Unmarriageable(33)
‘Pinkie,’ Nona said, exchanging a glance with Alys, ‘even nobodies can devote their lives to charity.’
‘Yes, but when you are somebody, then you have the satisfaction of being told how wonderful you are,’ Mrs Binat said, longingly. ‘Look at that kameeni, horrible Tinkle. People think Tinkle is such a great humanitarian, but I know what she really is – fame hungry, her road to importance paved with carefully calculated good deeds. Nona jee, the polo match Jena is invited to is tomorrow afternoon, and I’d rather she arrive in your good car than in our crap car. Will yours be available?’
The next morning a winter sun shone down on Lahore as Jena and Alys climbed into the good car and Ajmer, the driver, backed out of the driveway. He was a sweet man with a weak memory for addresses, but Nona and Nisar could not muster the heart to replace him.
‘Aur, Ajmer,’ Alys said, sitting back in the car, ‘how are you?’
‘Very good, baji!’ Ajmer smiled, his henna-dyed red moustache swallowing his upper lip.
‘Your children?’ Jena asked.
‘My son is beginning his medical degree in Quetta and my daughter is finishing Year 11. Her dream,’ Ajmer said proudly, ‘is to become a doctor like her brother, and Nisar Sahib promised to help her get into medical school too.’
‘Every girl should have a father like you,’ Alys said. But she also wondered how benevolent Ajmer would have been had his daughter wanted to be an actress or singer or model. She sighed as she recalled how bitterly Lady had cried at their father forbidding her to model. For the truth was that behind every successful Pakistani girl who fulfilled a dream stood a father who allowed her to soar instead of clipping her wings, throwing her into a cage, and passing the keys from himself to brother, husband, son, grandson, and so on. Alys felt a headache coming on.
‘Ajmer, turn the music on please,’ she said, and within seconds the car filled with an exuberant ‘Dama Dam Mast Qalander’.
As they entered a busy thoroughfare full of cars, rickshaws, motorbikes, bicycles, everyone honking madly, Alys straightened Jena’s hoop earring. Since Bungles, Hammy, and Sammy had already seen Jena in plenty of Eastern wear, thanks to NadirFiede, Mrs Binat had declared it was time for some Western wear. They’d settled on boot-cut dark-denim jeans, a black-and-white striped turtleneck, and a chocolate leather jacket, which Jena had seen in Vogue and had tailor Shawkat replicate. Jena wanted to wear sneakers, but Mrs Binat had handed her a pair of chocolate pumps originally brought for Qitty and so slightly large for Jena but still a decent-enough fit.
‘I’m nervous,’ Jena said to Alys as the car inched closer to the Race Course Park. ‘I wish you were coming with me.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ Alys said. ‘I plan to walk for an hour or so before returning home. Do you want me to send Ajmer to you before I head home? That way, if you want to return, just make an excuse that an emergency has come up and he’s come to get you.’
‘Yes!’ Jena said. ‘I’d rather face Mummy’s wrath than sit there if I’m feeling awkward.’
The car glided through leafy suburbs before turning in to one of the park’s back lots and, from there, taking another turn onto a wide dirt road. The dirt road led up to Aibak Polo Ground, where privileged children learnt to horse ride and some of them grew up to play polo on the impeccably mowed green ground.
The polo match had begun, and Alys and Jena could see majestic horses galloping at full speed towards goals, their coats polished by the sun, their riders in crisp whites wielding their mallets as they went after the wooden ball. Jena got out of the car and teetered for a moment on her shoes before turning resolutely towards the polo ground and clubhouse.
Ajmer drove back down the dirt road and parked amid a row of other good cars. Alys got out and told him she’d be back soon. Ajmer nodded. Pressing PLAY on her Walkman – she and Jena had recorded English songs on one side of the tape and Pakistani songs on the other – she hummed to ‘Material Girl’ and jogged to the clay track that ran around the periphery of the Race Course Park. Once an actual racecourse, until betting on horses was banned for political expediency in the name of Islam, the course had been converted into a sprawling public park.
Alys passed the Japanese garden and pagoda. Every few steps the park gardeners pruned leaves and deposited seeds, their shalwars pulled up over ashy knees, their sun-wrinkled legs planted firmly on the earth. She nodded a greeting as she walked by, and they nodded back. She thought of her father and the calm and refuge he’d found among flora and fauna. She passed by a couple seated on a bench, eating oranges in front of impeccably manicured flower beds. The veiled woman was feeding the bearded man with her fingers, and a citrus scent floated over the jogging track from the orange peels gathered in her lap.
Stopping to stretch her calves, Alys gazed at some boys playing cricket. The wickets were red bricks set upright on their narrow ends. The fielders stood waiting in their jeans and knockoff T-shirts. The bowler was good; the batsman was nervous; the rest was history. She switched the tape to side B, and Nazia Hassan’s seductive ‘Aap Jaisa Koi’ came on, followed by ‘Disco Deewane’. Nazia and her brother, Zoheb, were the first Pakistani pop singers Alys and Jena had heard and loved in Jeddah. Nazia had died earlier that year, and the sisters had mourned her passing.
Alys jogged by the artificial lake with paddleboats chained to one end for the winter and climbed up the steep man-made hill. Standing at the summit, she caught her breath as she looked out at the landscaped park, at the children in the playground, at groups of young men studying or napping, at the flock of sparrows in the blue-grey sky.