by Soniah Kamal
One evening, as the Binats were discussing the wedding menu, the phone rang and Mrs Binat went to answer it. When she returned, she was pale and Hillima was leading her by the elbow and seating her on the sofa.
‘You won’t believe who was on the phone,’ Mrs Binat said.
‘You’re scaring me,’ said Mr Binat. ‘Who?’
‘Tinkle,’ Mrs Binat said. ‘Tinkle was congratulating us on JenaBungles and AlysDarsee. She said she’d always had full faith that the girls would do the Binat name proud. She said she was looking forward to their weddings. She said she wanted to host a big milad and dholki for each girl at’ – Pinkie’s voice trembled – ‘at the old house. She said: “We will invite the whole of Pakistan. We will show them that nothing and no one can divide the Binat clan.”’
‘No,’ Mr Binat said loudly. Mrs Binat, Jena, Alys, Mari, and Qitty jumped.
Mr Binat cleared his throat. ‘I did not tell you, but when I was desperately looking for money to pay Mr Jeorgeullah Wickaam to marry my daughter, I had no option left but to arrive at Goga and Tinkle’s door.’
Mrs Binat gasped. So did the girls.
‘It was not their meanness of spirit,’ Mr Binat said slowly, ‘that was displayed in those stale biscuits they served me, or that Tinkle did not even bother to appear, or that Goga took his time appearing. Rather, it was the smile that spread on my brother’s face when I told him why I was there. Goga said he’d heard that one of my daughters had run away. He said he did not have money to spare on marrying off wayward girls. “Bark,” he said, “you obviously don’t have the brains to make money, for men fall on their faces all the time and yet manage to get right back up. In business you are a known failure, but I did not expect you to be a failure of a father too.”
‘I wanted to tell him about my kind and generous Jena, my fearless Alys, my artist Qitty, who holds her head up high no matter what anyone says to her, and my Mari, who just wants everyone to go to heaven. Even my silly, selfish Lady, who doesn’t know what is good for her and just wants to have a good time all the time. But I didn’t tell him about any one of my daughters. He doesn’t deserve to know a single thing about my precious girls.
‘As I was leaving that house, Pinkie, I realised that I’d spent this past decade there, if not physically, then in my heart by missing it and longing for it. But there was nothing there. It should have ceased to be home the minute we arrived in Dilipabad and you began to scrub clean this house. I should have rolled up my sleeves and joined you. They say blood is thicker than water. I say to hell with that. If blood mistreats you, better water. And if friends prove false, no matter, find better or be alone and be your own best friend.’
‘But, Barkat,’ Pinkie said carefully, ‘you have always dreamt of patching up with your brother. I know it.’
‘Goga is my brother biologically and Tinkle my cousin biologically, but in no other way have they earned those relationships. And the time for chances is over.’ Mr Binat raised his hand. ‘I’m not retaliating, Pinkie. It is not a matter of retaliation. It is a matter of principle. They’ve treated us shabbily, as if we were enemies and not blood. I realised that you are correct: our failure is their success. Since they broke the blood bond, I have no interest reviving it. We will not be inviting them to Jena’s or Alys’s wedding. We will not be holding any functions in their home. They are not welcome in my home or in my heart. My only regret is that I was unable to develop a relationship with my nephews and nieces or give my own children the gift of close cousins. But so be it. Not my fault. Not my problem.
‘Pinkie, my love, I apologise to you for all the times I ignored your complaints about them, told you to get over their insults, to tolerate it, to compromise, to let it go. It was callous of me. It is not how a spouse should treat a spouse. Not how I, your husband, should have treated you, my wife, when I’d vowed to love and protect you. Forgive me.’
Khushboo ‘Pinkie’ Binat instantly forgave her husband everything, for this was every Pakistani wife’s dream come true, that her husband should sincerely apologise on behalf of his family.
‘And Jena, Alys, the rest of you,’ Mr Binat said, ‘if your husband ever mistreats you, know that you have parents who support you and a home to return to here in Dilipabad, to rest and recover before you go back out into the world.’
WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY
Log Kya Kahenge
MRS NAHEED: You know Alys and Jena were British School of Dilipabad teachers. In fact, I was the one who introduced Alys Binat to Valentine Darsee, at the NadirFiede wedding. So sad – Nadir’s and Fiede’s divorce. My daughters, Gin and Rum, are so excited for Jena and Alys, who will surely be among their first clients when my daughters begin their designer-clothing line. Expect brilliant things from all BSD brands. I mean girls.
LADY: Hai, my only regret in eloping was that I didn’t get to wear QaziKreations at my wedding. But I will be wearing Qazi only at JenaBungles and AlysDarsee. Oh God, not this question again! Who cares if Wick was paid to marry me? Think of it this way: instead of a man buying a woman, here is a woman who bought a man.
MARI: Shakespeare says ‘All’s well that ends well.’ God says that too. So you know what that means? Shakespeare was Muslim.
QITTY: My sister Alys gave me the magazines. Mode’s last issue was published in October 2001. They were forced to close down. It wasn’t circulation. They had plenty of subscribers and were growing by the day. They were forced to shut doors because of lack of advertisements. Top designers only wanted to design for skeletons. Their Loss. Fat Stocky Short Squat Women Are Here. We Exist. We Are Visible.
HAMMY: Marrying Jaans was Sammy’s choice, and staying with him is her choice too. My ring? Two-carat solitaire. Yes, he is one of Jaans’s good friends but nothing like him. My fiancé is a gem of a person. No, I was never interested in Valentine Darsee. Who is spreading this rumour? What will my fiancé think if he finds out? For God’s sake, Valentine is one of my baby brother’s best friends. I’ve always seen him as just another brother.
JAANS: Shaadi equals barbaadi, marriage equals misery, a socially constructed battleground. My wife, Sammy, agrees with me. Chalo, what to do, bale bale.
BEENA DEY BAGH: Jab mian biwi razee tho kya karey qazi. When the bride and groom are willing, nothing the priest can do to stop the wedding.
JUJU DARSEE: My brother couldn’t have found anyone better than Alysba Binat.
ANNIE DEY BAGH: I’m so excited that my boyfriend is coming to attend the weddings. Yes, he’s Nigerian. Why the face? What’s bothering you? That I have a boyfriend? That he’s black? Both?
MRS SYEDA SHIREEN KALEEN NÉE SHERRY LOOCLUS: Of course it is necessary to have an income of one’s own beyond pocket money. I have never believed otherwise. But what a pity that homemakers are unpaid and so undervalued. Yes, Alys and I are planning to open a bookstore, and I will be in charge of translations. We are very excited. If my husband objects, my secret weapon, Annie dey Bagh, will have a word with him. That always works.
ROSE-NAMA: Miss Alys was always my favourite teacher, and I was one of her teacher’s pets. My mother switched my schools because she didn’t like the alternating uniform/free-clothes days. Or the new British School Group motto: ‘Home Is Everywhere on Earth. Be Honest. Be Kind.’ Or the introduction of a mandatory comparative-religion class. Or, as per new guidelines, a class on the history of marriage and sex.
TAHIRA: I’m so thrilled for Miss Alys and of course Miss Jena. Next on the list of duties is the good news that they are expecting. Thank you! My baby is due soon.
RAGHAV KUMAR: I knew something was up between those two.
HIJAB’S MOTHER: Of course my daughter is best friends with Mrs Lady Wickaam. Did you know Jeorgeullah Wickaam is Valentine Darsee’s and Annie dey Bagh’s first cousin? Wickaam is such a humble boy. Wants to make it on his own merit, so prefers to keep a distance from his relatives.
HILLIMA: My girls. They are like family.
MOTHERS IN DILIPABAD AND OTHER ‘-ABA
DS’, ‘-PURS’ AND ‘-ISTANS’ ACROSS PAKISTAN, TO THEIR DAUGHTERS: If Alys Binat and Jena Binat at their advanced ages can grab such catches, then you have no excuses.
DILIPABAD GYMKHANA VIPS: Pinkie Binat has exceeded expectations in training her daughters in the art of hook, reel, grab. All in favour of acknowledging her now and then? Done! Let’s buy an outfit or two from her debut collection.
SOCIALITES IN SOCIAL LIGHTS: Congrats to AlysDarsee and JenaBungles. Wishing them all the best on their Happily Ever After.
EPILOGUE
One Year Later
Lady stood at the window in the Dubai apartment, looking at Jumeirah Beach in the moonlight. The glass was not as clean as she liked, and Wick did not take kindly either to smudges. They’d paid a pretty penny for this place, one of the finest in town, but you had to spend money to make money. You had to look the part. She would have an extra-sharp word with the maid about the windows. Lady patted her lips, pleased with the Botox, wondering if she should go plumper, bigger always being better.
‘I’m bored,’ she said to Wick’s reflection in the window. He was lifting weights. What a handsome man she’d managed to marry, Lady thought for the millionth time. Dracula and Bungles did not come close. But. Then. Their money. Wick had turned out to be an even bigger flop with finances than her father. Alys and Jena had sent her some money to spend as she pleased and she was not going to tell Wick, because, unfortunately, he had the annoying habit of thinking the money her sisters and mother sent her was meant for him. She could make money modelling, but Wick, like her father, did not want her to model. However, while her father was controlling, Wick loved and respected her too much to bear the thought of other men doing the dirty with her pin-ups.
They’d had a rough patch for a while there, when she’d found out about his children, but that part of his life was behind him now. It wasn’t even as if it was his fault alone – he was irresistible to women. They would have to learn to resist him, because there was only one lady for him now, she always reminded him, and that lady was Mrs Lady Wickaam.
In fact, more than being upset with Wick, Lady was still annoyed with her family for barring him from Alys’s and Jena’s weddings. She would have boycotted in protest, except they really had been weddings of the year and Wick had encouraged her to attend. Best, he’d said, to stay in her sisters’ good books.
‘Let’s go watch a film,’ Lady said as she turned away from the window. ‘Or eat out.’
Wickaam mumbled something about their budget.
‘Not to worry, Wick,’ Lady said, ‘we’ll be rich and famous yet – this time our business idea is foolproof. Touch wood.’ And she touched the granite counter in the kitchen.
They were going to open up a lingerie boutique, Pakeezah Passions. Pure Passions. Their logo would be peacock feathers rising majestically out of what anyone with half a brain would be able to see was cleavage. Their tagline was ‘No more Mr Lonely Pants. No more Ms Lonely Panty’. Pakeezah Passions would be the hottest lingerie ever, with a Pakistani twist. So Sindhi ajrak teddies and Baluchi mirror-work baby dolls and Punjabi leather bra sets and Pathan pom-pom underwear. Also, on a separate note, Lady had insisted on a line devoted to brassieres of cotton and lace for those blessed with big busts. Wick was terribly excited. He was sure this business was the one to turn them from Wannabes to VIPs, and he grabbed his wife and she grabbed him back.
Mr and Mrs Binat lounged in bed, enjoying chai and samosas prepared on this Dilipabad evening by Hillima, who was still elated at having received generous amounts of cash and gold earrings from both Alys’s and Jena’s bridegrooms, unlike Lady’s useless husband – looks, ka aachar dalna hai, was one supposed to pickle and preserve his good looks! – who had asked her what wedding present she was giving him.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ Mrs Binat said to Mr Binat, her eyes perpetually shining. ‘Three daughters married in one year, and so well, duniya dekhti reh gayi – the whole world watched in envy. Barkat, did I not always tell you I would only give birth to marriageable material?’
Mr Binat looked up from his book on Mullah Nasruddin’s sagely antics. The miracle was Alys and Jena finding the rarest of husbands: supportive, decent, rich, smart, caring, faithful, uncontrolling, kind, good-looking, healthy, funny, generous, polite, affectionate, respectful. Such men simply did not exist except in novels. Pinkie had her eye on Cornell-Babur for Qitty or Mari, whichever he preferred, but she was not as bothered as she would have been a year ago, because she had more pressing issues to keep herself busy-busy.
Pinkie Heirlooms had taken off, thanks to demand from gymkhana patrons, and she was adding a bridal line called Binat Bridals, and she had dreams of a vast empire under the umbrella House of Binat. Mr Binat threw samosa crumbs to Dog and Kutta, new additions to the family. The puppies leapt off the rug, barking madly, happy to receive scraps.
Mari sat on the bed by her parents’ feet. She’d been beaming so hard for the last year, her teeth ached. She was convinced each day anew that her sisters’ outrageously good fortunes were the result of her piety and prayers. In giving thanks to the Almighty, Mari had taken to wearing a burqa, and whether Lady called her Ninja, or her mother called her Nut Case, or that brother in High Chai hissed, ‘Move it, Crow,’ she couldn’t care less. The entire world was losing its way.
Mari flipped through brochures of the advanced Quran courses offered at the Red Mosque in Islamabad as well as of Harvard’s comparative-religion courses. She’d apply to both. Though, really, going to Harvard would mean returning with prestige enough to set up her own Islamic school to rival all Islamic schools – Al-Hira, she would call it, after the cave in which the Prophet Muhammad had hidden from the baddies who wanted to kill him. She would come back and she would rule and she would make people like Fazool and Moolee give up their New Year’s parties – God willing, of course.
Qitty glanced at Mari browsing through the brochures. She returned to the drawing she was shading. She’d met a guy at Alys’s and Jena’s weddings, and it had been a perfect courtship. Then he’d said, ‘Jumbo, I’ll marry you if you lose fifty pounds and promise to maintain the weight loss forever.’ When people would ask Qitty what it was about that particular moment, all she knew to say was that, suddenly, she was fed up. She’d yelled at him with all her might: ‘Daffa ho, get lost. If I’m happy loving myself just the way I am, then who are you to put conditions on accepting and loving me?’
That day, a lifetime of rage was unleashed at Lady, her mother, people who compared her to globular fruit, people who used ‘health’ as an excuse to mock her; her anger poured out of her and onto paper. She’d sent her words to a national newspaper: she was not just fat; she was fat and intelligent, fat and funny, fat and kind, fat and fun, fat and beautiful, fat and a good friend, fat and creative, fat plus every lovely attribute in the world. She was fat and happy and did not care about being thin – imagine that.
Next Qitty knew, she’d been offered a weekly column on self-acceptance and talks all over the place. How she’d revelled in Lady’s stunned shriek: ‘What! You’ve become famous for being fat. A fashion and beauty blogger.’ How she’d relished showing a silent Lady the thank-you letters she was continuously receiving for talking about living large and celebrating all of oneself. Never in her dreams had Qitty thought that she’d be called a role model or an inspiration. (‘Never in my dreams either,’ Lady had said in a pinched voice as she’d wondered if Pakeezah Passions should design lingerie for fatties.) But it had been a dream of Qitty’s to pen a graphic novel about a fat sister surrounded by four not-fat sisters and how the fat sister was the one who triumphed. And dreams came true, Qitty knew, as she inked in the final panel for Unmarriageable.
In Lahore, Jena was wrapping up a meeting with potential financiers to discuss funding for her dream organisation – TWS, Together We Stand – which would provide educational scholarships to underprivileged girls in Pakistan. On the way home, she had the driver stop at Nona’s Nices, Nona’s f
lagship bakery, recently opened in Lahore, where she purchased her daily cravings, cream rolls. Bungles would monitor her gestational diabetes and they’d enjoy the dessert together in front of their wood fire as they debated girls’ names.
Alys Binat – she’d chosen to keep her maiden name post marriage – and Valentine Darsee walked hand in hand in Jane Austen’s House Museum, in Chawton village, on their holiday in England. It was the cottage that Jane’s elder brother had given his widowed mother and two sisters, Jane and Cassandra, to live in, and where Jane had written and revised many of her novels.
Alys ran her hand over the outside walls, the main door, the guest book, which she signed. She would never forget that Darsee had arranged this surprise visit for her birthday. Next they were going to Bath, Lyme Regis, Steventon, Winchester, and other Austen stops. Alys made a mental note to pick up souvenirs from each place, for her and Sherry’s thriving bookstore.
Alys squeezed Darsee’s hand and he smiled at her as they moved from room to room. She thought of her favourite line in Pride and Prejudice: ‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?’ She thought of Jane’s mother and elder sister, both named Cassandra, outliving their beloved Jane, her father, George Austen, her brothers, James, George, Edward, Henry, Frank, and Charles, cousin Eliza, and of Martha and Mary Lloyd and Anne Sharp, Jane’s friends. Of Harris Bigg-Wither, whose claim to fame was to be Jane Austen’s fiancé of one night. She thought of Jane dead at forty-one and yet so very much alive in novel after novel.