Duty Free Read online




  Advance Praise for Duty Free

  “This is a wildly entertaining book but, beware, it also bites.”

  —Neel Mukherjee

  “Refreshing, humorous, irreverent, and satirical, Moni Mohsin’s Duty Free is more than a boy-meets-girl story. It is an insightful social commentary.”

  —Bharti Kirchner, author of Darjeeling and Pastries

  “A deliciously funny book starring a clueless socialite heroine with inner savvy and a heart of gold. While this sharp, hilarious spoof of upper-class life is set against a backdrop of political unrest in Lahore, Pakistan, Moni Mohsin’s lively, witty satire will appeal to a wide readership.”

  —Anjali Banerjee, author of Haunting Jasmine

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Moni Mohsin

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com

  Broadway Paperbacks and the Broadway Paperbacks design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Published in slightly different form in paperback in India by Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd., Noida, and in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of the Random House Group Limited, London, as Tender Hooks.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mohsin, Moni.

  Duty free : a novel / Moni Mohsin. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Upper class—Pakistan—Fiction. 2. Arranged marriage—

  Fiction. 3. Lahore (Pakistan)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6113.O37D88 2011

  823′.92—dc23

  2011026253

  eISBN: 978-0-307-88925-6

  Cover design by Jessie Sayward Bright

  Cover photography by Getty Images

  v3.1

  For Shazad, Laila, and Faiz

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  27 September

  28 September

  29 September

  1 October

  2 October

  4 October

  6 October

  7 October

  9 October

  10 October

  12 October

  13 October

  14 October

  16 October

  17 October

  18 October

  19 October

  20 October

  21 October

  22 October

  25 October

  27 October

  28 October

  29 October

  30 October

  31 October

  1 November

  2 November

  9 November

  10 November

  11 November

  12 November

  15 November

  16 November

  17 November

  19 November

  20 November

  21 November

  23 November

  24 November

  25 November

  26 November

  30 November

  1 December

  18 December

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  27 September

  Yesterday was my cousin Jonkers’ thirty-seventh birthday. You know Jonkers, na? He’s my Aunty Pussy’s one and only child. Her sun and air. And since I’m doing my whole family tree, now let me tell about Aunty Pussy also. Aunty Pussy is Mummy’s cousin. Their mummies were real sisters. If I was English I’d say Jonkers was my first cousin once removed. As if cousins were bikini lines, once removed, twice removed, hundred times removed but still there. And Uncle Kaukab is Jonkers’ father. And also Aunty Pussy’s husband. Might as well be clear, no? Never know, otherwise, how much people understand and how much people don’t understand.

  Haan, so where was I? Yes, Jonkers. To celebrate his birthday, Aunty Pussy took us all—Mummy, me, her, and Jonkers also—to Cuckoo’s Restaurant for dinner in the old bit of the city next to the Badshahi Mosque. I like Cuckoo’s because everyone says it’s fab. Foreigners tau just love coming here. Or they did before the suicide bombs started in Lahore also. It’s a bit bore that Cuckoo’s is in the old city, with its bad toilet smells and all its crumbly, crumbly, old, old houses but at least all those prostitutes who used to live nearby in the Diamond Market have gone off to Defence Housing Society to live in neat little kothis their politician and feudal boyfriends have bought them. So no chance, thanks God, of bumping into bad-charactered-types. Unless it’s suicide bombers, of course. But them tau you can bump into anywhere, thanks to the army which has given jihadis safe heavens all over Pakistan.

  And also it’s a bit bore that you have to climb fifty-five thousand steps to get on top of Cuckoo but view from there is fab. You can look right inside the coatyard of the mosque. But we couldn’t because there was so much of smog. Lahore has just three problems: traffic, terrorists, and smog. Otherwise tau it’s just fab.

  Anyways, Aunty Pussy had also invited Janoo (he’s my husband, na) but Janoo was in his bore village, Sharkpur. Okay, okay, I suppose it’s our village because I’m his wife and what is his is ours, but thanks God I’m not from there and I haven’t been there for three years. Janoo spends half his time there, sewing his crops and looking after his mango and orange and grapefruit orchids, sorry, sorry I meant orchards. But because I don’t sew the crops, and I only spend the money we get from the crops, it’s best for me to live in Lahore where the shops are. Aunty Pussy also invited my darling, shweetoo baby Kulchoo but he said he was doing homework. His GCSEs are on top of his head but I think so he was reading Facebook. Such a little bookworm my baby is.

  So us four went and dinner was nice and all but when Jonkers went down the fifty-five thousand steps to pay the bill, Aunty Pussy suddenly resolved into tears. She started weeping into her chicken tikka—actually just chicken bones, because she’d eaten up every last bit of the meat. She’s very careful that way, Aunty Pussy. She said how her heart wept tears of blood each time she saw poor Jonkers on his own, without wife, without kids and what would happen to him when she died. I wanted to say that after you die he will play holi with all that money you have lying in your bank account that you were too much of a meanie to let him enjoy in your lifetime. But I didn’t say because it doesn’t look nice.

  And then she suddenly reached across the table, grabbed my hand in her thin, spidery one and said, “Promise me, promise that you will help me get my Jonky married by the end of the year.”

  “Haw, Aunty—” I began.

  But she gripped my hand tighter and shrieked, “Promise!”

  “Pussy!” Mummy hissed. “People are looking.”

  But Aunty Pussy ignored her. “Promise me!” she said in a horse whisper, her nails digging like little blades into my palms and her eyes boaring into mine.

  “Okay, okay, Aunty, I promise.” I said it to get my hand back really, but the minute she’d let go and sat back in her seat, Aunty Pussy said calmly, “Now remember you’ve sworn on your child’s life.”

  “Haw! I never,” I gasped.

  “No need to be so dramatical, Pussy,” Mummy said.

  “When you said promise that’s what I said in my heart. So that’s what you’ve promised,” said Aunty Pussy, smiling a catty smile.

  Before I could reply Jonkers came back up huffing and puffing like the Khyber Mail. And then, naturally, nobody cou
ld say anything.

  When she dropped me home, Aunty Pussy rolled down her window and shouted, “Remember your promise.”

  28 September

  Look at Aunty Pussy. What a double-crosser! Imagine, doing that to your very own niece. Making such horrid, horrid promises like that in her heart and then pretending that I’d agreed. I called up Mummy first thing this morning and I tau told her straight that not even my shoe is going to lift its toe for Aunty Pussy after what she did to me last night. And Mummy said “Think it through” and I said I’ve thought it through already, thank you very much. Aik tau Mummy is also such a side-taker. Honestly. Sometimes I wonder if she knows whose Mummy she is. Mine or Jonkers’?

  Today is 28 September. That means Jonkers has two and half months to get married in. Because I think so Muharram begins in middle of December and nobody gets married in Pakistan then, not even Christians, it being Islamic month of mourning and all. So Auntie Pussy has two months to find a bride for Jonkers. She’d better start looking, no?

  And me? I’m off to Mulloo’s coffee party. All the girls are coming. Bubble, Sunny, Baby, Faiza, Nina. I’m wearing my new cream Prada shoes I got from Dubai, so everyone can see and my new cream outfit I’ve had made to match. I put on green contacts (blue is so past it) and my new Tom Ford red lipstick and now I’m looking just like Angelina Jolly. But like her healthier, just slightly older sister. I know I shouldn’t do my own praises but facts are facts, no? Pity Janoo is not Brad Pitts. But you can’t have everything in life, as Mother Rosario used to say at my convent school.

  29 September

  Hai, you won’t believe what happened yesterday. I don’t think so I can believe even now. I was sitting in Mulloo’s drawing room sipping coffee and gently swinging my Prada-wallah foot under Sunny’s nose so she shouldn’t miss that it’s from the new collection and not from old, chatting to her about importance of baggrounds, when suddenly my mobile started playing “Tum Paas Aaye.” That’s my ringing tone na, from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, my most best Bollywood film. The call was from Kulchoo’s school. His stuppid housemaster calling to say that my poor baby had been hit on the head with a cricket ball and that his head had got cracked and he had fainted but now he’d come around and not to worry he seemed okay but would I like to come and pick him up? Head cracked, fainted, not to worry. Not to worry? For a few moments, I tau passed away myself. When I came too, the girls were all gathered round me saying “Hai, what happened?” I told them what happened and Sunny said, “My son had three fatal accidents while playing polo and mashallah he’s still fine, touch wood.”

  Just look at her, she does so much of competition. Not cricket but polo. And not one fatal accident but three.

  Got Muhammad Hussain—my driver, who else?—to drive me to Kulchoo’s school at top speed. From the car only I called Psycho, Janoo’s younger sister. Okay, okay her name is Saiqa but I’ve always called her Psycho because it suits her personality nicer than Saiqa. Her husband’s brother is a doctor, na, at Omar Hospital and I screamed down the phone at Psycho and said to her, I said, “Psycho if you want to inherit those twelve gold bangles of your mother’s that you have your eye on, get your brother-in-law to be standing in the porch when I arrive at the hospital.” Aik tau she’s also so stuppid. Asked lot of stuppid, stuppid-type questions like “What happened, Bhaabi?” and “Which gold bangles?” Such a time-waster.

  Poor darling Kulchoo was sitting in his school looking dazed like he’d just jumped off a merry-go-around. He had a towel with ice in it, pressed to his forehead. I threw the filthy towel on the ground (God knows which, which boys from what, what homes had used it before him), threw the housemaster filthy looks, and took Kulchoo straight forward to Omar Hospital where I marched up to the counter and shouted that Psycho’s brother-in-law was my sister-in-law’s brother-in-law and that I demand to see him there and then.

  Thanks God, Kulchoo didn’t argue with me and get all embarrassed like he always does when I jump cues and demand to see the top man. I think so my poor shweetoo was too out off it. Finally Psycho’s brother-in-law came and did a city-scan and an X-ray and an MRI of my baby’s head and said he had a mild-type crack. “Con-cushion,” he called it. I called Janoo when we got home and said Kulchoo had had an accident and had got a con-cushion in his head and that he should come back. “Why? How? When?” Janoo barked down the phone. Uff Allah! Aik tau he’s also so inquisitive. Anyways, I think so, he’s coming back tonight, thanks God.

  Then I called Mummy and told her what had happened. She was silent for a long time and then she said, “You’d better start looking for a wife for Jonkers.” And I swear my heart turned to ice. Just like that.

  1 October

  Janoo says I talk like an uneducated and that I’m very supercilious and that what happened to Kulchoo was just an accident and had nothing to do with Aunty Pussy’s promise or Jonkers’ wife or anyone. But I damn care. Janoo can go on speaking like the bore from Oxford that he is (I think so, they are called Oxens na—people with passes from Oxford). But I have very good sick-sense like that. Just like I knew Benazir was going to be killed the day before she was killed, just like that I know deep inside my heart that Aunty Pussy is responsible for Kulchoo’s con-cushion. And that if I don’t get Jonkers married by the end of the year, God knows what will happen to my baby.

  Kulchoo is resting upstairs. I’ve told him “no reading-sheading, okay?” So he’s watching a film on his DVD. Something called Black Hawk Down. I think so it’s a nature documentary. So serious my baby is. Between you, me, and the four walls, he’s becoming a little bit bore like his father, always watching documentaries about global warning and energy crisis and other bore, bore things like that. But thanks God, he’s at home.

  Every day threats are coming to his school from beardoweirdos saying they will bomb it. Girls schools’ headteachers are being threated night and day that they’ll burn down their buildings and throw acid in the girls’ faces because their uniform is unIslamic. Just look at them! What can be more Islamic than a shirt that comes down to your ankles and a shulloo that has more cloth in it than a three-seater sofa? Cracks. Everyone is saying it’s only a matter of time before the beardo-weirdos make schools shut down forever like they did in Swat and Kabul. Sunny was saying at the coffee party that they tau are thinking of sending their youngest son to a boarding school in England. Her youngest is one year senior to Kulchoo at school and a real stuppid. He has two, two tuitions in every subject, and even then just manages to scrap through. Sunny was boasting about some top school called Eaten just on the outer-skirts of London whose fees are more than Pakistan’s GDB. Show-offer.

  2 October

  Before I could go see Aunty Pussy, guess who came calling? Jonkers. I was lounging in my lounge, flickering through my fave magazine, Good Times—there was a photo of Sunny taken at Lucky Rice-wallahs’ anniversary party but luckily her eyes were shut and her mouth open as if she was asleep talking—when the bearer came in and said that my cousin Jonkers was here.

  Last thing I wanted to see was Jonkers. Don’t think I’m not family-minded. Or that I don’t like Jonkers. We grew up together, after all. He was always small and skinny and had asthma and used to wheeze like a broken accordion. Auntie Pussy wouldn’t let him play with the boys because she said he was too weak. So instead he played with me. Ludo and bedminton and dolls and house-house also. In house-house I was always the begum sahiba and he was the driver. “Drive straight to beauty parlour, driver,” I’d say to him. “Yes, Begum Sahiba,” he’d say. So cute he was then with his long white socks, his ironed shorts, and his hair combed nicely to one side.

  But when we became teenagers we grew apart. I got more into my friends and he got more bore. Became all studious and all and then went away to become a countant in England—I think so in a place called Hull or Dull or something. Meanwhiles I got married. I’d already had Kulchoo by the time he came back with his a countancy. Jonkers started helping his father, Uncle Kaukab. Uncle Kaukab has a small
business exporting bed-sheets and towels-showels and, just between you, me, and the four walls, a bigger business managing all the property that he’d collected when he was chief of central board of revenew back in the ’80s. God was very kind to them then. He put a lot in their way. And as Aunty Pussy’s always said, “God helps those who help themselves.” So Aunty Pussy and Uncle Kaukab helped themselves nicely to whatever came their way—houses, plots, cars, and so on and so fourth.

  They lost some when Musharraf’s guvmunt did its little a countability drama in the begining. Uncle Kaukab panicked and sold some of his houses quickly and lost money on them. Then Aunty Pussy investigated whatever money he got from the sale in her cousin’s (from her father’s side) motel in Ontario and the cousin sold the motel and ran off with everything. So they’re not as well off as before but still not poor, God forbid.

  Aunty Pussy wanted Jonkers to make a big marriage, na, to nice, rich, fair, beautiful type from an old family. At first, tau, she didn’t like any girl. Whoever she saw wasn’t rich enough or beautiful enough or fair enough or old family enough. So it was a real shock to her when she discovered that Jonkers was secretly dating low-class, hungry-naked types.

  There was that receptionist we called Typhoon (she used to say phoon instead of phone) whom Aunty Pussy had to pay off. Then there was another polyester number with underarm sweat stains and chipped nail polish, who worked in a furniture showroom, but who thanks God Jonkers himself caught in the muscular embrace of the security-wallah. In between also there was a cheap-type hairdresser. Actually not even proper hairdresser, she was just a blow-dryer. Her name was Akeela and Mummy and I called her Akela the loan wolf—from Jungle Book, which was my best film until Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. And then last year Jonkers arrived home with Miss Shumaila, his secretary, with whom he’d already done secret marriage in a mosque.

  And if we thought Akela was bad, Shumaila was ten times worst. So pushy and hungry and low-class. Wore tight polyester shirts and frosted maroon lipstick and had big busts and wobbly hips that juggled as she walked. And even more worst she had a meaty, furry smell about her as if a wild animal, like a female monkey or fox or something, had entered the room. Jonkers, of course, was like her lapdog, following in her meaty trail with his tongue hanging out. Honestly, all men are cracked. She stayed with him for four months, lying about in her unmade double bed in her air-conditioned room all day, eating nine, nine meals in one sitting, ordering the servants like they were her own and doing twenty-four-hour arguing with Aunty Pussy. Of course, after she’d had her little holiday, she ran off. Took a good clunk of Aunty Pussy’s jewellery and Jonkers’ brand-new Toyota Corolla and ran off in the dead of night with some low-class cheapster man like herself. Good radiance, I thought. Last month, thanks God, die-vorce came through.