Unmarriageable(60)

Mrs Binat’s heartbroken shrieks must have surely reverberated all the way to Sherry’s house, for Sherry, who’d been preparing breakfast for her family, decided that she must pay the Binats a visit. Farhat Kaleen was visiting them, and she wanted to request he take a look at her diabetic mother’s swollen feet.

As soon as breakfast was done and she’d washed and dried the utensils and fed her cat, Yaar, Sherry grabbed the translations Alys had requested of Manto’s story ‘Khol Do’ and Ghulam Abbas’s ‘Anandi’, and she hummed her way to Binat House.

Lady and Qitty opened the front door. Sherry thought she could hear shouting coming from inside the house.

‘You’re in for a treat,’ Lady said, pulling her in. ‘The house is in an uproar.’

Sherry had never ever known the fifteen-year-old Lady to whisper.

‘Has Bungles, thankfully, finally proposed to Jena?’

‘Fart Bhai has proposed to Alys,’ Lady cut in.

Sherry blinked. Alysba and Farhat Kaleen?

‘And Alys,’ Qitty said, ‘has point-blank refused. Our parents are yelling so loudly I’m sure Fart Bhai, who slunk into the guest room after Alys’s rejection, can hear them too.’

‘I thought it was going to be yet another boring day Chez Binat,’ said Lady, linking arms with Sherry and Qitty as they walked to the living room. ‘But this is better than my wildest dreams. Fart Bhai and Alys up a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Fart Bhai told Alys that if he were younger, then he would have come for her on a stallion. Can you imagine that purity pervert on a horse? Waise himmat dekho popcorn naak ganje ki, Alys se shaadi! Imagine the popcorn-nosed baldy’s boldness in proposing to Alys!’

‘He’s a decent catch, Lady,’ Sherry said, sighing.

‘You and my mother always think alike,’ Lady said.

Sherry shrugged. A marriage was a marriage and Farhat Kaleen was no ordinary frog, and Mrs Binat, poor woman, could see that, even if her daughters refused to.

They stepped into the living room. Mrs Binat lay on the sofa while Mari gloomily applied headache balm to her mother’s temples.

‘As-salaam alaikum, Pinkie Khala,’ Sherry said, sitting beside her.

‘Walaikum-asalaam.’ Mrs Binat managed an anguished smile. ‘Have you heard what your foolish friend has done? I ask you, if something was wrong with Kaleen, would I insist upon my daughter marrying him?’

Mrs Binat took a moment to blow her nose into her dupatta – not a very classy thing to do, she knew, but given the circumstances who could blame her? Such a decent proposal, and Alys had broken her heart by not only snubbing it but also running to her father for protection. The same father whose family was the reason they were stuck in Dilipabad with no worthy proposals to begin with.

‘Is not Farhat Kaleen marriageable material?’ Mrs Binat implored of Sherry. So what if she herself would never have considered him back in her day? That was then, and this is now.

Sherry nodded. ‘Any sensible girl would deem him a great grab.’

‘My daughters are not sensible.’ Mrs Binat gazed with hurt eyes at Sherry. ‘You must make your friend see sense, Sherry. It is all up to you now. Promise me you will make your foolish friend marry him.’

Before Sherry could promise anything, the living room door swung open and Jena and Alys entered.

‘Sherry,’ Alys said. ‘I heard you’d come.’

‘Here she is!’ Mrs Binat flared her nostrils at Alys. ‘The most thankless daughter in the universe. God knows I love my daughters equally, but you, Alys, have always been my least favourite, for you put yourself before the well-being of this family. It’s your father’s fault. Always indulging you. What’s your life plan now? To become Teacher of the Year and die an old maid? Oh God, better to remain barren than birth a disobedient child.’

Sherry flinched at the word ‘barren’. Alys shrugged an apology to Sherry for having landed at their house in the midst of this mess. Mrs Binat continued telling Alys what she thought of her until the man of the match, Farhat Kaleen himself, entered the room.

Mrs Binat quieted. ‘Girls,’ she said, adjusting her eyelet chador prettily over her shoulders, ‘be quiet now. Kaleen and I have important matters to discuss.’

Kaleen pointedly ignored Mrs Binat and turned to Sherry: how were her parents, brothers, sister, cat? Alys took the opportunity to slip out of the living room. Jena, Mari, and Qitty followed her, and though Qitty tried to pull Lady along, Lady would not move. Once Sherry satisfied Kaleen that her family and cat were well, she glided towards the window and pretended to busy herself checking the growth of the money plants on the sill. Like Lady, Sherry was tuned in to Mrs Binat and Kaleen and so she was witness to Mrs Binat’s utterly doleful ‘Hai, Kaleen! Believe you me—’

‘Pinkie, please.’ Kaleen pressed his palms together. ‘Let us forever be silent on the utter anarchy plaguing this house.’

He settled ramrod straight on the Victorian chair adjacent to Mrs Binat and proceeded to shatter the silence by assuring her that he did not resent Alysba. Why waste his time, he asked in a grave tone, resenting a woman whose favour he was beginning to be glad had been withheld after all? Obviously, Alysba would not have proved to be a perfect companion for him, let alone a good mother for his children, for he needed to marry a woman who knew her place, and Alysba had exercised displacement.