Unmarriageable(5)

‘Not “instead”. I said “side by side”.’

‘Yet another time you decided to inform them that if Islam allowed polygamy, then it should allow polyandry. This is a school. Not a brothel.’

Alys said, stiffly, ‘I want my girls to at least have a chance at being more than well-trained dolls. I want them to think critically.’

Naheed pointed above Alys’s head. ‘What is the school motto?’

Alys spoke it by rote. ‘“Excellence in Obedience. Obediently Excellent. Obey to Excel.”’

‘Precisely,’ Naheed said. ‘The goal of the British School Group is for our girls to pass their exams with flying colours so that they become wives and mothers worthy of our nation’s future VIPs. Please stick to the curriculum. I’m weary of apologising to parents and making excuses for you. Also, I know you value your younger sisters studying here.’

Alys gave a small smile. Qitty, in Year 12, and Lady, in Year 10, attended BSD at the discount rate offered to faculty family, which, all the teachers agreed, was not as generous as it could be.

‘I may not be able to protect you any longer,’ Naheed said. ‘Begum Beena dey Bagh’s nephew is returning from completing his MBA in America, and things seem to be about to change. For one, the young man plans to abolish the uniform. Can you imagine our students turning up in whatever they choose to wear? Anarchy!’

Alys understood Naheed’s concern. She and her husband had the monopoly over the British School of Dilipabad’s uniform business – winter, spring, autumn – and the loss would be an expensive hit to their income.

Mrs Naheed’s gaze fixed upon the driveway. Alys turned to see a Pajero with tinted windows and green government number plates driving in. The jeep stopped and the driver handed the gate guard a packet. Minutes later, Naheed tenderly opened a pearly oversize lavender envelope embossed with a golden palanquin. All smiles, she drew out equally pearly invites to Dilipabad’s most coveted event: the NadirFiede wedding, the joining of Fiede Fecker, daughter of old-money VIPs, to Nadir Sheh, son of equally important VIPs, though rumour had it that drug-smuggling was responsible for the Shehs’ fast accumulation of monies and rapid social climb and acceptance into the gentry.

‘Such a classy invitation,’ Naheed said, tucking the invites back in.

Alys disliked the word ‘classy’, a favourite of those who aimed to be arbiters of class. She knew that Naheed was hoping the Binats would not be invited, despite their pedigree, since Alys and Fiede Fecker, a graduate of the British School of Dilipabad, had been at loggerheads over incomplete assignments and projects never turned in.

‘Alys, the namigarami – the elite of Dilipabad – have spoken,’ Naheed said, fingering her invite. ‘Our duty is to send their daughters home exactly as they were delivered to us each morning: obediently obeying their parents. We are to groom these girls into the best of marriageable material. That is all.’ Naheed signalled to Bashir, who had been dawdling by the threshold, to get her a fresh cup of lemongrass tea and, in doing so, dismissed Alys.

Alys rejoined her Year 10s, bracing herself for Rose-Nama to demand her views on premarital intimacy. But Rose-Nama was busy scolding the class monitor, a timid girl Mrs Naheed had appointed because her father had given a generous donation to renovate the science laboratory. Mercifully, the bell rang as soon as she stepped in, and Alys, gathering her folders and cloth handbag, headed to the Year 11 classroom.

‘Girls,’ Alys said to Year 11, ‘open up your Romeo and Juliet. Let me remind you that Juliet is thirteen years old and Romeo around fifteen or sixteen and that they could have surely experienced a happier fate had they refrained from romance at their ages, which may well have been Shakespeare’s cautionary intent for writing this pathetically sad love story.’





CHAPTER TWO





When the final bell rang, Alys headed towards the staff room, nodding at girls giggling and gossiping around Tahira’s engagement ring. In the staff room, teachers were enjoying the celebration cake from High Chai that Tahira’s mother had sent. Alys beckoned to Jena, and both sisters headed towards the school van.

For a small fee, BSD provided conveyance to and from school for teachers and their relatives studying there. The Binats had an old Suzuki but Alys thought it wise to save on petrol, no matter how much more it embarrassed fifteen-year-old Lady to ride in the school van.

Lady and Qitty were inside the van, squabbling.

‘Qitty, move over, you fat hippo,’ Lady said, elbowing the sketchbook her elder sister was drawing in.

‘Shut up!’ Qitty said. She was the only overweight Binat sister, a blow she could never forgive fate or God. ‘There’s no such thing as a thin hippo, so fat is redundant, stupid.’

‘You’re stupid, bulldozer,’ Lady said. ‘You always hog all the space, hog. And stop showing off your stupid drawings.’

‘You wish you could draw.’ Qitty flipped to a fresh page and within moments had outlined a caricature of Lady. ‘The only talent you have is big breasts.’

‘Thanks to which, thunder thighs,’ Lady said, ‘I’m going to make a brilliant marriage and only ride in the best of cars with a full-time chauffeur. And, Qitty, you will not be allowed in any of my Mercedes or Pajeros, because I’ll be doing you a favour by making you walk.’