Duty Free (16 page)

Today there was a knock on my bedroom door and when I said come in, who should come in but all the servants: cook, bearer, sweeper, gardener, my driver, Janoo’s driver, Kulchoo’s driver, guards, maid. They all came in a group to say that they wanted a raise in their pay.

“
Haw
, why?” I asked.

“Because price of sugar has gone so high and we can’t afford.”

“So who’s asked you to eat so much sugar? It’s bad for your teeth. You should hear my dentist. He’s forbidden Kulchoo from drinking sugary drinks. Coke
tau
is a total no-no. You know how many teaspoons of sugar it has? Ten.
Ji haan
. Ten. I’m telling you, you don’t want to pay thousands and thousands to fill cavities. Besides, also, you’ll get diebetees.
And
sugar puts on weight. Ask me, it’s been a year and I’m still trying to get rid of those five pounds I put on from eating all those ice creams and chocolate cakes in America last year.”

They all looked at each other and then Muhammad Hussain who’s been with us the longest said, “Bibi, sugar is the worst but prices have become too much in everything—
daal
, rice,
atta
, electricity, gas, petrol. We won’t be able to pay our children’s school fees if you don’t give us a raise.”

“So put them inside my husband’s school, it’s free.”

“My village is two hundred miles away from Saab’s village,” said the cook.

I don’t know why these people can’t move. I’d go tomorrow to Dubai if you sent me. I think so they have no spirit of adventure.

Muhammad Hussain cleared his throat. “So, Bibi, what is your decision?”

I wanted to tell them that listen I also have to live, okay. Who’s going to pay for my hairdresser, my spa, my tailor, my waxing woman, my jeweller, my kitty, if you’re going to eat me alive? Money doesn’t come out of taps, you know. But they don’t understand these things. They think we are made of money. Always wanting, always asking. Never doing
Allah ka shukar
. Never satisfied.

“Okay I’ll speak to Saab when he comes,” I said to get them off my back. “But I’m not making any promises.”

Janoo, of course, immediately said that we should give them all a rise. And that we should have given them already.
Aik tau
he’s also such a softie. I said how about giving me a rise also? If you think sugar has gone up you should see how much gold has gone up. Only yesterday I was asking Shazad at Goldsmith how much a ten-
tola
necklace costs now and the reply he gave almost made me pass away with shock. But of course Janoo never ever thinks of my needs. Sometimes I think so I would be better off if I was his driver instead of his wife. Then he’d have a guilty conscious about me and give me a rise whenever I asked.

Tomorrow is our kitty day again. Thanks God, I’ll get a brake from Aunty Pussy and her constant demands. Honestly, she’s drunk up all my blood. Anyone else in my place would have told her long ago to get lost. But me, I’m too gentle for my own goods. Mummy says I’ve always been like that. When I was small I wouldn’t squat flies with a big thump like everyone else but instead I’d do it gently, slowly with four, five little taps.
Haan
, so where was I? Oh yes, the kitty.

This time it’s Sunny’s turn. We’ve thrown Nina out,
na
. She was going around everywhere saying how we’d eaten her money and she was giving us a bad rep, so we decided to give her her money back. So there’s just the nine of us left. And because Sunny lives near Raiwind, which is in the back of behind, Mulloo’s asked me for a lift. Irum is taking her car for tuition, she said. They, poor things, have only one car left now,
na
. So poor they’ve become. Well, they have two but the other one’s a tiny Suzuki that everyone keeps for servants to get vegetables and meat from the bazaar and not even Irum is prepared to be seen in
that
.

You know,
na
, that ever since Tony’s business went bangrupt, Mulloo has been depress. The banks have been asking for their
money back and they’ve had to sell a plot they’d bought in Cavalry Grounds for Irum’s dowry. Mulloo puts out a brave face but I think so the sich has been bad in their home. For instant, they sold their sport car ages ago and then I saw some diamond studs at Goldsmith which had come for selling. I was ninety-five per cent sure they were hers but you know Shazad Goldsmith, he never says. Even though I asked him to please tell
na
, and promise by God, swear on Holy Koran won’t tell anyone, he just said they belonged to a client. So
pukka
he is.

And also Irum’s roaming around with a poor type. Kulchoo made me swear I wouldn’t tell anyone, and particularly Mulloo because she
tau
doesn’t suspect anything at all, but he said the boy is a DVD-
wallah
. These children, they know everything about each other. It seems to me they can’t even go to the toilet without telling everyone on the computer. And sending photos also. So Irum’s boyfriend has a DVD shop called Kool Kat, probably on the backside of some small pathetic-type market. And nothing else. No house, no name, no family, no lands, no industries, no
uggla pichhla
, nothing. Just a stack of DVDs.

And Mulloo, poor thing, is hoping, no, not just hoping, counting on Irum to make good marriage to a nice, rich type. Also she’d love to migrate to Canada and live in Missy Saga which Baby says is just like Gulberg, it has so many Pakistanis. It’s so
desi
that the number of
darses
and other Islamic meetings that take place there don’t even happen in Lahore, Karachi, and Isloo combined. But I don’t think so Mulloo and Tony can leave because Tony is in too much trouble.

He made two fatal mistakes,
na
. When he was doing well, he was openly rude two times to his bank manager who at that time
tau
drank down his anger but now that Tony’s a defaulter and the bank manager’s sister has just got married into the family of the Interior Minister, the foot is in the other shoe. So Tony and his family’s name have been put on the exit control list. Mulloo pretends that she stays here for the love of her country but it’s really because she can’t even enter the International Departures section at the airport.

And I also know that in the quiet Mulloo does some catering from her house. Provides food to Zeenat’s schools’ canteens. I know because the woman who runs the canteen there is my waxing-
waali’s
sister-in-law. And my waxing-
waali
also does Mulloo, so she knows. And so I know. But Mulloo doesn’t know that I know. Mulloo puts money into the kitty from there only—from the
biryani
and
naan kebabs
she makes. Naturally, she doesn’t want anyone to hear even a whisper of it because she doesn’t want people to know how poor she’s become. She even hides it from me but I know because when I’ve called her, the maid’s said that Begum Saab’s in the kitchen. And not once, not twice, but at least three, four times.

We all have friends who have nice German kitchens full of stainless steel and mixers-shixers and American fridges and they sometimes go into those kitchens to do some non-smelly cooking like baking a cake or, as they say, fixing a salad (as if it was broken or something). But no one, absolutely no one, goes into the greasy kitchen in which servants cook the daily food. I mean, why would they? And you know what? Mulloo
doesn’t even have a smart kitchen. She only has the greasy servants’-
wallah
. So she goes into
that
and cooks. Imagine! And something else also. Since I first started suspecting, I’ve smelt
zeera
on her. And once or twice onions even. Raw.

And when everyone of her age is applying to American colleges for more studies, Irum’s not. One,
tau
Tony can’t afford and two, Irum, she’s not very serious-minded,
na
. As Kulchoo says she’s not scholarship material. But then nor is her mother. And father
tau
poor thing is total loser. I guess brains are not in Irum’s jeans. Not like Kulchoo who gets from both sides.

You know,
na
, that Kulchoo came top in his class in his mid-term exams? I distributed cake among the servants and called Sunny and dropped it casually into the chit-chat. Just to make her burn because of all the boasting she does. Janoo of course didn’t say anything except “Well done, Kulch.” But coming from him even this much of praise is like Noble Prize.

I told Janoo, “See now, how good tuitions are?”

“You mean
despite
all those mind-numbing tuitions he did so well,” he said. “Imagine how he’d do without them.”

I thought to myself, no point arguing with cracks. So I didn’t say anything more. All I want now is for Kulchoo to get into a top college, or at least better than Sunny’s, Baby’s, Nina’s, and Faiza’s children, and to not get snatched by some sharpie, greedy girl before he leaves. Then I want him to come back and start big business and make big marriage and have big family. Every night before I go to sleep I say one small prayer for that. “Please,
Allah Mian
, keep my Kulchoo safe from snatchers.”

You know
na
that low-class-type girls are always trying to
grab innocent, up-class boys with sobbed-stories about how they live only for them and how they will die without them and so on and so fourth. And before the boys even leave for college they’ve dug their pointy nails into them and got them to agree to an engagement and before you know it,
chalo ji
, they’ve got your son.

So the other day Kulchoo’s friend Kashif was over and they were sitting with me and Janoo and doing chit-chat and then they left together to go to Main Market. Two minutes after they left, mobile rang. It was Kulchoo’s Blueberry. Normally
tau
he never ever forgets it anywhere. As Janoo says, it’s like apart of his body, like his leg or arm, and can only be removed by armputation. Anyways, I picked up. Before I could say hello even, a screechy low-class-type shrieks in my ear, “Kay, you promised you’d call at three and now it’s seven past three. If you’ve found someone else just come out and admit, okay?”

“Who are you?” I asked.

Silence.

Then the screechy voice says, “Who are
you
?”

Look at her! Questioning me. As if I was a servant. “His mother only.”

Again silence.

Then: “Where’s Kay?”

“Out. Who are you?”

“Nobody.”

“Well, open your ears and listen to me, Nobody. Leave my son alone. Otherwise nobody will be worst than me. Understood?”

And I banged the phone down. Well to be frank, I couldn’t bang because it was mobile, but you know what I mean. And then I flung myself down on the sofa and howled, “Hai my poor baby, Kulchoo. Where’ve you gone and got stuck up?”

“What’s happened?” asked Janoo, peering out from behind his newspaper’s wall.

“It’s Kulchoo!”

“Is he okay? What’s happened?”

“No,” I moaned. “He’s not okay. He’s lost.”

“What
are
you going on about?”

“Kulchoo’s having an affair.”

“An
affair
? Isn’t he a bit young for an affair? The boy’s just fifteen.”

“I just spoke to her on the phone. Voice like nails on blackboard. Low-class. Urdu medium accent. I can just imagine her. Thin, scrawly thing with padded bra and false eyelashes tittering around on scuffed stilettos.
Hai
, my
bacha
, what have you gone and done?”

“Relax,” said Janoo. “It’s probably just a phone romance. It’ll blow over in a month. You should be glad he’s normal. He’d have to be gay if he didn’t think of girls.”

“Kulchoo’s a gay?”

“All I’m saying is that it’s perfectly normal for a fifteen-year-old boy to show some interest in girls.”

“But not girls like that, that slu—”

“Shh, quiet.”

There was the sound of footsteps coming and I heard Kulchoo’s voice outside the door. I quickly put the phone down
on the table between us. It lay there like a loaded gun. Janoo held his finger up to his lips and gave me warning scowls. I sat hands in laps. Eyes on table. The door opened. Kulchoo and Kashif came in.

“
Ye lay
Kashif
yaar
,” said Kulchoo, seeing the phone on the table. “Your phone.” And he picked up the phone and tossed it to Kashif.

“B-but isn’t that your Blueberry?” I asked Kulchoo.

“Nope. Mine’s right here,” Kulchoo patted his back pocket. “Blackberry. Not Blueberry.”

“It can be Strawberry now, for all she cares,” laughed Janoo.

“No missed calls?” muttered Kashif, staring at his phone.

“Nobody called,
beta
,” I said with a big smile. “Absolutely nobody.”