Moni Mohsin - Duty Free

“This is a wildly entertaining book but, beware, it also bites.”

— Neel Mukherjee

“Refreshing, humorous, irreverent, and satirical, Moni Mohsin’s Duty Free is more than a boy-meets-girl story. It is an insightful social commentary.”

— Bharti Kirchner, author of Darjeeling and Pastries

“A deliciously funny book starring a clueless socialite heroine with inner savvy and a heart of gold. While this sharp, hilarious spoof of upper-class life is set against a backdrop of political unrest in Lahore, Pakistan, Moni Mohsin’s lively, witty satire will appeal to a wide readership.”

— Anjali Banerjee, author of Haunting Jasmine

Yesterday was my cousin Jonkers’ thirty-seventh birthday. You know Jonkers, na ? He’s my Aunty Pussy’s one and only child. Her sun and air. And since I’m doing my whole family tree, now let me tell about Aunty Pussy also. Aunty Pussy is Mummy’s cousin. Their mummies were real sisters. If I was English I’d say Jonkers was my first cousin once removed. As if cousins were bikini lines, once removed, twice removed, hundred times removed but still there. And Uncle Kaukab is Jonkers’ father. And also Aunty Pussy’s husband. Might as well be clear, no? Never know, otherwise, how much people understand and how much people don’t understand.

Haan , so where was I? Yes, Jonkers. To celebrate his birthday, Aunty Pussy took us all — Mummy, me, her, and Jonkers also — to Cuckoo’s Restaurant for dinner in the old bit of the city next to the Badshahi Mosque. I like Cuckoo’s because everyone says it’s fab. Foreigners tau just love coming here. Or they did before the suicide bombs started in Lahore also. It’s a bit bore that Cuckoo’s is in the old city, with its bad toilet smells and all its crumbly, crumbly, old, old houses but at least all those prostitutes who used to live nearby in the Diamond Market have gone off to Defence Housing Society to live in neat little kothis their politician and feudal boyfriends have bought them. So no chance, thanks God, of bumping into bad-charactered-types. Unless it’s suicide bombers, of course. But them tau you can bump into anywhere, thanks to the army which has given jihadis safe heavens all over Pakistan.

And also it’s a bit bore that you have to climb fifty-five thousand steps to get on top of Cuckoo but view from there is fab. You can look right inside the coatyard of the mosque. But we couldn’t because there was so much of smog. Lahore has just three problems: traffic, terrorists, and smog. Otherwise tau it’s just fab.

Anyways, Aunty Pussy had also invited Janoo (he’s my husband, na ) but Janoo was in his bore village, Sharkpur. Okay, okay, I suppose it’s our village because I’m his wife and what is his is ours, but thanks God I’m not from there and I haven’t been there for three years. Janoo spends half his time there, sewing his crops and looking after his mango and orange and grapefruit orchids, sorry, sorry I meant orchards. But because I don’t sew the crops, and I only spend the money we get from the crops, it’s best for me to live in Lahore where the shops are. Aunty Pussy also invited my darling, shweetoo baby Kulchoo but he said he was doing homework. His GCSEs are on top of his head but I think so he was reading Facebook. Such a little bookworm my baby is.

So us four went and dinner was nice and all but when Jonkers went down the fifty-five thousand steps to pay the bill, Aunty Pussy suddenly resolved into tears. She started weeping into her chicken tikka —actually just chicken bones, because she’d eaten up every last bit of the meat. She’s very careful that way, Aunty Pussy. She said how her heart wept tears of blood each time she saw poor Jonkers on his own, without wife, without kids and what would happen to him when she died. I wanted to say that after you die he will play holi with all that money you have lying in your bank account that you were too much of a meanie to let him enjoy in your lifetime. But I didn’t say because it doesn’t look nice.

And then she suddenly reached across the table, grabbed my hand in her thin, spidery one and said, “Promise me, promise that you will help me get my Jonky married by the end of the year.”

“ Haw , Aunty—” I began.

But she gripped my hand tighter and shrieked, “Promise!”

“Pussy!” Mummy hissed. “People are looking.”

But Aunty Pussy ignored her. “Promise me!” she said in a horse whisper, her nails digging like little blades into my palms and her eyes boaring into mine.

“Okay, okay, Aunty, I promise.” I said it to get my hand back really, but the minute she’d let go and sat back in her seat, Aunty Pussy said calmly, “Now remember you’ve sworn on your child’s life.”

“ Haw ! I never,” I gasped.

“No need to be so dramatical, Pussy,” Mummy said.

“When you said promise that’s what I said in my heart. So that’s what you’ve promised,” said Aunty Pussy, smiling a catty smile.

Before I could reply Jonkers came back up huffing and puffing like the Khyber Mail. And then, naturally, nobody could say anything.

When she dropped me home, Aunty Pussy rolled down her window and shouted, “Remember your promise.”

Look at Aunty Pussy. What a double-crosser! Imagine, doing that to your very own niece. Making such horrid, horrid promises like that in her heart and then pretending that I’d agreed. I called up Mummy first thing this morning and I tau told her straight that not even my shoe is going to lift its toe for Aunty Pussy after what she did to me last night. And Mummy said “Think it through” and I said I’ve thought it through already, thank you very much. Aik tau Mummy is also such a side-taker. Honestly. Sometimes I wonder if she knows whose Mummy she is. Mine or Jonkers’?

Today is 28 September. That means Jonkers has two and half months to get married in. Because I think so Muharram begins in middle of December and nobody gets married in Pakistan then, not even Christians, it being Islamic month of mourning and all. So Auntie Pussy has two months to find a bride for Jonkers. She’d better start looking, no?

And me? I’m off to Mulloo’s coffee party. All the girls are coming. Bubble, Sunny, Baby, Faiza, Nina. I’m wearing my new cream Prada shoes I got from Dubai, so everyone can see and my new cream outfit I’ve had made to match. I put on green contacts (blue is so past it) and my new Tom Ford red lipstick and now I’m looking just like Angelina Jolly. But like her healthier, just slightly older sister. I know I shouldn’t do my own praises but facts are facts, no? Pity Janoo is not Brad Pitts. But you can’t have everything in life, as Mother Rosario used to say at my convent school.