Duty Free (21 page)

“Jonkers, don’t mind my asking but how much do you know her?”

“I’ve met her a few times. Remember my friend, Asad? His wife is friends with her. They were the ones who told me about her at the wedding and they introduced me to her then and later I asked them to invite me when she came by and so they did, twice, and then I dropped by at her office once on the pretext of buying a ticket and then a couple of times since then.”

“So you’ve met her four times?”

“More. And we talk on the phone every evening. I feel as if I’ve known her for years.”

“Like you knew Shumaila.” The minute I said it, Jonkers’ face crumbled and I felt bad with myself but facts are facts, no? I mean, here I am moving heaven and hell to find him a girl, going to corrupt politicians’ weddings and even drug smugglers’ houses, all to find him a decent bride from a decent bagground and here he is, again dating secretaries and all. Okay, I admit travel agent is better than a blow-dryer but still,
yaar
 …

Jonkers wiped his mouth carefully with a napkin and put it down on his side plate. Then he said, “I know, Apa, you look down on women who have to work for a living but your attitude is both outdated and, if you don’t mind my saying so, unpleasant. I realize Shumaila probably married me for my money but she was only trying to do the best she could for herself. And you know something? In that, she was no different to those two ladies who were sitting at that table, or indeed any of your wealthy, well-connected friends who marry rich men just for their wealth.”

“
Haw
, Jonkers, what have I said? You
tau
are getting after me for nothing.”

“Look, I’m sorry. But I know what you’re thinking. Travel agent equals glorified secretary equals gold-digger.”

“
Never
. Never in a thousand years. Cross my heart. Honestly, Jonkers, what do you take me for?
Haan?
”

“So will you come with me to her office? I’d like you to meet her. We’ll have to pretend you’re buying a ticket. I’d have liked to have introduced you properly without these silly excuses but I can’t just yet. I don’t want to put pressure on her. I know she’s the girl for me, but if she needs more time, she must have it. So will you come?”

“What do you mean, she’s the girl for you?”

Jonkers’ face broke out into an enormous smile. “When you meet her, you’ll see.”

“Have you told her?”

“Not in so many words but I suspect she has a pretty good idea. I’m prepared to wait. I’ll wait twenty years if I have to.”

“No, you have to get married in one month’s time. Before Muharram.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

“Because Aunty Pussy … never mind.”

“So will you come? Next week?”

“Okay, let me think. I’m not saying yes, just thinking.”

“Please don’t mention this to my mother just yet. I don’t want her barging in like a crazed bull and scaring Sana away.”

“So you’re never going to tell Aunty Pussy? Don’t mind, but you’re not going to do another Shumaila on her,
haan
? Marrying in a mosque behind your mother’s back and then bringing your bride home for breakfast.”

He laughed. “I can’t see Sana agreeing to that. She wouldn’t sneak off and get married without telling her mother. They’re very close. And in any case, Sana has a lot of pride. She’d never go for a hole-in-the-corner thing like poor Shumaila did.”

“Hmm,” I said, but inside my heart I was thinking how stuppid Jonkers was. How trusting. All of this pride thing this Sana of his is putting on is just an act. The minute she sees his house and set-up and all, she’ll change her mind in two tricks.

“Now how about a burger?” asked Jonkers. “That salad looks really miserable.”

Hai
, shweetoo Jonkers. He’s so sensitive.

“Okay
yaar
,” I said, “I’ll come and see your trav—… your Sana. And don’t worry, I won’t tell Aunty Pussy. But one thing: my coming along to her office doesn’t mean I’m okaying your marriage to this girl. Just now I’m only seeing. Also if Aunty
Pussy finds out from someone else and starts chewing my head and saying I knew all along, and why I didn’t tell her, I’ll just deny, okay? I’ll tell her, ‘I swear, Aunty, I tau, knew nothing.’ And you’d better not say anything different.” And inside I said to myself, “And she’d better not do anything to my Kulchoo.”

Sana’s office is on Jail Road, in a big, glassy skyscrapper. I had thought she’d sit in a tiny hole of an office on the back side of Moon Market or something with two peon-types working with her, but no. She is inside a skyscrapper on Jail Road next to Lahore’s trendiest furniture showroom, Zamana. But thanks God she is on the ground floor. So no need to use lift. I
tau
feel so scared of lifts. What if electricity goes away when you are inside? Then what? Anyways, her office has big glass windows and marble floors and plotted plants and is all air-conditioned with lots of big desks full of phones and computer screens and lots of people sitting at the desks in suits and ties and talking in English.

As I was walking in I noted that Sana’s office has six security guards sitting at the entrance, all carrying Kalashnikovs with belts full of bullets strapped across their chests. Now that the bombs-shombs have become so common, every big office on a main road has double, triple security. Hotels
tau
even have soldier-types in helmets crouching behind big machine guns in little room-type things made of sand sacks at the entrance. At first I was pleased to see so many guards in Sana’s office. Thanks God, I thought, if some crazy
mullah
-type bomber
comes in, they can kill him then and there only. No questions asked. But then I noted that one of the guards had a beard and he was giving me these funny, funny-type looks. I swear my heart started racing like a camel on drugs. It suddenly donned on me then, “Who will guard the guards?” But then I said some prayers under my breath and I blowed the prayers on me and Jonkers for extra protection and then thanks God that guard yawned, scratched his privates and looked away and I started breathing again.

Sana’s desk was bigger than everyone else’s and placed to one side and you had to go up a step to reach it. So she sat higher than everyone else.

Someone was sitting with her already, a big feudal type in a starched white
shalwar kurta
and big black moustache that curled up at the ends. So me and Jonkers, we sat down on the sofa placed besides the step leading to her desk and waited.

While we waited, I checked her out. Her complexion was wheatish. On the darkish side of wheatish, to be frank. Aunty Pussy’s always wanted a fair-skinned girl for her Jonkers and Irum may be only sixteen and also poorish and Tanya may be a gay and Tasbeeh poor thing may be deaf and dumb, but at least they’re all fair. I wouldn’t say Sana is double of Aishwarya Rai but she’s not ugly either. Long nose. Big mouth and dimples. Hair up again in a high pony-tail. No jewellery. Just a thin gold chain around her neck. This much I will say: at least she didn’t look like a Shumaila type. No plunging neckline, no over make-up, no tight polyester outfit, no cheapster jewellery. But then, I reminded myself, looks can be receptive.
Look at Jameela. She always looked so grateful, so polite, and see what she did.

Jonkers was sitting next to me pretending to flicker through a travel magazine. But his one foot was tapping the floor and I could feel the tension coming from his body almost like heatwaves. Today he was wearing an open-necked white linen shirt and casual khaki trousers. He looked as if he was reading but I could tell that all of his attention was fixed on Sana.

The feudal was speaking loudly and jabbing his finger across Sana’s desk at her. But as his voice got louder and louder, hers remained same: quiet, calm. The feudal stood up, placed his palms on her desk and leaning across, shouted, “You screwed up. Because of
your
incompetence, my son had to wait for six hours at Dubai airport.
Six
bloody hours!”

Sana didn’t shrink. She met his eyes and in a quiet but hard-type voice asked him to sit down. The feudal ignored her. Jonkers flung down his magazine and stood up. I tugged at his trouser leg to stop him—you never know with feudals,
yaar
, they may have gunmen waiting outside; after all, not all of them are decent, peaceful Oxen types running charity schools like Janoo. But he shook my hand off and in two strides he was at her desk.

“Is everything okay, Sana?” he asked, staring angrily at the feudal. The feudal glared back. I said a prayer under my breaths. Please,
Allah Mian
, don’t let there be a
phudda
. Because the feudal would make minced meat of poor old Jonkers. I looked around me. There was a small glass-topped table lying by my side. If the feudal grabbed Jonkers, I’d pick up the table and crash it onto the feudal’s head.

“Yes, everything’s fine, thank you, Mr. Ahmed. Why don’t you have a seat on the sofa over there while I explain a few facts to Mr. Shah here?”

“Are you sure?” asked Jonkers, still eyeing the feudal.

“Quite sure, thanks.” I could see Jonkers wanted to still hoover by Sana’s desk but the look she gave him made him return reluctantly to the sofa besides me. Thanks God. Never knew shy old Jonkers had it in him to behave like Shahrukh Khan.

“So you see, Mr. Shah,” Sana said to the feudal in her cool but hard-type voice, “your son had to wait six hours because
he
missed the flight I’d booked for him. I have all the paperwork here. This was his flight, EK01, departing Dubai for London at 11 a.m. He had a confirmed reservation. Business class. I’d even had his seat allocated, as you can see here. But he showed up
after
they had closed the flight. He called me from the check-in desk in a panic and demanded that I get him on to that very same plane. I tried but as I said, the gate was closed by then and as you probably know, they are very strict at Dubai airport. Not like here. He’d also rubbed the Emirates people up the wrong way by making some bizarre accusations so they weren’t in any mood to oblige him when he demanded a seat on the next flight. So when he called me it wasn’t easy to find him a seat—business class, again—on the next available flight but I managed. The flight was meant to leave two hours later but unfortunately there was a delay because of security concerns and it didn’t take off for another four hours. The wait, I’m afraid, was unavoidable. I’m sure if
you ask him about the circumstances, he will explain. Meanwhile I’ll give you a photocopy of his old ticket as well as the new reservation I made for him and you can look through them at your own leisure.”

The moustachioed man snatched the papers out of Sana’s hand. Then he turned around and marched out. On the way out, he threw dirty looks at Jonkers and me. Me and Jonkers, we both glared back. Cheapster. Who did he think he was?

After that Sana called us up to her desk. One thing I will say for her. Her father may have been only a branch manager of a bank—and that also a local bank—but she is full of confidence. Not for a minute did she look scared by that feudal. Jonkers had told me that I had to ask about tickets to America. He said that she wouldn’t like it if I said I’d just come to check her out. “She’s not a prize cow, you know,” he’d said to me, “and she won’t like it if we treat her like that. So we must make up a story.”

“Are you okay?” said Jonkers to Sana. “I’m sorry about that rude man.”

Sana shrugged. “No big deal. I come across them all the time.” And then she smiled at Jonkers and added, “But I appreciate the concern.” Then she looked at me. “Hello, I’m Sana Raheem. I’m sorry you had to wait.”

Jonkers introduced us and told her that I wanted to enquire about some flights.

“Sure. Can I offer you a drink?” she asked me. “Coffee? We do good cappucino here. Or would you prefer something cold? Some iced tea perhaps?”

“Coffee please,” I said.

“And for you, Jehangir?”

“Same,” said Jonkers, with a goofy smile.

She gave the order on her inner-com and then she asked, “Right, what can I do for you?”

“Er, I want to go to America,” I said.

“Where in America?” Behind her I saw a big poster of the White House and underneath it it said Washington.

“Um, Washington.”

“And when were you intending to travel?”

“In summers,” I replied. “We always go abroad in the summers. Gets too hot here,
na
. And bore also. Because all our friends also go away to London and Swizzerland and America and all.”

“So June? July? You are very organized to be booking your holiday so far in advance. May I ask how many of you will be travelling?”

“Three. Me and my husband and our son.”

“And your son is?”

“Kulchoo. Otherwise
tau
his real name is—”

“Sorry. I meant, how old is he?”

“He was fifteen on his last birthday. In May. He’s a Taurus.”

“So full fare. Just flights or hotels as well? Would you like me to book any flights within the US also or just to Washington and back? And would that be business class or economy?”

I looked at Jonkers and gave him a small frown. Why did she have to ask so many questions? Honestly, so nosy. Next she’ll be asking me my bra size.