Moni Mohsin - Duty Free

“Yeah, you wish,” Tanya muttered and threw her napkin to the floor and thumped out. Didn’t say goodbye even.

Now you will say I can’t even go to the toilet without asking Mulloo first. I swear I don’t ask her about anything except society stuff — you know, who’s up to what and why and with whom and so on and so fourth. And that’s also only because Mulloo is a suppository of all the local goss. You can ask anyone. They will all say it is Mulloo. Because she makes it her business to find out. So if you want the inside story about anyone, ask Mulloo.

So I called her the next morning and after doing full half an hour of innocent-type gup-shup to kill her suspicions, I asked her about Tanya.

“What do you think of Zeenat’s daughter, Tanya?” I asked super-casually.

“Why?” At once she became a lert, her voice all sharp and pointy like my D&G heels.

“Just like that, Mulloo.”

“Is your Aunty thinking of sending proposal for her?”

“ Haw , Mulloo, Aunty Pussy hasn’t even heard of Tanya.”

“It would be totally useless.”

“Why?” and now I became a lert.

“Because she’s not like that.”

“Like what?”

“Bridal type.”

“Meaning?”

“She is a gay.”

“A gay? Haw, how do you know?”

“You can see for yourself. The upper lips. The clothes. The hair. Besides, everyone knows she was dating this girl — American, even worse, Christian — in New York.”

I wanted to say that at least Christians were people of the Book and it wasn’t as bad as a Hindu or something but then I didn’t, one, because Mulloo would become suspicious if she thought I was taking Tanya’s side and two, because I didn’t know whether that people of the Book thing applied to gays.

And then Mulloo told me about how Tanya had been living with this girl called Holly or Holy, whatever she was, like husband and wife. In one-bed flat. Imagine. Apparently Nina’s sister-in-law’s daughter’s best friend had been in that all girls’ college with them and she says everyone there knew. But I tell you these American girls’ colleges, they are also too much. Everyone who goes there becomes a gay. My cousin Sabeena had a daughter who also went to one and she also became that way. Not fully gay. But definitely gayish. When she came back she wouldn’t wash her hair or wear deodrant and kept saying things like “Fat is a Femnist Issue.” I think so Femnist Issue was their college newspaper. Anyways, thanks God she grew out of it and now she’s married with three kids and living with her engineer husband in Jeddah in an abaya .

Haan , so where was I? Yes, Tanya. So the American girl, Holi or Holey or something — honestly why can’t they have straight names like Bubble and Sunny and Baby? — she was one year senior and when she finished and left for New York, Tanya also dropped out of college like a lizard from the ceiling, and followed her. And all that year Zeenat kept putting her college fees and also big fat allowance on top, in her bank account and Tanya kept taking it out and spending on Holy in New York and not coming home even for holidays and telling her mother it was because she was too busy studying. Zeenat was going around proudly, saying my daughter is such a turd or nurd or whatever it is they call bookwormy children. Poor Zeenat. Then finally college wrote to Zeenat and asked if her daughter was ever coming back to finish her degree and Zeenat tau of course went up the well. She took the first flight to New York and she went straight from airport to the apartment where that leach Holy was living off her hard-earned earnings and she put the bank account into deep freeze and grabbed Tanya by her frizzy hair and dragged her back to Lahore.

At first tau Holy kept calling Tanya and saying her heart was breaking and that she’d wait for her till Doomday and Tanya kept screaming at Zeenat that she’d kill herself if she wasn’t allowed to be with her true love but Zeenat also didn’t budge. Not an inch. Once Holi realized that no more money was coming, she tau dropped Tanya like a hot samosa. And now Tanya is sitting in Lahore skulking and texting.

“Zeenat wants to get Tanya hitched, before everyone finds out,” said Mulloo. “But no nice-looking, rich boy from good family is going to have her. So she’s looking at second-raters now. But a decent, mousy, second-rater who won’t run off with her money or throw his affairs in her face. Why are you asking?”

“ Haw , Mulloo, how suspicious you are, yaar . I was asking just like that.”

Look at them! The terrorists attacking the Headquarters of the army itself. So much guts they’ve got. Janoo says it serves the army right. They were the ones who brought the beardo-weirdos up in the first place, arming them and training them and sending them into India and Afghanistan and God knows where all to do jihad . And then saying to Americans, promise by God we don’t know where the fundos have gone, while all the time quietly giving them safe heavens in Pakistan. I didn’t say to Janoo but isn’t it a bit ungrateful of the jihadis to turn around and attack the army after everything it’s done for them?

But I think so the jihadis are angry because of the way the army threw them out of Swat and Dir and all and now army’s saying that they’re going to go and flush them down in South Waziristan also where they’re all hiding. And why? Because Americans are saying that we won’t give you any aids otherwise and because of this horrid economic slum that’s closed Mulloo’s husband Tony’s sanitary pads factory and put everyone in so much of depth to the banks, we can’t do without American aids na . I think so our country is hungry-naked. So that’s why we’re attacking Waziristan and that’s why the fundos are attacking us.

Meanwhiles Obama’s been given Noble peace prize and Tony was saying a man who sends drawns every other day to kill innocent Pakistanis, how is he getting peace prize, haan ? And Janoo said the planes target Al Qaeda leaders and not innocent Pakistanis. And Tony said yes, yes, Al Qaeda- wallahs sit there with big, big signs around their necks saying strike here, haan ? And Janoo said, how else … but I stopped listening because (a) their talk was very bore and (b) because thanks God my mobile phone rang just then.

But not so many thanks to God after all, because it was Aunty Pussy eating my head and drinking my blood like she does every day about Jonkers. She wanted me to come over there and then and discuss Tanya Kuraishi with her.

“I am ready to go and put formal proposal on them,” she said. “I’ve taken out my gold bangles, all twenty-four of them from the bank and if they say yes, which they will because we saw how much Zeenat was talking to Jonkers, I’ll immediately put all twenty-four of my bangles on Tanya’s arm and set the date. What do you think of 1 December? Of course we’ll have to ask my fortune-teller woman before I can fix proper date but—”

“Aunty Pussy, please,” I said. “Please don’t do like this. Wait till tomorrow and then we’ll discuss and decide.”

“What’s to discuss? What’s to decide? Girl likes boy, boy likes girl. What’s the problem?”

“Jonkers likes Tanya?”