Duty Free (10 page)

Kulchoo’s been home all day reading Facebook, because schools and colleges are all closed. Again. This time because the fundos have attacked Islamic University in Isloo and killed six students. Janoo’s been muttering non-stop about Kulchoo’s disrupted education. But I said (we’ve started speaking now but only little, little) he’ll only get educated if he lives, no? Even though he’s an Oxen, sometimes Janoo says such crack things.

Even when schools open danger won’t go away. Because the fundos
tau
are here to stay, na. Where will they go? Kabul? Kashmir? Waziristan? And then they’ll be back because they like it here with Sat TV and bazaars full of olive oils and imported cheeses. So I’ve told Kulchoo from now only that I won’t let him out of my sights even. He’ll go to school, with driver and armed guard, and come straight back and that’s it. No roaming around, no friends’ houses, no Pizza Hut, no DVD shops, no mini-golf, no nothing. Not even tuition. Of course he shouted and screamed and said I’m polaroid about the Talibans but I say better polaroid than dead. No?

I said to Janoo that we should leave Pakistan and go away somewhere for a while.

“Like where?” he said.

“Dubai,” I said. I wanted to say London but servants in London are not nice, always wanting holidays on Sundays and so full of attitude, almost as if they didn’t know they were servants. At least Dubai has good supply of Filipinas and South Indians who know they’re servants. And they also speak nice English. Not like the illitreds here who can only speak Punjabi.

“And do what in Dubai?” asked Janoo.

“Live,” I said.

All our friends have two, two passports. Sunny’s father was born in London so she’s got UK passport. Baby and Jamal have got Canadian. And they’re all set with a three-bed apartment in Missy Saga in Toronto where all the
desis
live and now whenever anyone says things are going to the bogs in Pakistan they smile smugly and say nothing. And Aslam and Natasha have bought a house in Malaysia in Koala Lumpur because he’s into rubber in a big way, so they’re all right. Only Mulloo and Tony and we have nothing. Mulloo and Tony because they don’t even have enough money left to bribe a lawyer or buy property over the seas but of course Mulloo won’t admit and she says it’s because she’s a patriot and that she was born here and she’ll die here. Janoo of course is just bore and says he’s not going to dessert a sinking ship. I told him I’m not talking about the
Titanic
, you know. He said I might as well be. I think so he’s lost it.

So then I said okay forget about me because obviously you don’t give two hoops about whether I live or die but at least think of Kulchoo. And he said in three years Kulchoo would be going to university abroad and after that he could choose
for himself whether he wanted to stay there or return home. And if things became too unsafe before then he would send Kulchoo to boarding school in England.

And I said what if things became too unsafe for me here? After all, bombs are bursting every day. People are dying, or being robbed by bugglers in their own houses and being shot and beaten also and only the other day I heard that someone who Nina knows had her arms slashed with a naked blade in Liberty Market by a beardo. He said he did it because she was wearing sleeveless.

“If you are worried about lawlessness in Lahore you can always come with me to Sharkpur,” he said.

Sharkpur! His bore village, where all you can hear is the mooing of cows and the barking of his mother, the Old Bag, and the snorting of his sisters, the Gruesome Twosome. Where no one uses olive oil and everyone is so illitred that they haven’t even heard of Prada or Versace. Where all you see is bore grass and even more bore fields and male sheeps misbehaving with female sheeps in front of everyone. And all you can do is sit there and pretend you haven’t noticed the shameless sheep. Where there’s no boutique, no spa, no hairdresser, no nice jeweller even. Honestly, I don’t know how people survive there. No, not even my dead body would be happy there.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said to Janoo. If I have to choose between dying of boredom or being blown up by a suicide bomber, I’ll take the bomb. At least it’s quicker.

Even bloody Jameela is living it up in Abu Dhabi while I die in bloody Lahore.

We had dinner at home. Just me and Janoo and Kulchoo. You know
na
that once the wedding and party season starts properly, we’ll be out every single night for whole two months. Dinners, balls, musical evenings, parties, weddings,
milaads
, the whole deal. So it’s good to have one night in. Also servants don’t get too spoilt that way. Otherwise, every night the minute we leave, they sneak off back to their quarters. Lazy lumps.

Haan
, so as soon as Kulchoo came home from his tuition master’s at nine o’clock, I picked up the inner-com and told the bearer to bring the food on a trolley to my bedroom because my fave TV serial was on and in the dining room we have no TV. As yet.

Kulchoo flopped down on the sofa and sighed loudly.

I looked up from my TV serial and said, “Are you okay, baby?”

“Yeah,” he said, making a face. I don’t think so he likes me calling him baby. “I’m just tired.”

“No tell, na, have you got headache? Tummy ache? Mosquito bites? Fever?” I pressed my hand on his forehead. It seemed hottish to me. I swear if anything happens to my baby I’m going to go and pull each and every one of Aunty Pussy’s backcombed hairs from her head with my own hands.

“Chill, Mum,” said Kulchoo pulling away. “I’m okay. I told you, I’m okay.”

Janoo put down his papers and told me not to fuss. I ignored.

“Then what’s the matter?” I asked. “Anyone said something to you? Tell me, and I’ll go and see them and tell them what’s what.”

“Don’t give me grief. I’m just tired. Okay? I’ve just had four hours of tuitions.”

Poor thing, na, every day after school he goes to four different tuition masters’ homes and has tuitions in four different subjects. Maths, Chemistry, Econmics, and Civics. Or is it Physics? My heart breaks but what to do? Everyone goes. Apparently it’s the only way of getting As and place in a college with a good name in America. Places like Yales and Princedom and Havard. Janoo’s always been against tuitions. He says it makes you dependent. And that Kulchoo’s bright enough to do well on his own. All he needs to do is focus. As if our son was a microscope or something. But if we don’t send Kulchoo everyone will say we are too mean to spend on our son even. And that we are throwing away his future.

“What I don’t understand is why the tuition masters can’t come to our house instead of you having to go to them?” I asked Kulchoo, giving sideways look to TV but it was where I’d left it; mother-in-law was still shouting at daughter-in-law for not bringing a house in her dowry. “Then you wouldn’t have to get tired being driven here, there, and everywhere. You could just sit comfortably in your own sitting room and make them come here. After all, we pay them fifty thousand each. They can do this much for us. Baby was telling me the Maths tutor has got so rich so rich, he’s got three flats in same building as theirs in Toronto. Three flats.
Ji haan
. One on top, two below. Three, three bedrooms each. Least he could do is to come here and—”

“Mum, we’ve been through this a hundred times. You
know
why I have to go there. Because they run classes for thirty
boys at a time. Now please can we have dinner? I’m hungry. What’s cooked?”

“What I don’t understand is why you have to go to school at all?” said Janoo putting down his book with a thump on the sofa. “If you have to be taught all over again in a tuition centre by the very same people who are supposed to be teaching you at school, why bother going to school at all? For what?”

“I need my teachers’ and my headmaster’s recommendation to apply to uni, remember?”

“Ah, light dawns,” said Janoo. “So the school fees are for the
recommendation
. And all along I thought I was paying for an
education
. Silly me!”

“Dad, don’t be like that,” said Kulchoo. “Besides I also have two Englishes and Pak Studies and Urdu and Islamiyat at school and for those I have no tuition.”

“Don’t eat the poor child’s head,” I said to Janoo. “Everyone does tuitions. Sunny’s stuppid son does six. We don’t want the whole world pointing fingers at us saying we’re too mean to send our son to tuitions. And everyone also knows no teaching is done in school. If the masters taught in school who’d go to their tuition centres? And where would they make enough money to send their own kids to college in the US,
haan
? Have you seen the fees? You know how much it costs? So then? Why are you asking
faltoo
questions?”

“I don’t see how this is a useless question. All I’m asking—”

Just then, thanks God, the food trolley came in. So I quickly heaped a plate with rice and chicken and
koftas
and put it in front of Kulchoo.

“Eat,” I said.

“I’m not hungry,” said Kulchoo.

“See what you’ve done?” I said to Janoo. “Taken away the child’s hunger
and
made me miss my TV drama.”

“It’s you who started it,” said Janoo. “Not just this conversation but the whole tuition nonsense. And all to keep up with the Joneses. I was against it right from the start.”

“Joneses? Have you gone cracked? I don’t know anyone called Joneses.”

“For God’s sake! It’s just a figure of spee—”

“You know what, guys?” shouted Kulchoo. “I’m out of here.” And he got up from the sofa and walked out slamming the door behind him.

“Kulchoo, eat something, baby,” I called after him.

“I’ll take something from the kitchen,” came his faraway reply.

“Happy now?” I said to Janoo.

He opened his mouth to say something but then he shut it and quietly left the room. I looked at the TV but even the credits of my serial had finished. I sat there with the untouched trolley till the food got cold. But still no one came back. Then the bearer came and said that Saab had asked for a plate of food to be sent to his study. I told him to take the trolley away.

I’m
tau
very glad that the Talibans are being given a good and proper beating-up by the army. They were giving us no ends of trouble. Blowing themselves up in full bazaars at the least evocation. You want to blow yourself up, go do it inside your own home or out in some quiet corner where you don’t endanger others, no? Honestly, so selfish they are. So unconsiderate. Then they were also stopping women in markets and bazaars and threating to throw acids in their faces if they wear jeans. Imagine! As if Pakistan belongs to them. And we are their slaves. Thanks God the army is showing them what’s what. If you ask me, it was overdue. I hope so now they will finish them off once and for all and not do a little bit of killing and then go quietly behind our backsides and make up with them again and as a make-up present give them another chunk of the country. “Here take Swat. And, here’s Kohat. Want Mardan also?
Chalo
, never mind, take that also.”

I know there’s that small problem of all the refugees who’ve fled from Waziristan to escape all that fighting-shighting and bombing-vombing. These days, by the ways, they are not called refugees but IDPs. That means Infernally Displaced Peoples. Sounds so much nicer than refugees, no? Almost as if it were
a job title in a big company—like CFO, meaning Chief Federal Officer, or VP, meaning Vice President, although I always thought VP meant Visible Panties. Newspapers are saying there are a million IDPs in the refugee camps near Mardan. Really, the poors have so many children! Anyways, all the NGO-
wallahs
are making such a big hoo-haa that they are living in tents with no runny water and no toilets and no electricity and no schools and no doctors-shoctors and that something has to be done. I wanted to tell them that listen, I also live without electricity and no doctor-shoctor lives with me also but do I complain? But then I thought better not because then there will be another who-and-cry about how we rich don’t understand anything.