Unmarriageable(7)
‘Why is Aunty Tinkle so rude to us?’ Alys would ask her mother. ‘Why does she act as if they’re better than us?’
Pinkie Binat replied hesitantly, ‘Her children are not better than any of you. You have the same history.’
Pinkie Binat made sure her daughters knew where they came from. The British, during their reign over an undivided subcontinent, doled out small plots to day labourers as incentive to turn them into farmers, who, later, would be called agriculturists and feudal lords, which is what the Binat forefathers ultimately became. These men then turned their attentions to consolidating land and thereby power and influence through marriage, and even during the 1947 partition the Binats managed to retain hold over their land.
It was infighting that defeated some of the Binats. After the death of his wife, Goga’s and Bark’s ailing father had increasingly come to depend on Goga and his wife, first-cousin Tajwer ‘Tinkle’ Binat, a woman who spent too much time praying for a nice nose, thicker hair, a slender waist, and dainty feet. When Binat Sr. passed away, he left his sons ample pockets of land as well as factories, but it was clear Goga was in charge and not impressed by his much younger brother’s devotion to the Beatles, Elvis, and squash. He was even less impressed by Bark’s obsession with a girl he’d glimpsed at a beauty parlour when he went to pick up Tinkle.
‘Please, Tinkle,’ Bark had begged his cousin plus sister-in-law, ‘please find out who she is and take her my proposal. If I don’t marry her, I will die.’
Tinkle knew immediately which girl had smitten Bark. She herself had found it hard to not stare at the fawn-eyed beauty and, in a benevolent mood, she returned to the salon to make enquiries into her identity: Khushboo ‘Pinkie’ Gardenaar, seventeen years old, secondary school leaver. The girl’s mother was a housewife, overly fond of candy-coloured clothes. Her father was a bookkeeper in the railways. The girl’s elder brother was studying at King Edward Medical College. Her elder sister was a less attractive version of Bark’s crush.
The girl’s family claimed ancestry from royal Persian kitchens. Nobodies, Tinkle informed Goga; basically cooks and waiters. After the brothers fell out, Tinkle would discredit Pinkie’s family by stressing that there was zilch proof of any royal connection. At the time, however, the Binats accepted the family’s claims, and so it was with fanfare that Barkat ‘Bark’ Binat and Khushboo ‘Pinkie’ Gardenaar were wed.
On the day of the wedding, Tinkle lost control of her envy. Was it fair that this chit of a girl, this nobody, should make such a stunning bride?
‘She is no khushboo, good smell, but a badboo, bad smell,’ Tinkle railed at Goga as she mocked Khushboo’s name. ‘I’m the one who went to a Swiss finishing school. I’m the one who sits on the boards of charities. But always it’s her beauty everyone swoons over. She calls a phone “foon”, biscuit “biscoot”, year “ear”, measure “meyer”. She does not know salad fork from dinner fork. How could your brother have married that lower-middle-class twit? Doesn’t Bark care that they are not our kind of people?’
Tinkle’s jealousy grew as Bark and Pinkie delivered two peach-fresh daughters in quick succession. Tinkle’s own children barely qualified for even qabool shakal, acceptable-looking. Goga tried to ignore his wife’s complaints. He had bigger matters to trouble him, including the loss of the Binats’ factories after a wave of nationalisation. Goga was doubly displeased over Bark’s welcoming attitude towards the government takeover. Could his bleeding-heart brother not see that socialism meant less money for the Binats?
In order to diversify assets, Goga invested in a series of shops in Saudi Arabia to capitalise on the newly burgeoning mall culture. He informed Bark he was needed to supervise the investment, and Bark and Pinkie dutifully packed up and, with their daughters, Alys and Jena, headed off to Jeddah.
Even though Pinkie had been reluctant to leave her life in Lahore, once in Jeddah, frequent visits to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina were a great spiritual consolation. Alys and Jena were enrolled in an international school, where their classes looked like a mini-United Nations and the girls made friends from all over the world. Pinkie’s friends were other expatriate wives, with whom she spent afternoons shopping in the souks and malls for gold and fabrics. The Binats resided in an upscale expat residential compound, which had a swimming pool and a bowling alley, and Pinkie hired help.
Life was good; Jeddah was home. Bark grumbled occasionally about the hierarchy – Saudis first, then white people, no matter their level of education or lineage, then everyone else. Still, they might have remained in Jeddah forever were it not for a car accident in which a Saudi prince rear-ended Bark’s car. In Saudi Arabia, the law sided with Saudis no matter who was at fault, and so Bark counted his blessings for escaping with only a broken arm and, fearing that he might be sent to jail for the scratch on the prince’s forehead, packed up his wife and their now five daughters and moved back into their ancestral home in Lahore.
It took two years for Bark to unearth the rot. His elder brother had bilked him out of business and inheritance. Bark proceeded to have a heart attack, a mild one, but Tinkle made sure Goga remained unmoved by his younger brother’s plight.
Bark had nowhere to turn. His parents had passed away. Relatives commiserated but had no interest in siding with Bark or helping him money-wise. Alys, then nineteen, convinced her father to consult a lawyer. They were the talk of the town as it was, she said, and they needed to get back what was rightfully theirs. Too late, said the lawyer. They could appeal, but it would take forever and Goga had already transferred everything to himself. They would learn later that the lawyer had accepted a decent bribe from Goga to dissuade them from filing.