by Soniah Kamal
Kaleen began to lecture on the benefits of happy animals and fresh eggs and goat milk, until Sherry gently ushered the party back indoors to their bedrooms so they could freshen up.
Alys was given a comfy room that overlooked the back garden. She opened the windows to faraway goat bleats and a chikoo tree thick with brown ripe fruit.
‘It’s a lovely room,’ Alys said. She plucked a chikoo straight off the tree and inhaled its sweet scent before handing it to Isa, who was perpetually glued to Sherry’s hip.
‘It’s a lovely life,’ Kaleen said jovially as Sherry’s cat contently circled his legs. ‘It’s a lovely house. Sherry couldn’t be happier or healthier. Right, Sherry?’
Sherry nodded and, kissing Isa and promising to peel the chikoo for him, she herded everyone out of Alys’s room.
Alys took a hot shower in, she had to admit, a cosy cobalt-tiled bathroom and then, as instructed, she returned to the living room. There, the maid, Ama Iqbal, was serving a high tea and Kaleen was breaking the great news: tonight they dined at Begum Beena dey Bagh’s.
‘Tonight?’ Alys said. She’d been looking forward to getting in bed with a good book. ‘What’s the hurry?’
‘Hurry!’ Kaleen scowled. He was beyond flattered that Beena dey Bagh had insisted Sherry’s family’s first dinner in Islamabad be at her table. ‘There’s no hurry except that she wishes to do me a great honour.’
‘If you don’t mind,’ Alys said, ‘may I be excused?’
‘Excused!’
‘Please, Kaleen,’ Sherry said, ‘your blood pressure will go up. Calm down.’
‘Number one, no one excuses themselves when Begum Beena dey Bagh summons,’ Kaleen said, seething. ‘And number two, Alysba, I expected your parents to have instilled some manners in you and some sense of protocol.’
‘Kaleen Sahib,’ Alys said, ‘number one, I’m assuming that Beena dey Bagh will honour you by inviting us at least once more in these next three weeks. And, number two, at my age I should hope I’ve taught myself how to exercise good manners and protocol of my own free will.’
‘Alys,’ Bobia Looclus said in a tight voice, ‘Begum Beena is Kaleen’s employer, and we must not give cause for complaint.’
‘You’re right, Aunty Bobia.’ Alys smiled sweetly at Kaleen, who was clearly squirming at being categorised as a mere employee. ‘I should have thought of this technicality myself. I would not like to be the cause of Kaleen Sahib getting into trouble with his employer.’
Kaleen spluttered as he looked for something to say that would restore his full glory in everyone’s eyes. Sherry squinted at Alys, a playful request that she cut it out.
Later that evening, Alys was the first guest ready and waiting to leave for Beena dey Bagh’s estate, which was a good forty minutes away. Sherry was dressed in a brand-name silk shalwar kameez, and she was wearing new gold earrings that Bobia and Mareea were swooning over. Mareea had to borrow a silk outfit from Sherry’s closet. Sherry told her younger sister that they’d go shopping the very next morning to update her meagre wardrobe. Mansoor and Manzoor were dressed in ill-fitting suits with clip-on ties; they reminded their elder sister that they too required an upgrading, and Sherry promised them a shopping spree as well.
Kaleen entered in brown trousers and a purple shirt. He glanced at Alys’s zari embroidered khusse, white capris paired with a green-and-red ajrak kurta and matching dupatta, and the grey pearls dangling from her ears. He assured his guests that they were all looking decent and that none of them should worry anyway, because everyone’s taste and style fell short compared to Begum Beena dey Bagh’s and that – such a kind soul she was – she readily imparted her sartorial advice, as Sherry could attest.
‘True,’ Sherry said with a glimmer in her eyes. ‘Begum Beena is enormously generous with her opinion to better people as she thinks best.’
‘Yes, she is.’ Kaleen beamed at Sherry as they all squeezed into his car, for the Loocluses’ rented minivan was a rather tacky vehicle and not one Begum Beena dey Bagh deserved in her driveway. ‘You’re so perceptive, Sherry; you’re able to see things exactly as I would like you to see them.’
Sherry twitched a smile at Alys in the back seat. Alys nodded. If such a marriage was working for Sherry, then so be it. As they drove out of Islamabad, the city fell away to increasingly rural surroundings until they were passing acres of land between grand houses nestled behind walls. Kaleen stopped at imposing gates with gold lettering, VERSAILLES OF PAKISTAN, and he honked politely until a guard opened the gate. They drove down a long driveway with peepal trees on either side until they arrived at a massive house with a huge fountain, water gushing out of the beaks of black and white swans.
The butler led the guests over black marble floors strewn with hand-woven Kashmiri and Afghani rugs and into the main drawing room. An Amazonian woman in a blue ajrak shalwar kameez and matching dupatta, though in a different pattern from the one Alys had on, looked up from the candles she was lighting on the mantel over the fireplace.
So this was the aunt, Alys thought, who was instrumental, along with Darsee, in robbing Wickaam of his inheritance. Beena dey Bagh’s thick salt-and-pepper hair fell to her broad shoulders in a blunt cut. She wore diamond studs, a diamond Allah pendant, and several obese diamonds on her large French-manicured fingers. Her coral lipstick bled into the creases around her mouth. Above the fireplace was a blown-up Warhol-style photograph of a very striking girl. Kaleen had told Sherry, who had told Alys, that Annie was engaged to Darsee, and if it was Annie, Alys thought, then Darsee was in luck, looks-wise at least.
‘You are on time, good,’ Beena dey Bagh said as she handed the candle lighter to the butler. Kaleen introduced everyone. Bobia and Haji Looclus nearly fell over themselves as they thanked Beena dey Bagh for her gracious invitation. Mareea, Mansoor and Manzoor were tongue-tied as they looked from glass ashtrays to porcelain vases to the myriad sculptures and figurines that adorned the coffee tables, side tables, and consoles of the four separate seating areas in the drawing room. Alys had grown up in a similar setting before Uncle Goga and Aunty Tinkle had kicked them out of their ancestral house, and she was not intimidated by expensive decor no doubt chosen by a costly interior designer.
Beena dey Bagh motioned to the sitting area with a minimalist arrangement, its angularity softened with plush cushions and a Zen tabletop waterfall with budding bamboos standing in black pebbles. She settled her imposing frame into a curved chair with spindly legs and invited them to seat themselves.
‘My favourite corner,’ she said, peering at them one by one. ‘So peaceful. No, Mr Looclus? Wouldn’t you say, Mrs Looclus?’
Bobia, who’d been wishing she could free her inflamed feet from the confines of her good shoes, managed a fawning, ‘Jee, jee, fuss class, fuss class.’
‘It is A-one setting,’ Haji Looclus said. ‘We are very sorry to be missing Lolly Sahib.’
‘Yes,’ Beena dey Bagh said. ‘My husband is in Frankfurt, attending a pen show, and then he heads to Switzerland for some skiing. Such an adventurer.’
‘Such an adventurer,’ Kaleen echoed.
‘I remind him that, Lolly, you are too old to be going skiing, bungee-jumping, zip-lining but he informs me age is just a number and he’s not going to allow his knees, or me, to hold him back.’
Haji Looclus threw in his trump card, for either you were rich or you elevated your status by claiming direct descent from the Prophet, which he did.
‘We are Syeds, you know,’ he said with a magnanimous smile, ‘so we did not let age stop us from performing Hajj. Have you been for Hajj?’
‘Hajj?’ Beena dey Bagh said. ‘Seven, actually, and we’re planning to go next year in order to give thanks for the miracle Kaleen here has managed with Annie.’
Haji Looclus shrank into his chair. His single Hajj had left them all but bankrupt, and suddenly to have insisted on the title ‘Haji’ on the basis of a lone pilgrimage seemed empty. Haji Looclus swallowed. To be a seven-time Haj
jan! And still want more! Beena dey Bagh was a truly pious woman, and no wonder Almighty God had blessed her with so much.
Luckily for Haji Looclus, Beena dey Bagh was not interested in how many times anyone else had performed the holy pilgrimage and, instead, she pointed to the portrait above the fireplace and informed them that it was Annie at her best.
‘And where is dear Annie?’ Kaleen looked towards the archway that separated the drawing room from the large parquet foyer.
‘As you know, Kaleen,’ Beena said, ‘if Annie cannot go to the salon, then the salon must come to Annie. She is so fond of mani-pedis, she gets them done as regularly as others brush their teeth. It so heartens me that my daughter remains interested in a few things.’
A maid entered with a silver tray holding soft drinks. Mareea, Mansoor, and Manzoor excitedly chose from the array of colas. Alys took a glass of lemon squash.
‘Ice, Alysba?’ Beena said, and before Alys could answer, Beena had signalled to the maid, who whisked Alys’s glass out of her hand, topped it with ice, and set it back down on a cut-crystal coaster. ‘Sherry has told me so much about you. Also I have Naheed’s reports. I will say that the Dilipabad English literature exam scores are consistently admirable.’
‘Thank you,’ Alys said, as she signalled to the maid to remove the ice.
Beena dey Bagh’s eyes narrowed. ‘I hear other things too, Alysba. I’m not averse to progress, within reason, but I hear you like shocking students.’
‘I believe—’
‘You teachers,’ Beena dey Bagh cut Alys off, ‘are such ardent believers in this, that, or the other.’ She looked up at a woman who entered. ‘Yes?’
‘Madam,’ the woman said, ‘we’re done with Madam Annie. Payment, madam.’
‘Where is Nurse Jenkinudin?’
‘Don’t know, madam.’
Beena dey Bagh picked a walkie-talkie off the coffee table. Within minutes a woman in a starched white shalwar kurta came running in, apologised, and glared at the salon woman as she shepherded her out.
‘I had such an efficient Filipina nurse for Annie.’ Beena dey Bagh threw up her hands. ‘Unfortunately her mother also got a visa to work in Pakistan and off mine went to join her in Lahore. A replacement is in the works, but visas can take time. Nurse Jenkinudin is my third local. The local domestics are shoddy compared to the foreign domestics. No work ethic. Of course, you pay through the nose for foreigners, but then you get the best.’
Everyone nodded. Kaleen remarked that staffing his clinic with hard-working locals was a challenge too.
‘Might you say,’ Alys said, looking at Beena dey Bagh even as everyone turned to look at her, ‘that if one were to pay the local servants the same wages one paid the foreign, then the local would be just as good?’
‘Begum Beena dey Bagh,’ Kaleen said, grimacing at Alys as if she’d farted in public, ‘prefers the term “domestics” to “servants”. She believes it gives them an air of respectability that the term “servant” lacks.’
‘Right you are, Kaleen,’ Beena dey Bagh said. ‘That is exactly how I feel.’
‘Of course, everyone deserves dignity,’ Alys said.
‘Precisely,’ Beena dey Bagh said.
‘But,’ Alys said, ‘were I a servant, I might be compelled to say, “Call me by whichever term you want – ‘domestics’ or ‘the help’ is fine – but please pay me the same exorbitant salary as you would foreign servants.”’
‘Are you a communist?’ Beena dey Bagh hissed. ‘Surely you do not believe that everyone deserves the same salary if they have unequal qualifications. The foreign come trained, while I have to train the domestic. Anyway, inequality is ordained by God. Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist – show me any religion or philosophy that does not speak of rich and poor. It is the rich’s job to take care of the poor in their own way, often via charity, and it is the poor’s job to take care of the rich in their own way, often through serving.’
‘But charity,’ Alys said, ‘is dependent on goodwill, and serving is a job that should be highly paid. If you ask me, even teachers’ salaries should go way up.’
Kaleen spluttered on his juice. Sherry gave a hint of a smile. Beena dey Bagh cackled.
‘Everyone,’ she said, ‘ultimately thinks of their own skin.’
‘Yes,’ Alys said. ‘Everyone does perhaps think of their own coffers and comforts. But some people deserve and others simply hoard and exploit.’
‘Such confidence. How old are you?’
‘I believe girls are not supposed to be asked, or expected to divulge, their ages. However, I recently turned thirty-one.’
‘And the other teacher, your older sister?’
‘Jena is thirty-three.’
‘And neither one of you is married yet, I hear.’ Beena dey Bagh gave an all-knowing smile. ‘Must be hard on your mother.’
‘It is,’ Alys said. ‘But I believe that as hard as it may be on our mother, it seems to be even harder on absolute strangers.’
Beena dey Bagh geared up for a choice reply but, at that very moment, everyone turned to see Nurse Jenkinudin helping Annie walk in and sit down. Annie’s tall frame wore well a white silk blouse and bottle-green jeans and gold Dior sandals, from which shone ten long toenails in pearly glittery crimson. The colour rendered her complexion even sallower, Alys thought, but her hair was glossy and fell in a blue-black curtain to her waist and was cut in bangs above her pallid eyes.
‘Sorry to have kept everyone waiting,’ Annie said, breathing heavily.
‘My love, never any need for sorry from you,’ Beena dey Bagh said, as she signalled to the maid to set dinner. ‘How was this new mani-pedi team?’
‘Fine, Ammi.’ Annie smiled at everyone. ‘Sherry, you must be so excited your family is finally here. So pleased to meet you all. And your best friend, it is Alys, right? Good to meet you. Sherry mentions you at least a hundred times each visit.’
‘All good mentions, I hope,’ Alys said, smiling.
‘So far,’ Annie said, laughing. Alys laughed too.
Kaleen joined in the laughter, though he was miffed that Sherry would mention Alys at all. The maid announced that dinner was served, and they all rose and proceeded to the fourteen-seater dining table, where servers waited with three main dishes – paya, nihari, and haleem – and the many accompaniments that went with each of the delicacies – fresh coriander, chillies, lemons, julienned ginger, and crisp fried onions.
Beena dey Bagh asked Mr and Mrs Looclus to please begin. Paya was Haji Looclus’s favourite dish, and he ladled the gummy hoof soup into the fine china bowl and sprinkled ginger and coriander on it. Bobia Looclus helped herself to choice chunks of meat from the nihari. Once they were done, the servers moved on to Beena dey Bagh and then around the table. Alys poured a little haleem into a bowl and squeezed lemon over the meat-and-lentil stew and topped it off with sliced green chillies. She dipped her buttered tandoori bread into it. Delicious.
Alys complimented the food, and Annie said that their cook should be declared a national asset.
‘I do so miss being able to eat anything I want,’ Annie said as Nurse Jenkinudin placed a bowl of steaming chicken broth before her and cracked a fresh egg into it. ‘Did you know that in order to enjoy food one must smell it? So at least through smell, I get to eat. I had a friend back at university who developed anosmia – couldn’t smell a thing – and lost all interest in eating. Once I fell ill, we’d compare notes about which was worse: no smell or not being able to keep anything down.’
‘Annie, you’ll be eating everything you want in no time,’ Beena dey Bagh said. ‘Right, Kaleen?’
‘Why not?’ Kaleen said. ‘If God wills it.’
‘Life,’ Sherry said, ‘can change from good to bad so fast, and it follows that just as fast it can change from bad to good.’
‘You’re so wise, Sherry. An angel to Dr Kaleen’s saint.’ Annie turned to Mr and Mrs Looclus. ‘Your daughter is an angel. Ever since she’s arriv
ed, she regularly reads the Quran to me, with excellent Arabic pronunciation. Neither of us understands the language, but just the rhythm is such a balm to my soul.’
‘It is very good,’ Beena dey Bagh said to Mr and Mrs Looclus, ‘that you people teach your children to recite the Quran by rote in Arabic regardless of whether they understand it or not. Of course, the best thing would be to learn Arabic, and if I ever had the time and inclination, I would be as fluent as any native speaker, possibly even better. Sherry has such a soothing voice and it brings such peace to Annie. In fact, Sherry, I’d like you to record the Quran for Annie so she has access to your voice at her convenience.’
‘Sherry does have a soothing voice,’ Alys said. ‘Sherry, you should sell the recordings.’
‘Astagfiruallah, God forbid,’ Kaleen said. ‘Selling the word of God!’
‘Aren’t Qurans sold?’ Alys said.
Kaleen bristled. ‘There’s no need for Sherry to earn a single penny. She’s merely doing me a favour by helping me heal Annie through oral-to-aural therapy.’
‘I think every woman should have her own income,’ Alys said to Kaleen, ‘even married women.’
‘I agree,’ Annie said.
‘Every woman should have the ability,’ Kaleen said, smiling at Annie and Sherry, ‘to earn her own income, but what will we husbands do if you women start to earn comparable incomes and have the babies? The lucky woman is one whose husband can provide well for her in his lifetime as well as after his death.’
‘We agree,’ Bobia and Haji Looclus said. ‘Sherry agrees too.’
Sherry nodded politely.
‘Alys,’ Annie said, ‘Sherry told me that you’d be the perfect person to ask: can you recommend any stories with characters who are chronically ill and yet rise above it? But no becharis, no pitiable creatures.’
‘Have you read the short story “Good Country People” by Flannery O’ Connor? The main character, Hulga, is a non-bechari. Also there’s Anne de Bourgh in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.’
‘I’ve read P and P,’ Annie said. ‘It was helpful in an unexpected way. Anne doesn’t say a single word the entire novel, she just sits there, sickly and voiceless, and I decided that, no matter how ill I got, I’d never turn or be turned into Anne de Bourgh.’