Moni Mohsin - Duty Free

We waited in the car while Muhammad Hussain went inside to fetch the mullah. When he came out he was a youngish man wearing a beard and turban just like my attacker. (The mullah, not Muhammad Hussain.) As soon as I saw him, my heart came into my mouth again and a loud buzzing started up in my head. I didn’t want to give the money to him but Mummy said to me in a whisper, “Looks bad now.” So I handed over the money but I was careful not to let his fingers touch mine. Nor did I look at his face.

I went to see Mulloo today. I hadn’t seen her or even spoken to her on the phone since that day with the beardo. Sunny, Nina, Baby, and all, when they came to see me they said that they’d dropped in at Mulloo’s also but Tony had said she was resting and wouldn’t let them go in. And she hasn’t called anyone after that. Not even me. In fact, Mulloo has dropped out of the social scene altogether. No one’s seen her, no one’s heard of her, nothing.

So when I arrived at Mulloo’s place, Razia, her maid, told me that Mulloo Begum Saab was resting in her bedroom and I shouldn’t disturb her or she’d yell at her and maybe even throw her out of her job. I said doesn’t matter, I’ll make her keep you again. And I pushed past her into Mulloo’s room.

At first I couldn’t see anything because the curtains were drawn up but when my eyes became used to, I saw this lumptype thing in the bed under the sheets. I switched on the lights and the lump threw off the sheet and started screaming, “Razia, I told you not to bother me. Get out. Fool! Idiot!” It was Mulloo.

I said to Mulloo did I look like Razia to her and why wasn’t she getting up? She sat there on her bed with her hair all wild, wild and her eyes all crazy, crazy, looking at me as if she’d never seen me before and I swear I thought she’d finally cracked. The room was also smelling as if no one had opened the windows in a month. So I pulled back the curtains and threw open the windows. She immediately pulled the sheets back over her head again and started moaning and rocking like a weepy rocking horse.

“Come on, Mulloo, yaar ,” I said. “It’s not the end of the world, you know.”

“It’s fine for you,” she sobbed from under the sheets. “You didn’t lose ninety thousand and your pearls also. And you didn’t have him touching you. He touched me! I feel dirty.”

“I know, Mulloo, and I’m really sorry. But it’s over, yaar . And we are both alive and we haven’t been raped even.”

“Yes, it’s over. Everything’s over for me.”

“ Haw , Mulloo. How you can say this? The pearls and money were just things and Janoo says it’s okay to lose things.”

At that she flung back the sheets and glared at me. “It may be okay for you and your darling Janoo but it’s not okay for me. Do you know how hard I work for my things ? Do you have any idea?”

I went up to her. “Don’t be like that, Mulloo.”

“Go away,” she shouted, flapping her hands at me as if she was shooing away a crow. “Just go away and leave me alone.”

“Listen to me, Mulloo,” I said, sitting down on the side of her bed. “I know it was scary and I know that man touched you and took your pearls and money, and he didn’t take so much of my money, nor my diamonds, but he also threated me , you know, and he also called me dirty names and he was going to kill me if the other one hadn’t taken him away just then. If I become depress and stop talking to my friends then I will let that man win. But if I keep living like before and I keep going out and being myself, then I win and he loses. No?”

“Everything for you is a game,” she laughed emptily. “Isn’t it? Winners and losers. Well, I don’t want to play.”

She pulled the sheets up and disappeared under them again. As if I wasn’t there.

“Mulloo?” I said.

“Go away. Leave me alone,” she shouted from under the sheets.

“Mulloo—”

“Get out!”

“Okay, Mulloo, then I’ll go.”

As I walked to the door she called out, “Listen, please don’t tell anybody what he did to me.”

“Of course I won’t, Mulloo.”

“Swear, swear on your child’s life.”

“I swear.”

Outside the door I met Razia.

“Where are Tony Saab and Irum Bibi?” I asked her.

“Out,” she shrugged.

“Tell them to stay with Mulloo Bibi. She needs them around.”

“Can you keep me yourself?” She tugged at my sleeve. “I don’t ask much. Only seven thousand. That’s all. Please? I can do waxing and threading also. Okay, six thousand five hundred for you.”

I shook her hand off my arm and walked straight away past her.

As if we didn’t have enough problems, now we’ve even got dengue fever. Honestly! And I thought that only poor countries like Africa got it. I’m so worried, so worried that my poor darling Kulchoo is going to get it. Yesterday when he came home from school I told him he’s not to eat street food from roadside stalls and he’s not to drink water in other people’s houses because God knows if they use bottled or drink from taps only and he’s not—

“Why?” he asked.

“Haven’t you seen how much dengue fever there is?”

“But what’s that got to do with food or water? Dengue’s spread by mosquitoes.”

“Oh?” I said. “Is it? Well, don’t go near mosquitoes then. And, even if there are mosquitoes around don’t let them bite you, okay?”

“Take a chill pill, Mum. It’s hardly as if I go paddling in ditches of stagnant water.”

Take a chill pill! If he knew what I know about Aunty Pussy …

So yesterday I had the whole house sprayed from top to bottom with mosquito-killer spray. I also had lots of those green coils burnt whose smell mosquitoes don’t like. And also in every room I had those tablets put inside the switches which make the buzzing sound that drives mosquitoes crazy. I also put a net around Kulchoo’s bed and I told all the servants that I would fire them if they opened Kulchoo’s windows one inch even.

When Kulchoo came home from school he said, “What’s that awful chemical smell everywhere?”

“Mosquito spray, and mosquito coils, and mosquito tablets,” I said.

“Jeez, Mum. You don’t have to go at them with WMDs. I don’t know about dengue fever, but by the time you’re through, I’ll be dead of chemical poisoning.”

“Don’t speak like that!” I said.

And then he went upstairs to his room and two seconds later I heard him shouting, “Who put these wussy net curtains around my bed?”

Honestly! He doesn’t even have this much of gratitude. It’s all Janoo’s fault of course, for teaching him to question me.

Talking of teachers, I’d gone to a dinner at Sunny’s. Janoo had come with me because I’ve told him I feel scared riding in a car by myself and also if I don’t go out and meet my friends and see the world I might go crack like Mulloo. Because I’ve had a trauma na , that’s why. I think so he believes me, poor thing, because now he comes quietly wherever I say. I think so I’ll keep it up for another five, six years at least.

Anyways, we were at this dinner. Not very big. Only about twenty people. As usuals men sitting on one side of the room drinking whisky and discussing politics and women sitting on the other side of the room drinking Seven-Up and vodka and doing gup-shup . Dinner hadn’t been served yet because it was only a little bit after eleven o’clock. I felt like doing bathroom and also checking out Sunny’s new paintings that she’d bought behind my back from the NCA degree show. She’d told me she wasn’t going because “ Bhai , who can be bothered to go all the way up the Mall with all the suicide bombs and those bore lawyers protesting every day just to see some silly paintings and besides, I’ve heard this time the show is not so good even.” So then when I’d said, “Okay then I won’t go also,” she’d quietly got into her car and gone. Double-crosser. Back-stabber. Hippo-crit.