jonkers. Because what do I know about happy marriages,
haan
?”

I’m so depress, so depress, that don’t even ask. I have no maid to take my clothes out of my wardrope and lay them out in the morning. No maid to pick them off the floor at night and take them away for washing. No maid to straighten my shoes in lovely long lines in my dressing room. No maid to sort up my underwears drawer. No maid to bring my tea in the morning. To pull the curtains. To plumb up my cushions. To hand me my bag as I leave the house. To take my bag as I re-enter the house. To press my legs and massage my head. To get my shawl when I feel cold. To switch on the AC when I feel hot. To tell me who-all is doing what-all in Kulchoo’s room upstairs when his friends come. To always tell my mother-in-law I’m out whenever she calls. To give me goss about Sunny, Mulloo, and all that she’s heard from their maids. Never to tell my goss to anyone. Ever.

On top, I’m not speaking to Janoo. Because of our fight,
na. Hai
, I’m so depress, so depress that don’t even ask.

Sunny says
desi
maids are all back-stabbers like this only and that I should get a Filipina. They cost as much as a middle manager-type in a small business but they don’t say please get my husband a job, and my son admission in school and my
father out of jail and my mother into hospital. They just do their work and after two years they go. Done. You never even know how many brothers and sisters they have. Locals
tau
eat you alive with their demands, demands, demands. Unlike locals, Filipinas also know English and can help your children with their homework and because everyone knows how much they cost, they make you look rich. They also call you Madam which sounds more modern and classy than
Baji
.

I also used to have one. She was called Maria and she was from Vanilla, Filipines. She was always smiling but when the tsunami came in Vanilla she cried and wept and howled and said she had to go home, so being the soft-headed and gentle soul that I am, I gave her five hundred dollars and time off for two weeks and she never came back. I think so she got another job somewhere else. Very selfish they are, I must say. And then I found Jameela and so I thought
chalo
, never mind, if God takes with one hand He gives with the other. Even if He takes English-speaking smart Filipina and gives Punjabi-speaking illitred
desi
. One shouldn’t complain because He is like that only.

Now Sunny is after me to get another Filipina but Mulloo says Natasha is
tau
still really anti them even three years after her Filipina left. She gave so much of trouble that don’t even ask. Apparently she was having an affair with
both
the driver and the cook and also taking money from them both and when they found out about each other there was a huge
phudda
in her house with both of them rushing at each other with kitchen knives and car-jacks. Police had to come. So embarrassing.
No, no, I think so I’ll wait for a
desi
. At least she will have the decency to have one affair at a time. First cook, then driver, then bearer, and then guard. Everyone has a turn and everyone is happy. Mummy is right, you know, all these people think about is You Know What.