Moni Mohsin - Duty Free

“Are you all right?” she asked, holding Aunty Pussy by the shoulders.

“Yes, yes, fine,” Aunty Pussy snapped, brushing the girl’s hands off her shoulders as if they were dandrough. “I’m perfectly fine. Can’t you see?”

I wish Aunty Pussy wouldn’t treat everyone like a servant. Honestly, some times she can be so rude.

“Thank you,” said Jonkers to the girl. He stepped up and helped Aunty Pussy back into her chair. “Thank you for saving my mother.” He was probably also feeling embarrassed of his mother’s behaviour.

“No problem.” The girl smiled at him.

Jonkers’ face flashed red.

She had a dimply smile, otherwise she was a bit plainish. High pony tail, slim, wheatish colouring, longish nose. She was dressed in a pale yellow silk shalwar kameez with just a little bit of silver embroidery on the neckline and small pearl earrings. No designer shoes, no big jewels, no nothing. She didn’t look like she came from an effluent bagground. Aunty Pussy thought the same because she gave her one look and immediately lost interest. The girl gave Jonkers a little wave and went away.

“What did you think?” asked Jonkers, tugging at my elbow.

“Of what?” I asked.

“That girl. The one in yellow? Who just passed by?”

“That dark, poor-looking thing in the cheap clothes?” asked Aunty Pussy in a loud voice. “She must be one of the poor relations. Or else, a gatecrasher.”

Immediately Jonkers’ face fell down but he didn’t say anything.

And then I saw Sunny and Faiza standing gossiping and they called me over and I went because Mulloo was jumping up and down on my nerves. I did just five minutes of goss with them and when I came back I saw that Jonkers was gone and Aunty Pussy and Mulloo were smiling as if they’d just got engaged to each other.

“It’s been decided,” said Aunty Pussy when she saw me. “Your lovely friend here, what’s your name, dear? Yes of course, Mottoo. Well Mottoo—”

“Mulloo, Aunty, my name is Mulloo, not Mottoo.”

“Yes, yes, Mottoo has a cousin with a lovely daughter. Young, respectful, wealthy, nicely brought-up, isn’t that right? Who she’s going to introduce to us.”

“Why?” I asked, giving Mulloo a suspicious look.

“For your cousin Jonkers, of course.”

Bloody Mulloo. She’s so pushy. Always pushing herself to the front. Well, I damn care what sort of girl she gets for Jonkers now. Aunty Pussy and she deserve one another. And if Jonkers is going to be such a wet brag and just stand there gargling and staring, then he also deserves whatever type of cheapster thing or bore number they give him.

“Jonky darling, have you heard? You’re marrying Mottoo’s cousin. Jonky?” Aunty Pussy’s head snivelled around to look at the empty space where he’d been standing. “Where is he? Where’s he gone?”

“I’ll go find him, Aunty.” Mulloo, grinning like a baboon, went off to look for him.

“He’s probably gone to find some dinner,” said Mummy. “Get up, Pussy. We’d better go and get something to eat also before we all starve to death.” And when they’d gone a bit of the way, I heard her say to Aunty Pussy, “You shouldn’t say that you’re going to marry Mulloo’s cousin’s daughter. You haven’t even seen her yet. She may be a hunchback or black as coal, for all you know.”

This morning I was woken up at the crack of noon by a phone call. Who else but Aunty Pussy? Honestly, she’s so consistent, so consistent that don’t even ask. Once she’s got after something only a suicide bomber could make her change her mind.

“Dar- ling ,” she shrieked, “your Mummy seems to think that you got upset at the wedding. Why, darling? What is that Mottoo to me? It is you who will choose Jonky’s future brides with me. She can show me all she wants, but you’re the one who’s going to have final say. After all, you are blood.”

And then she told me about Mulloo’s distant cousin.

Apparently she has a broken nikah behind her so, like Jonkers, she is also second-hand. And she is quiet and simple and obedient. And rich. Her father has a big import — export business and they have a nice, fat house in Defence Housing Society but not near the bad bit of Defence where all the prostitutes are. Mulloo (trust her, the pushy back-stabber), she’s already organized a tea party at their house for Aunty Pussy. I told Aunty Pussy to take Jonkers along as well so the girl and boy could see each other but she fell silent for a bit and then said Mulloo had told her that maybe not at the first meeting, because her cousin, Farva, is in that way a little bit on the conservative side. Not much. A bit, only.

They must be pukka conservative-types to do nikah contract instead of just engagement. Breaking it off is like doing proper die-vorce through courts and all, unlike engagement that you can break any time, anywhere. I bet you Mulloo’s cousin did the nikah when her daughter was a baby or something. Poor Jonkers. He’s marrying into a fundo family.

Aunty Pussy begged me to come along also. I wanted to say no, you go with your precious Mulloo, but then thinking of Kulchoo I said yes. Before I hanged up, I asked Aunty Pussy if she’d told Zeenat Kuraishi that Jonkers wasn’t interested. And Aunty Pussy at once became sharp with me and said how could she go and say they were not interested when Zeenat hadn’t even asked properly. When the right moment came, she’d drop a hint. Until then she was going to let sleeping logs lie. So after that I called Mummy and told her that she must come also because Aunty Pussy when she gets highly stung like this, she can become quite over, na . Mummy said okay.

After that I called Jonkers in his towel and bed-sheet office and told him we were going to see Girl Number Two the next day. I also told him that he couldn’t come just now because her parents were a little bit like that. I thought he’d be really disappointed but he seemed least bothered as if he couldn’t care less if he came or not. I said to him sharply, I said, “I’m doing this for you, okay?” So he thanked me and said he was very grateful to me for taking time out like this. I asked if he had any last requests. Nothing really, he said, except that girl must be nice person and must be someone who would be on his side. That’s two things, I told him. And anyways, what did he mean by “on his side”? Supportive, he said. I told him we were going to look at a girl, not a sports bra, okay?

Mulloo’s cousin lives in a powder-palace. It has two storeys and is plastered everywhere in white plaster — white pillars, white dome, white triangle, paper-hat-type thing on front porch. All powder-pashas — drugs smugglers, na —have houses like this. I think so they must be having a textbook of house designs for drug smugglers from which they all copy. Also house is in Defence Phase V, on the very edge of Lahore, where all the upstarters live. The army only started making it into plots and selling to people five years ago. Before that it was boarder with India.

“What did Mulloo say her cousin’s husband did?” asked Mummy, as the driver honked at the gate.

“All Mulloo’s told me is that girl is called Tasbeeh, she is in her early twenties and that the family is well off,” Aunty Pussy told her. “And she’s got a broken nikah. ”