Unmarriageable(13)

‘But you’re always telling the girls to be fashionable,’ Mr Binat said, winking at Alys.

‘Wink at Alys!’ Mrs Binat threw a dagger of a look at her husband. ‘Please, Barkat, wink at her again. Keep teaching her to disrespect her mother. Keep teaching all your daughters to deride me. You used to do the same in front of Tinkle. That woman wished she had one per cent of my looks, and yet you allowed her and your brother to treat me like nothing. And what did they do in turn! They treated you like nothing.’

‘I’m going to the garden,’ Mr Binat said. ‘If I sit here any longer, I’ll have another heart attack.’

‘Please, go,’ Mrs Binat said to his retreating back. ‘One heart attack years ago and constantly we have to be on best behaviour. Who thinks of my health? I get palpitations at the thought of you five girls languishing in this house, never knowing the joy of marriage and offspring. Hai,’ she said, suddenly wistful, ‘can you imagine Tinkle’s face if even one of you manages to snag an eligible bachelor at NadirFiede, let alone all of you.’

‘Maybe Qitty can snag an eligible bachelor by sitting on him,’ Lady said.

Qitty picked up her sketchbook and whacked Lady in the arm.

‘Jena, Alys,’ Mrs Binat said, ‘shame on both of you if this wedding ends and you remain unmarried. Cast your nets wide, reel it in, grab it, grab it. But do not come across as too fast or forward, for a girl with a loose reputation is one step away from being damaged goods and ending up a spinster. Keep your distance without keeping your distance. Let him caress you without coming anywhere near you. Coo sweet somethings into his ears without opening your mouth. Before he even realises there is a trap, he will have proposed. Do you understand?’





CHAPTER FOUR





Ten years ago, the evening Hillima declared the clean-up of Binat House complete, the Binats gathered in the study, wondering how to occupy their time. Jena began reading a pop-up Alice in Wonderland to her younger sisters. Mr and Mrs Binat quarrelled about finances. Mrs Binat segued into how she wished she’d got Jena and Alys married off before their banishment.

Alys escaped her mother’s dire predictions regarding her prospects by fleeing to her new bedroom. She sat on her bed, made cheery with a yellow chenille bedspread and crewelwork pillowcases, and thought about what the hell she was going to do with her life in this small town.

She stared at her bare walls, livened up with a Pisces poster and a photo of herself amid friends during a school trip to the Red Sea. She remembered treading the ocean bed with Tana, laughing as they looked out for sea urchins, snorkelling under the hot sun, returning to land and sand fights. The future had seemed so limitless and bright back then.

Alys stepped out onto her small balcony. Evening had descended on Dilipabad, and the sun was setting in a sky pollution had turned milky. She wasn’t sure when she began to cry. She wiped her tears and told herself to stop. She was crying because ever since they’d returned to Pakistan two years ago, all she’d heard was how, if she did not conform to certain beauty standards and demure etiquette, she was going to die alone. She was crying because she missed her friends in Jeddah and wondered if she’d ever see them again. When Alys had left Jeddah, she and Tana sent each other letters but, slowly, they petered out. In her last letter, Tana mentioned that her family was returning to Denmark, after which Alys’s letter was returned saying ‘no forwarding address’.

In Lahore, Alys and Jena had met some friendly faces at university. But sitting in the canteen and sharing greasy naan kebabs with girls who’d known each other since nursery and accordingly cracked ancient jokes just made them feel lonelier. So it was that the two sisters had turned to each other: ‘Do you remember Radhika in the Brownie troop getting into trouble for demonstrating how to play spin the bottle?’ ‘Do you remember when we watched Madonna’s Virgin Tour at Sahara’s house?’ ‘Do you remember when Tana showed us a condom and we thought it was a balloon?’

They’d been too young to say goodbye forever to friends, home, familiarity, and now they’d even left big-city Lahore and come to Dilipabad, where life seemed to revolve around marrying well and eating well. There wasn’t even a proper bookstore or library. Alys’s eyes filled up again. Any minute now, she was certain, her mother would come barging in to tell her that if she cried, then she’d ruin her eyesight, and if she started to wear spectacles, then no one would marry her.

Across the road, at the graveyard’s entrance, a flower-cart vendor was putting away the marigold garlands and loose rose petals he sold to mourners to commemorate their dead. Alys blinked. The graveyard was the one place no one would follow her, because her family was terrified of ghosts, djinns, churails, and, thanks to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video, ghouls, zombies, and monsters.

Alys tiptoed down the stairs and out of the front door and across the street to the graveyard’s entrance.

‘As-salaam-alaikum,’ the vendor said, looking up from his flowers. ‘You are the new people who’ve moved into the house?’

‘We moved two weeks ago,’ Alys managed to reply in her heavily English-accented, stilted Urdu.

‘Chunga – good,’ he said. ‘No place deserves to remain empty for too long. From Ingland or Amreeka?’

‘Jeddah.’