Moni Mohsin - Duty Free

Muhammad Hussain cleared his throat. “So, Bibi, what is your decision?”

I wanted to tell them that listen I also have to live, okay. Who’s going to pay for my hairdresser, my spa, my tailor, my waxing woman, my jeweller, my kitty, if you’re going to eat me alive? Money doesn’t come out of taps, you know. But they don’t understand these things. They think we are made of money. Always wanting, always asking. Never doing Allah ka shukar . Never satisfied.

“Okay I’ll speak to Saab when he comes,” I said to get them off my back. “But I’m not making any promises.”

Janoo, of course, immediately said that we should give them all a rise. And that we should have given them already. Aik tau he’s also such a softie. I said how about giving me a rise also? If you think sugar has gone up you should see how much gold has gone up. Only yesterday I was asking Shazad at Goldsmith how much a ten- tola necklace costs now and the reply he gave almost made me pass away with shock. But of course Janoo never ever thinks of my needs. Sometimes I think so I would be better off if I was his driver instead of his wife. Then he’d have a guilty conscious about me and give me a rise whenever I asked.

Tomorrow is our kitty day again. Thanks God, I’ll get a brake from Aunty Pussy and her constant demands. Honestly, she’s drunk up all my blood. Anyone else in my place would have told her long ago to get lost. But me, I’m too gentle for my own goods. Mummy says I’ve always been like that. When I was small I wouldn’t squat flies with a big thump like everyone else but instead I’d do it gently, slowly with four, five little taps. Haan , so where was I? Oh yes, the kitty.

This time it’s Sunny’s turn. We’ve thrown Nina out, na . She was going around everywhere saying how we’d eaten her money and she was giving us a bad rep, so we decided to give her her money back. So there’s just the nine of us left. And because Sunny lives near Raiwind, which is in the back of behind, Mulloo’s asked me for a lift. Irum is taking her car for tuition, she said. They, poor things, have only one car left now, na . So poor they’ve become. Well, they have two but the other one’s a tiny Suzuki that everyone keeps for servants to get vegetables and meat from the bazaar and not even Irum is prepared to be seen in that .

You know, na , that ever since Tony’s business went bangrupt, Mulloo has been depress. The banks have been asking for their money back and they’ve had to sell a plot they’d bought in Cavalry Grounds for Irum’s dowry. Mulloo puts out a brave face but I think so the sich has been bad in their home. For instant, they sold their sport car ages ago and then I saw some diamond studs at Goldsmith which had come for selling. I was ninety-five per cent sure they were hers but you know Shazad Goldsmith, he never says. Even though I asked him to please tell na , and promise by God, swear on Holy Koran won’t tell anyone, he just said they belonged to a client. So pukka he is.

And also Irum’s roaming around with a poor type. Kulchoo made me swear I wouldn’t tell anyone, and particularly Mulloo because she tau doesn’t suspect anything at all, but he said the boy is a DVD- wallah . These children, they know everything about each other. It seems to me they can’t even go to the toilet without telling everyone on the computer. And sending photos also. So Irum’s boyfriend has a DVD shop called Kool Kat, probably on the backside of some small pathetic-type market. And nothing else. No house, no name, no family, no lands, no industries, no uggla pichhla , nothing. Just a stack of DVDs.

And Mulloo, poor thing, is hoping, no, not just hoping, counting on Irum to make good marriage to a nice, rich type. Also she’d love to migrate to Canada and live in Missy Saga which Baby says is just like Gulberg, it has so many Pakistanis. It’s so desi that the number of darses and other Islamic meetings that take place there don’t even happen in Lahore, Karachi, and Isloo combined. But I don’t think so Mulloo and Tony can leave because Tony is in too much trouble.

He made two fatal mistakes, na . When he was doing well, he was openly rude two times to his bank manager who at that time tau drank down his anger but now that Tony’s a defaulter and the bank manager’s sister has just got married into the family of the Interior Minister, the foot is in the other shoe. So Tony and his family’s name have been put on the exit control list. Mulloo pretends that she stays here for the love of her country but it’s really because she can’t even enter the International Departures section at the airport.

And I also know that in the quiet Mulloo does some catering from her house. Provides food to Zeenat’s schools’ canteens. I know because the woman who runs the canteen there is my waxing- waali’s sister-in-law. And my waxing- waali also does Mulloo, so she knows. And so I know. But Mulloo doesn’t know that I know. Mulloo puts money into the kitty from there only — from the biryani and naan kebabs she makes. Naturally, she doesn’t want anyone to hear even a whisper of it because she doesn’t want people to know how poor she’s become. She even hides it from me but I know because when I’ve called her, the maid’s said that Begum Saab’s in the kitchen. And not once, not twice, but at least three, four times.

We all have friends who have nice German kitchens full of stainless steel and mixers-shixers and American fridges and they sometimes go into those kitchens to do some non-smelly cooking like baking a cake or, as they say, fixing a salad (as if it was broken or something). But no one, absolutely no one, goes into the greasy kitchen in which servants cook the daily food. I mean, why would they? And you know what? Mulloo doesn’t even have a smart kitchen. She only has the greasy servants’- wallah . So she goes into that and cooks. Imagine! And something else also. Since I first started suspecting, I’ve smelt zeera on her. And once or twice onions even. Raw.

And when everyone of her age is applying to American colleges for more studies, Irum’s not. One, tau Tony can’t afford and two, Irum, she’s not very serious-minded, na . As Kulchoo says she’s not scholarship material. But then nor is her mother. And father tau poor thing is total loser. I guess brains are not in Irum’s jeans. Not like Kulchoo who gets from both sides.

You know, na , that Kulchoo came top in his class in his mid-term exams? I distributed cake among the servants and called Sunny and dropped it casually into the chit-chat. Just to make her burn because of all the boasting she does. Janoo of course didn’t say anything except “Well done, Kulch.” But coming from him even this much of praise is like Noble Prize.

I told Janoo, “See now, how good tuitions are?”

“You mean despite all those mind-numbing tuitions he did so well,” he said. “Imagine how he’d do without them.”

I thought to myself, no point arguing with cracks. So I didn’t say anything more. All I want now is for Kulchoo to get into a top college, or at least better than Sunny’s, Baby’s, Nina’s, and Faiza’s children, and to not get snatched by some sharpie, greedy girl before he leaves. Then I want him to come back and start big business and make big marriage and have big family. Every night before I go to sleep I say one small prayer for that. “Please, Allah Mian , keep my Kulchoo safe from snatchers.”