by Soniah Kamal
‘BeenaDeenaWeena attended Murree Convent School, followed by a year of finishing school in Paris and then a year in London. When they returned to Pakistan, they married within months of each other. Beena married a first cousin, Luqman “Lolly” dey Bagh, whom she’d always had her eye on. Deena married the son of a family friend her father held in great regard, Fauji Darsee, an army officer in the intelligence. And my mother, Weena, married a Pakistani-British man she’d met in London during an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. My father was not wealthy, but he’d studied philosophy and dreamt of becoming a great playwright, and my mother was happy to support him.
‘BeenaDeenaWeena got pregnant within months of each other, and soon Weena had me, Deena had Valentine, and Beena had Annie. I have pictures of the three of us cousins in identical tartan dungarees, in a tree house, playing the piano, riding horses, that sort of thing. Our life was so nice; we used to say we never wanted to grow up. BeenaDeenaWeena were also happy, and they decided to fulfil a dream they shared – of being educators – and so they established a private school for girls, British School Group. Now it has branches all over the country. What! You teach in a British School branch! Small, small world.
‘Do you remember the Ojhri arms-depot explosion in 1988, which killed and injured scores of civilians?’ Wickaam blinked. ‘Both my parents and Valentine’s father had been in the vicinity together. They all died.
‘Valentine and I were fourteen years old. Deena Khala kept insisting she was my mother now, but no one can replace a mother. Beena Khala comforted Valentine and me as if our losses were equal. But Valentine had his mother and his four-year-old sister, Jujeena. I was the full orphan. Still, Valentine and I found ourselves crying shamelessly together and wishing revenge on everyone who told us boys don’t cry and certainly not in public.
‘Deena Khala was going mad with grief, just weeping all the time. She decided Pakistan reminded her of loss, and that a change of scenery would benefit us, and so we all moved to London. London was nice, except Valentine was growing sickeningly jealous of both his sister and me, for he couldn’t bear to share his one remaining parent’s love with anyone. Adding to Valentine’s rage was his mother’s frenetic dating, if “dating” is what you’d call Deena Khala’s revolving list of lovers. Darsee calls them “unsuccessful relationships”. One day, Deena Khala declared she was in love with Ricky from Thailand and married him. They moved to Bangkok, and Deena Khala decided to take only Jujeena and Valentine with her.
‘I was hurt, but I’d survived the death of both parents on the same day so this was nothing. I was sent to Bradford to live with my father’s family. Everyone was very kind, but it was more out of duty than love.
‘After three years, Deena Khala divorced Ricky because he wanted a second wife, and she came back to Pakistan. I also returned to live with them. But it was not the same. The closeness Valentine and I had once shared was gone. And Jujeena barely remembered me. Then we found out that Deena Khala had an advanced stage of cancer and had months to live. I was so sad. I thought this would bring us all closer. Instead, for all of their supposed love for my mother, both Beena Khala and Deena Khala tampered with my mother’s will. I received no share in the British School Group, or anything. God only knows why they did this; I believe this question will haunt me forever. I am not materialistic, Alys, but to be cheated out of one’s inheritance is a hard thing to bear. It’s why I decided to be a lawyer. To make sure that others are treated fairly.
‘My father’s family had no clout compared to the dey Baghs, and everyone on my mother’s side preferred to remain in Beena Khala’s good books. I’ll never forget one moment: I’d come to pay my last respects to Deena Khala on her deathbed. Beena Khala was there too when Deena Khala said, “Jeorgeullah is our sister Weena’s son. Let us give him his due.” But Valentine roared, “Never!” And that was that. My own cousin, my buddy, my brother, if you will, betrayed me.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Alys said, mortified. ‘I’m so sorry about the loss of your parents. Everything. I don’t know what to say. My father went through a similar betrayal with his elder brother, and I understand your devastation.’
‘Thank you. Thank you very much. Your sympathy means so much to me.’
‘Darsee is even worse than I imagined,’ Alys said. ‘I can’t believe he thwarted his mother’s wish on her deathbed!’
‘Believe it,’ Wickaam said, gazing into her eyes.
‘I do!’ Alys said, earnestly. ‘I most certainly do. But doesn’t Darsee realise that money, power, prestige, it’s all ephemeral, and that eventually we go to our graves with nothing and leave behind only memories?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Alys returned from her day with Wickaam in time to hear Nona sighing about having to make a night delivery and Ajmer being unwell. Alys volunteered to deliver the cake with Jena. Jena was making origami ornaments for the Christmas tree with the children, but she took one look at Alys and rose.
Alys backed the car out of the driveway and took a turn into the main street. She filled Jena in as fast as possible. Jena was thrilled that Alys had met Bungles and that he’d asked about her, but she was troubled at the report Jeorgeullah Wickaam had given of Darsee. If Darsee was as vile as his cousin claimed, then why was Bungles friends with him? Surely he must know about Darsee usurping Wickaam’s inheritance.
‘Perhaps,’ Alys said as she glanced at the address Jena was holding, ‘all decent people think Darsee is a decent person because he chooses to treat them decently.’
‘But, Alys,’ Jena said hesitantly, ‘just because a relative says something doesn’t make it true. We know that!’ A beggar tapped on her window and she rolled it down and handed him money. ‘I don’t want to believe that Darsee is devious or that Wickaam has some ulterior motive for maligning him.’
‘You never want to believe ill of anyone,’ Alys said, driving around a bullock cart. ‘In a country where the national sport is backstabbing and one-upmanship, I don’t know whether to hand you a trophy for sainthood or for stupidity.’
‘I don’t want trophies,’ Jena said. ‘Take a right from here. All I’m saying is that we have no proof to back Wickaam’s accusations and that a person should be innocent until proven guilty.’
Alys rolled her eyes. ‘What was the house number again?’
At the house, Alys delivered the solar-system cake to the kitchen and took the remaining payment. She returned to the car and turned back onto the main road. A car cut in front of her. She honked. The man inside yelled, ‘Bloody lady drivers!’
Alys gave him the finger. ‘Jena, Wickaam has nothing to gain by lying to me about Darsee. And I trust him.’
‘How can you trust him? You just met him,’ Jena said, puzzled. ‘That’s very unlike you, Alys.’
‘Wait till you meet him,’ Alys said, blushing. ‘You’ll see.’
Alys invited Wickaam to Nona and Nisar’s Christmas party on the pretext that her father wanted to meet the man representing their Fraudia Acre case, but in her heart she wanted Jena to vet him. Wickaam accepted the invitation with an enthusiasm that surpassed mere lawyer–client relations, and Alys eagerly awaited his arrival.
On the morning of the party, the Gardenaars opened their Christmas gifts, attended church service, and returned to a festive house. A regal Christmas tree graced the drawing room, its boughs cheery with home-made baubles and shop-bought trinkets, its fresh pine fragrance competing with the scents of roast lamb, leg of mutton, chicken pulao, mixed-vegetable bhujia, aloo gosht, nargisi kofta, shepherd’s pie, and macaroni salad. Dessert was seviyan, vermicelli in sweet milk, and zarda, the saffron-yellow rice bursting with nuts, raisins, and orange peel, and, of course, Nona’s Christmas cake, with the three wise men on caramel camels bearing their gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and pointing to an edible silver star, which would take them to baby Isa and his mother, Maryam.
At the party, Alys kept an eye on the door even as she and the children belted out ‘The Twelve Day
s of Christmas’, followed by an improvised ‘The Twelve Days of Eid’. A petite man entered. He stood at the threshold, one hand behind his back like a picture of Napoleon Bonaparte in a textbook. The man’s dinner jacket hung off sloping shoulders, and his chequered tie lay lopsided over a satiny shirt. He scanned the room, his soft hooded eyes resting on teenage girls preparing a synchronised dance. He frowned before quickly composing his face into a benign smile and heading towards Nisar.
Nisar greeted the man, embraced the three children tagging behind him, and led them to his sisters for an introduction: Farhat Kaleen and his children – eighteen-year-old Fatima, fifteen-year-old Musa, and seven-year-old Isa.
Mrs Binat and Falak were seated in front of a coffee table, and they paused their merry munching on dry fruit in order to smile benevolently at the man and his children. Mrs Binat squinted. What in the world was he wearing? Polyester, if the patina on that shirt was anything to go by. The children were better dressed and greeted her and Falak politely.
‘Pinkie, Falak,’ Nisar said, ‘surely you remember Farhat Kaleen, our cousin nine times removed from the branch of the family that moved to England so many moons ago.’
Kaleen beamed brightly. Upon returning to Lahore, he’d made it a point to reconnect with relatives and so had begun the arduous process of winnowing out the worthy from the worthier. He was very pleased with Nisar Gardenaar’s worth, and because Nisar was worthy, Kaleen was willing to overlook Nisar’s sisters’ unworthiness for having married losers. Still, better to be safe rather than sorry, for fortunes could literally change overnight. Apparently Falak’s son, Babur, was intelligent and had applied to prestigious universities abroad, albeit to study agriculture. His plan was to get in as a farmer and then switch subjects.
Since Kaleen deemed it religiously inappropriate to shake hands with let alone hug women, even if they were his relatives, he proceeded to give Pinkie and Falak the most congenial of nods. He was, he told them, overjoyed to be reunited with them. He had a few memories from childhood, in particular visiting Lahore one summer when he was a young boy of ten and Pinkie sixteen and Falak seventeen. Did Pinkie and Falak remember being put in charge of babysitting him while his mother went to Ichhra Bazaar? Did they remember he found their lipstick-kissed posters of film stars and he’d threatened to tell their mother unless! ‘Unless what?’ both sisters had cried. Unless, he’d replied, they let him tear out the picture of the girl in the red bikini in the lewd Western fashion magazine he’d also found tucked away in the drawer.
‘That picture,’ Kaleen said, ‘allowed me an early window into the different types of women available in the world, and so I was able to see clearly at a young age which women were worthy of my time, attention, and earnings.’
Mrs Binat and Falak exchanged looks. So this is what had become of that snooping telltale! Mrs Binat vividly recalled his drawing-room preacher of a mother repeatedly proclaiming that if only Kaleen were a few years older than ten and Pinkie a few years younger than sixteen, then she would have got them engaged.
Kaleen, as if reading her mind, reminded Mrs Binat of the same, and she giggled in embarrassed horror at the thought of ending up the wife of this balding, sartorially dismal man. Catching Mr Binat’s eye, Mrs Binat shrugged coyly, for it was hardly her fault if admirers from the past popped up to remind her that she may very well have been their wife.
‘And your wife is where?’ Mr Binat said, taking a step closer to Mrs Binat even as he exchanged a bemused look with Alys. Alys and her sisters and Sherry had joined the circle around Kaleen, who seemed to be basking in the role of pistil to their petals. Mari, recognising a kindred spirit with his talk of lewd magazines, was, for perhaps the first time in her life, experiencing the urge to make you-you eyes.
‘Alas, my wife!’ Kaleen put a hand on his heart. ‘My pious wife, Roohi, the good mother of my three children, passed away last year. She and I had gone for our evening stroll and she stopped to smell the flowers, and we suspect some insect entered her nose and from there her brain. Three days sick and on the fourth, poof, gone.’
Amid a chorus of commiserations, Sherry’s condolence rang out. She ruffled the seven-year-old motherless Isa’s hair, smiling at him with all the kindness she contained.
‘Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon. From God we come and to God we return.’ Kaleen glanced resignedly at his daughter and sons. ‘But we miss her, and my poor children are left bereft of a most splendid mum.’
He explained that he’d returned to Pakistan because it was difficult to raise obedient and virginal children in the promiscuous English mohol, atmosphere, with no motherly guiding light among the temptations of pubs and clubs. Also, he’d received a job opportunity too incredible not to accept, from a big-name patroness. She’d even introduced him to the most select of the select crowd, who in turn, all, by the grace of God, required his services in one capacity or another. Kaleen stood erect, hands clasped behind his back, and it was clear from his expectant expression he was waiting to be asked what he did.
Mr Binat obliged. ‘What do you do?’
‘I am,’ Kaleen stood tall on his tippy-toes for a second, ‘a physiatrist.’
‘A psychiatrist?’ Lady said. ‘You’ll have lots of business in this town, though no one will admit coming to you.’
‘Not psychiatrist!’ Kaleen snapped. ‘Physiatrist. It is not the soul’s trials I fix but the body’s tribulations. Don’t ask how much I make, because you will all faint.’
‘Faint in a bad way?’ Alys half smiled as she looked at her father, then glanced at the door. Where was Wickaam? He was quite late.
‘In a good way.’ Kaleen frowned. ‘In a very good way. Is that not true, Nisar?’
‘It is.’ Nisar nodded. ‘There is such high demand for physiatrists and pain management that Kaleen is setting up his private practice.’
‘Oh,’ Mrs Binat said. She and Falak exchanged glances, acknowledging that if Farhat Kaleen was going to be an important member of society and mint money, then it was unwise to dismiss him. Mrs Binat and Falak simultaneously moved to the edges of the sofa, and Mrs Binat patted the centre.
‘Kaleen, you sit here and tell us all about your dearly departed wife, God rest her soul.’
Kaleen perched between the two sisters; Mrs Binat ordered Lady to introduce his daughter to the other teenage girls in the room, and she urged his sons to enjoy the appetisers, as long as they left plenty of room for the scrumptious dinner Nona had planned. The elder son settled on the edge of the couch and took a handful of pistachios. Sherry marched the younger son over to the children rehearsing carols for the show they planned to perform.
A sudden hush came over the room as all eyes turned to the entrance, where a dashing man stood with a bouquet of glitter-sprinkled red roses.
‘Is that him?’ Jena’s eyes widened at Alys. ‘You told me he was decent, nice, and trustworthy, but I suppose you forgot to mention that he looks like a film star.’
‘I didn’t forget,’ Alys said. ‘I just didn’t see how it was relevant.’
Alys hurried to greet Wickaam. He apologised profusely for being late – friends had coerced him into accompanying them to see the fairy lights strung all over town. Nona assured Wickaam he was not late at all, and Nisar added that he’d taken his own kids to see the city dolled up, although the decorations were for Pakistan’s founding father, whose birthday fell on the same date as Christmas, a happy coincidence.
Wickaam complimented Nona on her bungalow, the Christmas decor, the tree, the lovely colour of her walls and even lovelier shade of her burgundy lipstick, and, upon gleaning that the art on the walls was her own, he complimented Nisar on being the luckiest of husbands to have secured such a multitalented wife.
Alys introduced Jeorgeullah Wickaam to everyone. Wickaam could tell a good joke, and soon Nisar and the menfolk were slapping him on his back as if they were all old friends. Wickaam watched the children’s Christmas show attentively. Afterwards, to their delight, he me
smerised them with coin tricks. He helped the cook bring out dishes from the kitchen and arrange them on the dinner table around the green-and-gold-candle centrepiece. He praised Nona’s menu, praised the cook’s cooking, praised even the grocery stores from where the ingredients had been purchased. He was full of compliments for all the women. Someone’s voice was angelic. Someone’s hairstyle perfectly framed her face. Someone’s shoes reminded him of royalty. He told Mrs Binat that she was a stunner.
Mrs Binat’s heart fluttered. What a handsome man! What a solicitous man! What a gracious man! So conscientious of Alys! Thank God Alys had started to take a little more care of her looks. Bronzer dusted her cheeks and eyelids, and she was wearing a fitted embroidered kurta with bell sleeves that accentuated her bonny shoulders and waist. And, miracle of miracles, high heels.
When Lady put on film songs, every young person rose to dance. Mrs Binat noticed that Kaleen did not look pleased at his daughter’s participation. Mrs Binat, in turn, was most gratified to see Wickaam force Qitty up. Considerate man! Amazing human being! True hero! In any case, Wickaam was paying special attention to each of her daughters, and Mrs Binat prayed fervently that one of them would win the lottery of becoming Mrs Jeorgeullah Wickaam.
Kaleen was feeling a bit green over having his thunder stolen by this smooth-talking fine-looking devil. It occurred to him that perhaps the devil might be a suitable match for his daughter. He asked Wickaam where he worked and how much he made. Wickaam informed everyone that he’d studied in New York, that he was back in Pakistan and was working as a junior lawyer, and that he was just starting out but he hoped, prayed, and planned to go places.
Hoping, praying, and planning to go places did not guarantee getting anywhere, and Kaleen immediately lost interest. He wanted to see his daughter married off as soon as possible, as per her dying mother’s final wishes, but he had standards, which did not include struggling, penniless lawyers no matter how charismatic.