Duty Free by Moni Mohsin Page A

is Mulloo, not Mottoo.”
    “Yes, yes, Mottoo has a cousin with a lovely daughter. Young, respectful, wealthy, nicely brought-up, isn’t that right? Who she’s going to introduce to us.”
    “Why?” I asked, giving Mulloo a suspicious look.
    “For your cousin Jonkers, of course.”
    Bloody Mulloo. She’s so pushy. Always pushing herself to the front. Well, I damn care what sort of girl she gets for Jonkers now. Aunty Pussy and she deserve one another. And if Jonkers is going to be such a wet brag and just stand there gargling and staring, then he also deserves whatever type of cheapster thing or bore number they give him.
    “Jonky darling, have you heard? You’re marrying Mottoo’s cousin. Jonky?” Aunty Pussy’s head snivelled around to look at the empty space where he’d been standing. “Where is he? Where’s he gone?”
    “I’ll go find him, Aunty.” Mulloo, grinning like a baboon, went off to look for him.
    “He’s probably gone to find some dinner,” said Mummy. “Get up, Pussy. We’d better go and get something to eat also before we all starve to death.” And when they’d gone a bit of the way, I heard her say to Aunty Pussy, “You shouldn’t say that you’re going to marry Mulloo’s cousin’s daughter. You haven’t even seen her yet. She may be a hunchback or black as coal, for all you know.”

27 October
    This morning I was woken up at the crack of noon by a phone call. Who else but Aunty Pussy? Honestly, she’s so consistent, so consistent that don’t even ask. Once she’s got after something only a suicide bomber could make her change her mind.
    “Dar-
ling
,” she shrieked, “your Mummy seems to think that you got upset at the wedding. Why, darling? What is that Mottoo to me? It is
you
who will choose Jonky’s future brides with me. She can show me all she wants, but
you’re
the one who’s going to have final say. After all, you are blood.”
    And then she told me about Mulloo’s distant cousin.
    Apparently she has a broken
nikah
behind her so, like Jonkers, she is also second-hand. And she is quiet and simple and obedient. And rich. Her father has a big import–export business and they have a nice, fat house in Defence Housing Society but not near the bad bit of Defence where all the prostitutes are. Mulloo (trust her, the pushy back-stabber), she’s already organized a tea party at their house for Aunty Pussy. I told Aunty Pussy to take Jonkers along as well so the girl and boy could see each other but she fell silent for a bit and then said Mulloo had told her that maybe not at the first meeting,because her cousin, Farva, is in that way a little bit on the conservative side. Not much. A bit, only.
    They must be
pukka
conservative-types to do
nikah
contract instead of just engagement. Breaking it off is like doing proper die-vorce through courts and all, unlike engagement that you can break any time, anywhere. I bet you Mulloo’s cousin did the
nikah
when her daughter was a baby or something. Poor Jonkers. He’s marrying into a fundo family.
    Aunty Pussy begged me to come along also. I wanted to say no, you go with your precious Mulloo, but then thinking of Kulchoo I said yes. Before I hanged up, I asked Aunty Pussy if she’d told Zeenat Kuraishi that Jonkers wasn’t interested. And Aunty Pussy at once became sharp with me and said how could she go and say they were not interested when Zeenat hadn’t even asked properly. When the right moment came, she’d drop a hint. Until then she was going to let sleeping logs lie. So after that I called Mummy and told her that she must come also because Aunty Pussy when she gets highly stung like this, she can become quite over,
na
. Mummy said okay.
    After that I called Jonkers in his towel and bed-sheet office and told him we were going to see Girl Number Two the next day. I also told him that he couldn’t come just now because her parents were a little bit like that. I thought he’d be really disappointed but he seemed