by Soniah Kamal
‘First comes marriage, then comes love,’ Mrs Binat said sternly as she summoned the giggling, eye-rolling Lady to snuggle with her on the sofa, after which mother-daughter switched the TV channel from sports – despite Mari’s outcry – to the Indian film channel, where Sridevi and Jeetendra were dancing-prancing-romancing around trees to the ludicrous love song ‘Mama Mia Pom Pom’. After a few sullen minutes, Mari curled up on her mother’s other side, even as she asked God’s forgiveness at wasting her time over frivolous fare. Qitty joined at the far end of the sofa and opened up Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Jena took out some grading. Alys and Sherry murmured that they were going to feed birds and headed towards the graveyard.
In the graveyard, Alys and Sherry took a path that led to a cluster of family tombs in a roofed enclosure. They sat in a patch of late-afternoon sunlight on the cracked marble floor. Alys told Sherry she’d caught Darsee looking at her a few times.
‘Oof Allah, he likes you,’ Sherry said, taking out her cigarettes. ‘He loves you. He wants to marry you. He yearns for you to have his arrogant babies.’
‘Ho ho ho. Ha ha ha. You should become a comedienne.’ Alys shook her head. ‘He was, no doubt, checking to see how crooked my nose is, how crossed my eyes are, and whether I have all thirty-two teeth intact. I was talking to Sarah—’
‘How is she?’
‘Good. Her mother is adamant that she drop future PhD plans, because, she insisted, no one wants to marry an overeducated girl in case she out-earns her husband, which will drive him to insecurity and subsequently divorcing her. I told Sarah to forget her khayali non-existent husband’s self-esteem and work towards her dreams. We were talking about thesis topics and Darsee asks me, “How do you know all this?” Literally. As if I’m some ignoramus.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Reader’s Digest and Good Housekeeping.’
Alys and Sherry exchanged high fives.
‘How did it go with the potbellied Prince Charming?’ Alys asked.
Sherry gave a small laugh. The potbellied prince had brought along sixteen family members, for whom Sherry and her younger sister, Mareea, had to scramble to fry up double, triple batches of kebabs. Then, after serving everyone chai, which took a good hour, Sherry was told she had to take a reading test. The potbellied prince produced a conduct book of Islamic etiquette, Bahishti Zewar – ‘Heavenly Ornaments’ – and made her read out loud, in front of everyone, the section on how to keep oneself clean and pure before, during, and after sex.
‘My father left the room, lucky him.’ Sherry exhaled a smoke ring. ‘But no one thought to stop the reading. I suppose they were picking up tips.’
‘You should have just stopped,’ Alys said.
‘The reading was the easy part,’ Sherry said. ‘Next test was massage.’
She’d had to massage his ropy, sweaty, oily neck for several minutes while he shouted, ‘Left, right, upper, lower.’
‘You should have pinched him,’ Alys said.
‘I did,’ Sherry said. ‘I even dug my nails into him. But he seemed to enjoy both.’
The real shock came when he was leaving. He’d looked straight at her, removed his dentures, which Rishta Aunty had neglected to inform them he wore, and wiggled his tongue in an obscene manner.
‘Anyway, he rejected me.’ Sherry lit another cigarette with trembling fingers. ‘He telephoned to inform us that, although I’m a competent reader, my fingers do not possess the strength he, at age sixty-one, requires, and also I’m too thin and don’t earn enough to compensate for my lack of a chest.’
‘Would you have married the potbellied pervert if he’d said yes?’ Alys asked quietly.
Sherry sighed. ‘There’s no dashing Bungles waiting to de-pigeon me. I’m down to either perverts fluttering my feathers or a lifetime of listening to my brothers groan and moan about having to look after me in my old age. These are the same brothers whose nappies I changed, snot I wiped, whom I taught to walk and talk. I’m tired of them treating me like a burden and I’m sick of my parents’ morose faces, as if every day I remain unmarried is another day in hell for them. Honestly, Alys, Jena needs to chup chaap, without any frills, make her intentions clear to Bungles, before it’s too late.’
‘It is a truth universally acknowledged,’ Alys said, ‘that hasty marriages are nightmares of bardasht karo, the gospel of tolerance and compromise, and that it’s always us females who are given this despicable advice and told to shut up and put up with everything. I despise it.’
‘Me too,’ Sherry said. ‘But I’d rather bardasht karo the whims of a husband than the scorn of my brothers. Not that I blame my brothers. It’s my duty to get married and I’m failing. I’m a failure.’
‘It’s not your duty and you’re not a failure.’ Alys planted a kiss on Sherry’s cheek. ‘You and I will live together in our old age, on a beach, eat samosas and scones, and feast on the sunsets. We won’t need anyone to support us or feel sorry for us. Your brothers and everyone else will instead envy our forever friendship.’
‘Outstanding fantasy.’ Sherry inhaled the last of her cigarette. ‘You won’t believe what my mother did after the potbellied pervert telephoned. Instead of thanking God that I’d escaped a fate of being reader and massager in chief, she starts berating me for not massaging him properly and so losing another proposal. I swear, I wish my mother would just disappear for a while.’
‘Better yet, I know how to make you disappear.’ Alys put her arm around Sherry. ‘We’re going to Lahore for the NadirFiede walima, and you’re coming with us.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mrs Binat would have been utterly displeased about Sherry’s inclusion in the Suzuki for the two-hour trip to her elder brother’s home in Lahore, but she was so excited about Jena and Bungles’s future nuptials that she did not complain too much. Before they knew it, they were parking in the driveway of the six-bedroom house located in Jamshed Colony – unfortunately no longer a fashionable part of town, much to Mrs Binat’s chagrin, but thankfully not one of the truly cringeworthy areas either.
When they heard the Binat car honking at their gate, Nisar and Nona Gardenaar came rushing out to the driveway with their four young children – a daughter, Indus, and sons, Buraaq, Miraage, and Khyber.
‘Now, this family,’ Alys said to her mother, ‘is what liking your spouse and compatibility look like.’
‘It was love at first sight, is what it was,’ Mrs Binat said.
Years ago, Nona’s older brother, Samir, had been cohorts with Nisar during their medical residencies. Nona had been studying at the National College of Arts, and one day Samir’s motorbike broke down and he borrowed Nisar’s to pick her up from university. As thanks for lending his bike, Nisar was invited to their house for dinner. The sombre boy with a shy smile found Nona’s family – her parents, her brother, and Nona herself, with her freckles and sugar smile – a very pleasing contrast to his younger sisters, Falak and Pinkie, who seemed obsessed with fashion, celebrity gossip, and who’s who.
Under one pretext or another, Nisar began to frequent Nona’s home. He wanted to be a doctor. She wanted to be an artist. Her father worked at a travel agency, and her mother was an art teacher in a government school, and Nona wanted to teach art too. Her goals were to earn enough for art supplies and, once in a while, to go out for a nice meal. Nisar warned his sisters that they may not be impressed by Nona, but, to his pleasant surprise, Falak and Pinkie fell in love with Nona and her total disinterest in where they came from and who they were now.
By then Falak was struggling to find some happiness with the bad-tempered underachiever she’d married, who was very proud at having no ambition other than playing cards and carrom and smoking charas and who knew what else with his equally feckless friends, and finally she’d been forced to look for a job. Through a friend’s recommendation, she joined a bank as a teller and felt forever guilty at not being a stay-at-home mother to her only child, Babur.
In turn, Pinkie died a million
deaths whenever Tinkle and her friends openly mocked her name, Khushboo, by calling her ‘Badboo’ and laughed at her mispronunciation of words or brands – ‘Not paaanda, darling, pan-da.’ ‘Not Luv-is, dear, Lee-vize.’ ‘Goga, you must hear Pinkie’s latest gaffe. Pinkie, say “Tetley” again. What did I tell you, Goga, “Tut-lee!”’ How utterly lost and stupid Pinkie would feel as Tinkle and clique conversed about Sotheby’s and Ascot and the Royal Family and ‘oh, how very mundane it all was at the end of the day.’ Pinkie derisively referred to her in-laws as Angrez ki aulad – Children of the English – even as she envied them their furfur fluency in English and swore to herself that her children would also master the language and customs and never be mocked on that score.
‘Both my poor sister and my rich sister are unhappy in their own ways,’ Nisar had told Nona one evening as they sat on the metal swing in her parents’ garden. ‘After our parents passed away, as their brother, I vowed to take care of them whenever needed, and, Nona, I want to continue with that vow once married.’
That had been the beginning of Nisar’s proposal to Nona, and she said yes. Nona’s parents cautioned her that marrying out of one’s religion could be extra-challenging, but having had their say they welcomed the Muslim Nisar. Falak and Pinkie did not care that Nona was Christian. They did care that she adored their brother and was kind to them.
It was Nona who babysat Falak’s son until she was promoted to bank assistant manager and was able to hire a reliable woman to look after Babur during the day. It was Nona who dropped the high-end fashion magazines into Pinkie’s lap and told her to study them, until Pinkie, with her killer figure, could confidently out-style anyone – especially Tinkle, who Nona had disliked on sight, what with her ample art collection but scant knowledge of who she’d had the disposable income to collect.
Over the years, Nona would get annoyed over Falak’s lack of pride in being a working woman and her rants against her husband but refusal to subject Babur to a ‘broken home’, as well as over Pinkie’s obsession with marrying her daughters into great wealth, but overall she loved her sisters-in-law and all their children.
Nona hugged the Binats and Sherry, then put her arms around Jena and Alys, and they all headed into the living room. The house smelt of vanilla and chocolate. The maid, Razia, brought in tea and the mini-cupcakes Indus had made especially for them.
‘Your daughter is going to outdo you one day, Nona,’ Mr Binat said, wagging his finger before following Nisar into the garden to take a look at a guava tree.
‘She must!’ Nona proclaimed. ‘That’s what children are for, aren’t they? To become better versions of their parents. Girls, what news?’
‘Hai, Nona jee!’ Mrs Binat said, shaking with excitement. ‘We have struck gold. Gold! Such a good boy! And sisters are also modrun, but in a good way.’
‘Not mod-run, Mummy,’ Lady said. ‘Mod-ern.’
‘Modrun. Modrun. That’s what I’m saying,’ Mrs Binat said. She proceeded to inform Nona that she was sure Bungles had chosen the upcoming polo match as the proposal venue so that he could ride up to Jena on a horse, just like a prince in olden-day films.
‘Hai, Mummy,’ Lady said, as she took the hairbrush Indus brought her and began to French-braid her young cousin’s hair. ‘I also want someone to propose to me astride a horse.’
‘Me too,’ Qitty said as Khyber dropped crayons into her lap.
‘Not me,’ Mari said as she, Buraaq, and Miraage opened up the Snakes and Ladders board game. ‘Imagine the man is proposing while the horse is pooping away.’
The kids started to giggle at the thought of a poopy horse.
‘Jena,’ Nona asked gently, ‘are you expecting a proposal?’
Jena glanced at her mother. ‘I know he likes me.’
‘Likes you!’ Mrs Binat said. ‘Any sane person can see he is badly in love with you.’
‘And his family?’ Nona said. ‘Are they also badly in love or might they have some other girl in mind?’
‘If they have some other girl in mind,’ Mrs Binat said indignantly, ‘then Bungles will be no better than that hoity-toity Darsee, who insulted Alys’s looks.’
‘And intelligence,’ Sherry said, adding five spoons of sugar to her milky tea.
‘But,’ Mrs Binat said, ‘Bungles is not like Darsee. Girls, tell Nona how Bungles is one in a million.’
The girls proceeded to tell her.
‘Chalo, okay, Jena, good for you,’ Nona said after she heard them out. ‘If I could bake a magic cake that would make him propose this very minute, I would.’
Three years ago Nona had baked an Arabian Nights cake for her daughter’s birthday at school. The children had fallen silent at the sight of the fondant bed with yellow marzipan pillows, the strawberry pantaloons-clad storyteller, Scheherazade, and her blueberry pantaloons-clad sister, Dunyazade, on the bed, surrounded by crystal-sugar characters from the stories: Aladdin, Sinbad, Ali Baba, and Prince Shahryar turned chocolate giant with liquorice whiskers. The teachers cut the cake carefully, a little apprehensive that, like many things in life, it would look beautiful from the outside but would turn out to be tasteless from the inside. It was delicious. Word of mouth spread so fast that Nona was soon inundated with orders.
‘You need to charge,’ Falak and Pinkie urged Nona. Soon, white boxes with lace calligraphy saying NONA’S NICES were being sold to weddings, birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, Quran starts and finishes, Eids, Iftars, Christmases, Holis, lawn launches, fundraisers, et cetera. Nona and Nisar were, Falak and Pinkie often marvelled with dazed pride, minting money.
‘I’m doing more charity cakes,’ Nona said. ‘Birthday cakes for orphans at the Edhi Foundation, at Dar-ul-Sukun for the disabled, and I’ve added Smileagain Foundation for acid-attack survivors.’
‘Aunty Nona,’ Mari said as she rolled the dice, ‘you are surely going to heaven.’
‘Truly,’ Sherry agreed. ‘You are.’
‘You live the life I’d like to lead,’ Jena said softly. ‘To be able to contribute happiness to the less fortunate.’
‘Jena,’ Mrs Binat said, ‘concentrate on grabbing Bungles, and, once you’re married, you can do whatever you want.’
‘That’s a lie.’ Alys gave a derisive laugh. ‘The dangling carrot to lure us into marriage.’
‘Lost cause,’ Mrs Binat muttered, gazing sorrowfully at Alys. ‘You will die of loneliness if you don’t get married.’
‘I’ll never be lonely’ – Alys gave a satisfied sigh – ‘because I’ll always have books.’
Nona smiled.
‘Nona jee, don’t encourage this pagal larki, mad girl,’ Mrs Binat said, and she turned to Jena. ‘Jena, beta, I’m sure Bungles will allow you to—’
‘Allow!’ Alys shrieked. ‘Vomit, puke, ulti.’
‘Yes, allow,’ Mrs Binat said firmly. ‘And don’t you dare ever encourage your sisters to disobey their husbands. You want them divorced and also relying on books for companionship and God knows what else! Jena, as I was saying, Bungles will allow you to aid every charity under the sun, because that’s what begums do in order to keep themselves busy and give purpose to their lives. Do not scoff, Alys! Their need to keep busy is what helps those in need. I too was going to be a busy begum, devoting my life to good causes; instead, here I am, a nobody.’
‘Pinkie,’ Nona said, exchanging a glance with Alys, ‘even nobodies can devote their lives to charity.’
‘Yes, but when you are somebody, then you have the satisfaction of being told how wonderful you are,’ Mrs Binat said, longingly. ‘Look at that kameeni, horrible Tinkle. People think Tinkle is such a great humanitarian, but I know what she really is – fame hungry, her road to importance paved with carefully calculated good deeds. Nona jee, the polo match Jena is invited to is tomorrow afternoon, and I’d rather she arrive in your good car than in our crap car. Will yours be available?’
The next morning a winter sun shone down on Lahore as Jena and Alys climbed into the good ca
r and Ajmer, the driver, backed out of the driveway. He was a sweet man with a weak memory for addresses, but Nona and Nisar could not muster the heart to replace him.
‘Aur, Ajmer,’ Alys said, sitting back in the car, ‘how are you?’
‘Very good, baji!’ Ajmer smiled, his henna-dyed red moustache swallowing his upper lip.
‘Your children?’ Jena asked.
‘My son is beginning his medical degree in Quetta and my daughter is finishing Year 11. Her dream,’ Ajmer said proudly, ‘is to become a doctor like her brother, and Nisar Sahib promised to help her get into medical school too.’
‘Every girl should have a father like you,’ Alys said. But she also wondered how benevolent Ajmer would have been had his daughter wanted to be an actress or singer or model. She sighed as she recalled how bitterly Lady had cried at their father forbidding her to model. For the truth was that behind every successful Pakistani girl who fulfilled a dream stood a father who allowed her to soar instead of clipping her wings, throwing her into a cage, and passing the keys from himself to brother, husband, son, grandson, and so on. Alys felt a headache coming on.
‘Ajmer, turn the music on please,’ she said, and within seconds the car filled with an exuberant ‘Dama Dam Mast Qalander’.
As they entered a busy thoroughfare full of cars, rickshaws, motorbikes, bicycles, everyone honking madly, Alys straightened Jena’s hoop earring. Since Bungles, Hammy, and Sammy had already seen Jena in plenty of Eastern wear, thanks to NadirFiede, Mrs Binat had declared it was time for some Western wear. They’d settled on boot-cut dark-denim jeans, a black-and-white striped turtleneck, and a chocolate leather jacket, which Jena had seen in Vogue and had tailor Shawkat replicate. Jena wanted to wear sneakers, but Mrs Binat had handed her a pair of chocolate pumps originally brought for Qitty and so slightly large for Jena but still a decent-enough fit.
‘I’m nervous,’ Jena said to Alys as the car inched closer to the Race Course Park. ‘I wish you were coming with me.’