FOUR
May 1993
Ami’s backless choli was an instant hit at Sabeen and Sarfaraz Khans’ wedding anniversary party the year I turned eighteen. She was back in our lives for a short while and I watched Abu painstakingly try to cater to her every mood in an effort to get her to stay.
Ami emerged from her room, the pallu of her black crushed silk saree draped around her body. As soon as she turned, Abu frowned in disapproval at the exposed skin but said nothing. I felt a bit ridiculous in my own sage green low-necked salwar kameez with beaded edges that Ami had insisted I wear. I kept my exposed cleavage covered with the dark long-trimmed dupatta. We all knew why I was invited. Parties were a great place to arrange matches. While the singles roamed around, adults fitted them like puzzles and decided the course of their lives. It disgusted me. I was too independent-minded to succumb to such matches, or so I believed then. It was useless to argue with Ami; if things didn’t go her way, she pouted for days. I had agreed to wear lipstick at Ami’s persistence. After repeated strokes, almost bruising my lips with the plum-colored lipstick, she then proceeded to powder my cheeks when I decided I was done.
“That’s enough, Ami.” I eased out of the chair. I knew Abu didn’t care much for makeup.
Ami shrugged and examined her own reflection in the mirror. She fluffed her hair and smiled in satisfaction.
The Khans’ mansion was filled to the brim with the elite of society: glittering and heavily made-up women wearing dazzling jewelry, sporting the latest fashions, trying out fancy English accents when they had not yet perfected the grammar, while men huddled together in circles, comparing sales figures, watches and cars. An ever-growing mass of unrelated and indifferent uncles and aunts, titles imposed on them by society, approached me at intervals to peck me on my cheek. I looked around for Abu and found him sitting on a couch at the end of the hall. Earlier he had been in an animated discussion with some of his friends about politics, a subject he could discuss for hours on end. There was a general uneasiness among the public since the new prime minister had been ousted within months of coming to power. That year had been a political disaster for Pakistan. Both the prime minister and the president resigned from their offices citing serious differences. Even the central and provincial assemblies were dissolved. Abu had great faith in the interim Prime Minister, Moin Qureshi, and was impressed by his determination to check the plague of corruption that had been growing in the governing bodies. Abu’s hope of such a person taking over the country and turning it around was futile; Qureshi’s tenure lasted only 90 days.
“Politics today has gone to the dogs, Tehsin Saheb,” Uncle Athar was telling Abu, taking a slow drag off the cigar in his hand. He was a pediatric surgeon at the hospital where Abu worked. “The governing bodies have wiped the country clean. Totally absorbed in their own personal gain. How can a nation grow in such a climate?”
“The whole country is rooted in bureaucracy,” Abu observed, shaking his head. “Until that’s taken care of, our progress is questionable. You can’t even get a simple identity card without bribing someone.”
“I waited twenty months to get a new phone line,” offered Uncle Zahoor, a mutual friend whose profession I could never remember. “Twenty months, can you believe it? Even a baby is born quicker.”
“Can’t match that even if you count from the actual conception,” Uncle Waqar interjected. He had thick, tightly permed hair that made him look like a hedgehog. “You might have better luck in that time period, Zahoor. Maybe you could end up with a son that you always wanted.”
The men guffawed at that comment, and Uncle Zahoor looked mildly offended. He had four daughters and each year tried his luck at having a son and failed. So far his wife had been pregnant four of the five years they had been married.
I started to lose interest in the discussion and looked around. The single young women at the party looked like they were straight off the runway and paid to parade at the party. Like moths, they flocked together with no room for expansion and eyed me with disdain. Suddenly my 4,000-rupees suit lost its class. I had not seen many eligible bachelors that night, and I didn’t see the sense of being dragged to a party where the primary purpose of my attendance was not being fulfilled. The only young men I saw were already with women or pretended to be.
“Are Saheb, corruption breeds corruption,” said Uncle Waqar, “What can the public do when they can’t even get basic necessities? It is simple. Without bribing, you will be in a hell hole and who wants to be there?”
“Did you look at the list Qureshi published of the defaulters of tax and ban
