Unmarriageable

by Soniah Kamal

  ‘Affection and respect,’ Alys said, ‘increase exponentially once one is dead.’

  Sherry spluttered on her smoke. Alys patted her on the back.

  ‘I’ve said it before,’ Sherry said when she could speak, ‘and I’ll say it to my dying day: there is no guarantee of happiness in any marriage, and being in love with your prospective partner is not going to solve that. People change, relationships change.’

  For the first time since their friendship had begun in this graveyard ten years ago, they walked out in an awkward silence. But it was done, thank God, and when Sherry returned home she told her parents that they were now free to spread the good news.

  Duly, Bobia and Haji Looclus arrived at the Binats’ with a box of heart-shaped barfis.

  ‘Wah jee wah,’ Mrs Binat said taking a barfi. ‘To what do we owe this celebration?’

  Bobia Looclus spewed the news like water out of a high-pressure hose.

  ‘Our Sherry and your Farhat Kaleen are getting married, mashallah, inshallah.’

  Mrs Binat’s barfi fell into her lap.

  ‘Please, Aunty Bobia,’ Lady said. ‘Itni bari gup, such a tall tale. Don’t you know Fart Bhai is madly in love with Alys and dying to marry her?’

  Bobia Looclus sucked in her cheeks. Her husband gave her a calming look and she contented herself with huffily adjusting her dupatta over her head.

  ‘They are marrying,’ Alys confirmed. ‘Sherry told me herself.’

  ‘Aunty, Uncle.’ Jena got up to hug them. ‘Bohut mubarak, my sincere congratulations. Congratulations from all of us.’

  ‘Yes, heartiest congratulations, Bobia Behen, Haji Sahib,’ Mr Binat said, even though he was surprised that poor Sherry had agreed to marry Alys’s reject. Mari’s, Qitty’s, and Lady’s congratulations followed, and, eventually, Mrs Binat managed a congrats.

  ‘Oof Allah,’ Bobia Looclus informed her husband once they left Binat House and proceeded to another neighbour’s, ‘if Pinkie Binat’s looks could kill, Alys would be a dead girl.’ She let out a big happy sigh. ‘Dear God, protect my Sherry from buri nazr, the world’s evil eyes and ill wills.’

  The very next day Sherry fulfilled a dream. She marched into Mrs Naheed’s office and handed in her resignation. Naheed was about to make a big stink about a week’s notice when she looked at Sherry’s form.

  ‘You’re marrying Beena dey Bagh’s daughter Annie’s doctor? That Farhat Kaleen?’

  ‘Jee, Head Teacher Madam.’

  Naheed’s mouth fell open. How in God’s good name had this gangly nobody managed to snag what was for her a stellar match, a doctor, despite the fact that Kaleen was a widower with three children? She had to tread carefully, for she did not know exactly how close Kaleen was to Beena dey Bagh, but it would not bode well if he informed Beena that Naheed had been rude to his wife-to-be. And so it was that Naheed accepted Sherry’s resignation with courtesy and told her that she was not to worry about finding a replacement – Urdu teachers were a dime a dozen – and proclaimed that she looked forward to attending the wedding.

  Sherry left Naheed’s office stunned. She’d been expecting fury, and suddenly the full force of her coup hit her: she wasn’t just getting married; she was marrying a somebody. A somebody who mattered so much that Mrs Naheed had been forced into politeness. Sherry did not know why the universe had, after years of insult, decided to smile upon her now, but she went straight to the toilets, where she allowed herself a sob. She was late to her class but for the first time she didn’t care.

  The Loocluses fixed the wedding two weeks hence, chut mangni pat biyah, a quick engagement followed by a quicker marriage, lest Kaleen change his mind. There was not much to prepare because, per the teachings of Islam, Kaleen declared that he and Sherry were to have a simple wedding. Instead of weeks of dholkis, a milad, and a mayun leading up to the bankruptcy-inducing three main events of mehndi, nikah, and walima, Sherry would hold a Quran recital at her humble abode, Looclus Lodge Bismillah, where they would read the good book in order to begin the marriage auspiciously. The recital would be followed by the marriage vows, followed by a nice lunch for close family and a handful of friends, as well as sweet and savoury deyghs prepared to feed the poor.

  Once back in Islamabad, Kaleen would host a decent walima in a nice wedding hall, where Begum Beena dey Bagh and all his important clients would not hesitate to be seen. As for dowry, Kaleen hated the concept and would not hear of it. There was no dowry in Islam. Rather, the groom was required to give haq mehr, the mandatory monetary gift to the bride, and he planned to hand over to Sherry a generous amount on the very day of their nuptials. Sherry wanted to ask for the right of divorce, but her mother forbade it.

  ‘An ill omen,’ Bobia stressed, ‘to begin a marriage with provisions for divorce. A good girl stays married for life no matter what, and only silly girls believe that making compromises towards lifelong commitment is old-fashioned. Sherry, if you want to be happy and successful in your marriage, then forget all the nonsense that bad influence Alys has been putting into your head.’ Sherry silently comforted herself with the thought of khula, no matter how much more difficult that method of procuring a divorce could be – not that, God forbid, the need for divorce would ever arise.

  Bobia and Haji Looclus were overjoyed that Kaleen had not turned out to be one of those greedy men who expected his bride’s family to fulfil material demands. Nevertheless, they could not stomach sending Sherry with zero dowry, lest anyone taunt her for arriving at her husband’s house empty-handed, and so they prepared the minimum: a gold jewellery set, a bed and matching wardrobe plus dressing table, a wristwatch for Kaleen, and suit pieces for his children and close relatives. Thankfully, Sherry’s haq mehr, which she would dutifully hand over to her parents, would defray the cost of the dowry. As for wedding outfits, Sherry was reluctant to spend a fortune on clothes that would never be worn again. Alys came up with the solution. Sherry could wear her mother’s wedding clothes from back in the day.

  ‘If someone asks,’ Alys instructed, ‘just say you’re wearing them because of sentimental reasons and also: vintage.’

  Other than conferring over wedding outfits and mehndi designs for her hands and feet, Sherry did not spend much time with Alys. Visiting the Binat household meant enduring Mrs Binat’s comments about friends who stole their friends’ paramours and, when Alys visited Sherry at her house, the chasm between them was palpable: where before they had discussed every topic freely, now they skirted around the one topic they knew was futile to discuss. Sherry missed Alys, but she was growing increasingly excited as her wedding day approached, and she was loath to let Alys’s silent reproach dampen her enthusiasm.

  Then the wedding day was upon them. The guests proclaimed that Sherry was glowing in her pink gota-kinari gharara, and Farhat Kaleen, dressed in a white suit and green tie and looking like a Pakistani flag, was overjoyed at his lovely bride. They signed the wedding papers, and Sherry was married, and before she knew it an entourage was walking her to her husband’s tinsel-decorated car, with her parents holding the Quran aloft over her head, and her siblings and Alys walking behind her.

  The car door opened, the real moment of impending rukhsati, of bridal departure, and everyone started to cry. Sherry clung to her parents and siblings for a long minute, and then she hugged Alys farewell. ‘I truly wish you happiness,’ Alys said. ‘I know,’ Sherry said, and she made Alys promise that she would visit her in Islamabad. In fact, her family was planning to come during the summer holidays and Alys was to accompany them. Alys, overcome by this moment of transition from home to home that most every Pakistani girl dreams of and dreads in equal measures, agreed to the visit, pukka promise.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The wedding was done, there was no undoing it; Sherry Looclus was Mrs Syeda Shireen Kaleen, and Pinkie Binat came undone, stitch by stitch, and she was determined to unravel her daughters too. Always critical, in her despair she turned cruel: no one would marry Jena, because she was
a guileless nincompoop. Qitty was a moustached walrus. Mari was asthmatic and dim – that’s why she hadn’t got into medical school – and she had no sex appeal. No one would marry Lady, because who would marry the youngest sister at the tail end of four unmarried sisters. As for Alys, total loser.

  ‘You are alienating your daughters,’ Mr Binat said. ‘You are losing your mind.’

  Trying to make sense of how Sherry had pulled off this victory under her watchful eyes had put Pinkie Binat’s very identity in a tailspin. She was a failed mother. She was a useless mother. How could Alys have been replaced by Sherry, of all people? Were her daughters not special after all?

  The month of Ramadan at the Binat House was a subdued cycle of sehris and iftaris, with Mari leading her troubled family through mandatory prayers and plenty extra. The daily fasting and feasting were followed by a subdued Chaand Raat, the moon sighting leading into a quiet Eid lunch at which, to everyone’s dismay, Mrs Binat wanted to only lament Sherry’s festive Eid as a new bride as per Bobia Looclus’s boasts: Sherry’s brand-new designer clothes for a gala Eid lunch, gold bangles and earrings and necklace set to match, three goats and three sheep sacrificed and the meat distributed to relatives, friends, and the poor. At each lament, Mrs Binat eyed Alys with distraught rage. Alys’s birthday came. She turned thirty-one. Mrs Binat refused cake and wept. Jena turned thirty-three. Mrs Binat wept even more and berated her daughters with new ferocity.

  After weeks of their mother’s haranguing, Alys grabbed Jena one afternoon and drove them to High Chai. They ordered cappuccinos. Jena was not hungry. Alys ordered baklava. The spring weather had turned warm and pleasant enough for High Chai to have opened their patio area, and the sisters sat outdoors. A vibrant fuchsia bougainvillea clambered over the red-brick boundary wall, and the scent of freshly mowed grass was in the air. Their mother was out of sight, though not out of mind.

  ‘Mummy wants you to apologise,’ Jena said, poking a hole in the cappuccino’s foam heart.

  ‘Mummy, Mrs Naheed, Rose-Nama’s mother – is there anyone who doesn’t want me to apologise?’ Alys said. ‘Maybe I should tattoo a scarlet “sorry” onto my forehead.’

  ‘Mummy just wants you to admit you made a mistake and that Sherry is a snake of a friend.’

  ‘I made no mistake and Sherry is no snake.’ Alys scraped a fork across the baklava’s honey-soaked pistachio topping. ‘It’s not as if I was about to walk down the aisle and she coiled herself around him. I had zero interest and Sherry knew that.’

  ‘I know,’ Jena said.

  ‘Which is why I am never apologising or accepting any of Mummy’s unreasonable demands. I’ve grown up hearing, “Who will marry you? Who will marry you?” Never once has she deigned to ask whom I will marry. She needs to apologise to me.’

  ‘You’re both too headstrong.’

  ‘I swear,’ Alys said, ‘our mother would sell us off to the first bidder if she could. Who in their right mind abandons their daughter at a polo match so that she can be proposed to?’

  ‘She’s desperate to see us married, that’s all,’ Jena said miserably. ‘It’s not her fault, Alys. She’s the product of her time and this system, and she can’t see beyond it.’

  ‘She should try,’ Alys said. ‘She has a brain. And don’t tell me that, no matter what, it’s disrespectful to speak of one’s parents like this.’

  Jena sighed. A sparrow hovered over one of the wrought-iron chairs. The sisters looked at it for a moment.

  ‘We are,’ Alys said, ‘a society teeming with Austen’s cruel Mrs Norrises, snobby looks-obsessed Sir Walters, and conniving John Thorpes and Lady Susans.’

  ‘The whole world is full of these types,’ Jena said.

  ‘Aren’t you sick of everything, Jena?’ Alys asked. ‘I’m sick of the hypocrisy and double standards. It’s like they break your legs, then give you a wheelchair, then expect you to be grateful for the wheelchair for the rest of your life. How can you trust anyone? How could anyone be happy with a Farhat Kaleen?’

  ‘Everyone’s standard of happiness is different,’ Jena said. ‘Sherry’s settling down and she’ll be well settled.’

  ‘Settling down. Well settled.’ Alys laughed derisively. ‘That’s the golden ticket.’

  ‘Can I tell you something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I keep thinking,’ Jena said, ‘that maybe if I’d worn something more flattering, something more alluring, he might have proposed.’

  ‘Oh please.’ Alys swallowed back tears. ‘Jena, it’s not even just the men. We dress to impress other women. Everything is a competition, and the reward is the other women’s envy. But Mummy is wrong about style and looks outweighing everything else. It doesn’t work that way. It can’t work that way. I won’t let it.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not my fault,’ Jena said. ‘If he was meant to get engaged to Jujeena Darsee—’

  ‘Of course it’s not your fault. And I’ll bet Bungles has no idea he’s engaged to Jujeena Darsee.’

  ‘Alys, stop it,’ Jena said. ‘His sisters were very clear that he and Jujeena Darsee are to be engaged.’

  ‘His sisters!’ Alys stabbed apart the baklava layers. ‘Hammy wishes Bungles and Jujeena would get married. She thinks that will lead to Darsee marrying her.’

  ‘Alys, it makes complete sense to me that Hammy and Sammy would choose Jujeena Darsee for their sister-in-law. They’ve known her for a long time, and Bungles must want it too, for no grown man allows his sisters to impose their will on him. I was simply mistaken in his intentions. He thought of me as a good friend and that was all.’

  ‘You sound like a film star denying a love affair. “We’re good friends only, blah blah blah.”’

  ‘I’d rather have mistaken his level of interest,’ Jena said, ‘than think he or his sisters are deceitful. Just let’s change the subject.’ Moments later she said, ‘And, anyway, why would Hammy and Sammy try to sabotage their own brother’s happiness?’

  ‘Because,’ Alys said, ‘their own happiness is more important to them than his. They are selfish sisters, selfish girls, who manipulate their brother without any qualms. They hide their ugly hearts behind dressing well, and so manage to fool people like our mother, who believes clothes-style-accessories-grooming reflects character. Hammy and Sammy think we are beneath them and so couldn’t care less how much their brother likes you. And he does like you. Very much.’

  ‘If he liked me that much, he’d call me. He’d show up. He—’

  ‘I’ll bet he wants to, but his dragon sisters and Dracula—’

  ‘Have they tied him up and gagged him? He’s not a puppet.’

  ‘The problem is that he trusts that they have his best interest at heart. No one wants to believe that relatives and friends can betray them for their own selfish reasons.’

  ‘I’m sure Aunty Tinkle said something to them about us,’ Jena said, ‘and you know how crucial good reputations—’

  ‘Stop,’ Alys said. ‘If you truly love and like someone, then nothing you hear about them should matter. Bungles is weak willed.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Jena pushed away her cappuccino.

  ‘Okay. And Sherry and I were going to spend our old age together, by a seaside, eating scones and samosas, two bachelorettes bingeing on the sunset forever.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Jena said with a wan smile. ‘Who eats scones and samosas at the same time?’

  Alys grabbed Jena’s hand. ‘You’ll be all right. You’ll be perfectly all right and Bungles will be a footnote of a funny story.’

  ‘Maybe I should have cracked some jokes?’ Jena said, sadness settling on her face. ‘I was just being myself. I would be reserved with any man who showed interest in me. At least I didn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing I was in love with him. But should I have? A little bit?’

  Jena’s eyes filled with tears. She laid her head on the table. Alys stroked Jena’s hair, and by and by Jena dried her eyes and they sat together as long as they cou
ld, until it was time to return home.

  A week later, Falak and Nona arrived with tranquillisers Nisar had sent for his sister. Mrs Binat gave them an earful concerning Sherry. ‘Kitni chalaak nikli – what a schemer she turned out to be.’ ‘Aastheen ka saanp, a snake in our backyard.’ ‘Budhi ghodi lal lagam, an old mare dressed in youngster’s red.’ She was supposed to have made Alys marry him, instead she married him herself! Then Mrs Binat began on Alys yet again. Jena was obviously suffering from someone’s evil eye, which had prevented Bungles from performing as expected, but Alys had let an already netted fish escape. Kaleen should have been theirs. Instead, he now belonged to the Loocluses. Pinkie 0, Bobia 1.

  Mrs Binat picked up her shoe and threatened Alys with a beating. Nona, her arms spread out, rushed between mother and daughter.

  ‘Pinkie, pagal ho gai ho?’ Nona asked. ‘Have you gone mad?’

  ‘Nona jee,’ Mrs Binat yelled, ‘would it have killed her to marry Kaleen? Who will marry her now? Who will marry her?’

  Alys strode towards her mother. Everyone froze. Then Alys hugged her mother tightly, not letting her go.

  ‘Don’t sell us short, Mummy,’ Alys implored. ‘Don’t sell me short. I’m not useless or good for nothing. I don’t want to get married just for the sake of it. I don’t need to.’

  Mrs Binat sobbed on her daughter’s shoulder. Alys rocked her mother gently. Finally Mrs Binat pushed Alys away, but it was not as rough a push at it could have been.

  ‘Don’t be so hard on the girls, Pinkie,’ Falak said, handing her sister a tranquilliser and a glass of water. ‘No matter what we do, kismet is the real decider of our fates.’