For forty-eight years Taj delivered Dard-e-Dils. Delivered her brothers and sisters, her cousins, her nephews and nieces, her great-nephews and great-nieces. Received gold and umbilical cords in return. What did she do with the cords? She took them, that’s all. More to the point, in taking the cords she gave the Dard-e-Dils something her mother had never given them: a reason to remember her name. And then the three boys were born near midnight. At what times exactly? Only Taj knows, and maybe even she didn’t. Of course she left the palace immediately after that. She’d delivered them, announced the timings of their births, taken their umbilical cords. Without a doubt, no question of it, she’d secured a place in the family story.

I looked at the picture that Rehana Apa had sent with her letter. Dadi and the three boys, laughing in the palace grounds. If they knew they were fated to bring misery to the family you wouldn’t know it by looking at the photograph.

I showed Dadi the photograph that evening. She rested it on her lap and hung her head low. I waited for her to look up and when she didn’t I walked over to her and placed my hands over two of the brothers so that all that remained visible was Dadi angling her body towards the boy in the centre.

‘That’s the most romantic picture of you and Dada I’ve ever seen,’ I said.

‘That’s not your grandfather. It’s Taimur.’

She wouldn’t say any more about it, and no matter what I said the rest of the evening I couldn’t make her laugh.

Chapter Fifteen

‘Aliya, sweetoo, you must come over right away. Futafut. On the double take.’ It was Older Starch on the phone, disrupting my evening cup of tea with Sameer.

‘I would have loved to, but Sameer’s over.’

Older Starch clicked her tongue. ‘Bring him also. Where’s the problem? Don’t answer, I’ll tell you. The problem is here. I have out-of-town guests coming for tea with their children who are your age. First, Raunaq and Rusty were coming to keep them company but now Raunaq has piles, poor baby. Have you ever had piles, Aliya?’

I put her on speaker phone. ‘Piles? No. I didn’t think Dard-e-Dils suffered from piles.’

‘Arré, what a thing to say! Although, no, actually, you’re right. Usman is the only one among us who’s had them and that must be from his father’s side. He’s got Pathan blood, you know. But anyway, I said to Raunaq that last week there was an ad in the paper for a doctor who has a herbal cure for piles. No operation and also no need to show the doctor any part of your lower body. What’s that noise?’

It was Sameer choking on his tea. I promised we’d drop in, and hung up. Afterwards, I wondered if Older Starch was wilier than I gave her credit for. Because if I hadn’t been so amused by her comments I would never have agreed to entertain her guests. But with my head full of images of Older Starch, boasting that she comes from a royal family which once owned vast tracts of land and never suffered from haemorrhoids, I walked right into her trap. And walked into it alone, because Sameer took off for a game of squash at the Club, declaring that he’d have to see more than enough of the Starched Aunts once festivities for Kishwar’s wedding to the Ali Shah son got under way.

‘Well, I’m avoiding the wedding,’ I said. ‘Kishwar said some things about Mariam Apa—’

‘Everyone said some things about Mariam Apa.’

‘Okay, more to the point, I’m not getting involved in the Aunts’ ploys to get me married off.’

‘Weddings breed weddings,’ Sameer laughed, and twirled his racket in farewell.

‘Aliya!’ The Starcheds rose to greet me, minutes later, as I entered Older’s drawing room. ‘Have you met the Ali Shahs?’

Starched Aunts-1. Aliya-0.

Mind you, the four-wheel drives parked outside with their tinted windows and armed bodyguards should have tipped me off.

My aunts introduced me to the Ali Shah parents and daughters, then turned in triumph to the two boys. ‘This is Khurrum, Kishoo’s fiancé. You know Kishoo, Aliya. She couldn’t be here, unfortunately.’

Younger Starch whispered, ‘Stays at home when the sun’s out. Wants to look fair on her wedding night.’

‘And this is Murtaza. Just graduated from an Ivy League. Aliya was also in America, Murti. You two have a lot to talk about.’ And with that, both the Starched Aunts pushed me down on the sofa beside Murtaza.

Murtaza and Khurrum’s sisters caught my eye and turned away, giggling. Their father, engaged in a discussion with Older Starch’s husband about the dangers of allowing the masses to have access to Internet porn, gestured to his wife in a manner clearly meant to indicate that she was responsible for seeing to it that her daughters behave themselves. Younger Starch pulled a little bottle out of her handbag and, after instructing the Ali Shah boys to admire the painting on the wall, hastily rubbed concealer over the pimple just above my eyebrow.

Oh, please Scotty, beam me up. I’d rather face Klingons than this.

‘So what did you major in at college?’ Murtaza said.

‘English,’ I replied, quite confident that he would be unable to follow up on that.

‘Really?’ Khurrum leant forward. ‘That was my minor.’

Older Starch distracted him with a plate of sandwiches, and Younger Starch said, ‘Murtaza studied World Politics.’

‘Whirled Polly Ticks.’ Khurrum made a spiralling motion with his finger.

‘The revolving parrot is really a bomb!’ I laughed back.

‘Khurrum, please go and call Kishwar. I need to know who will be at dinner tonight.’ Now Mother Ali Shah was getting in on the act. Attack from all quarters.

Khurrum raised his shoulders helplessly and disappeared from the room with a mobile phone.

‘Always Murtaza was standing up to his professors. Always!’ His mother beamed at me and nodded.

‘Really?’ said a Starch. ‘American professors?’

Murtaza nodded. ‘They’re all idiots there. When they talk about Pakistan, which they almost never do, they say such stupid things. One of them said our biggest problem is feudalism. Other than the usual rubbish about paying taxes, he said we treat the peasants badly. I made him look like such an idiot in front of the whole class.’

‘What did you say? Aliya, did you hear? He took on his professor.’

I smiled benignly at my aunt and hid behind a samosa.

‘I told him he should come to Pakistan. See how my family looks after the people on our lands. We’ve built medical facilities; every year we bring in someone from the cities to talk to the women about birth control; if anyone has a dispute they come to us and we resolve the situation without bribery or favouritism. And they are so grateful they want to kiss our feet. But we tell them they don’t have to do that. Then I said, “Professor, sir, has anyone ever tried to kiss your feet?” That really shut him up.’

‘Tell them what you said about cities,’ his mother urged.

‘Hanh. I also said the poor people on our lands are much better off than poor people in the city, who have to rely on the government for justice and medical care and things like that’

This was too much for me. ‘But you are the government! The National Assembly is teeming with landowners. Both on the government and the opposition benches. And incidentally, in all your talk of the largesse you provide to these benighted souls, you never mentioned education.’ Masood so often said he wanted to learn to read and write English, and I never even offered to teach him. Worse, the few scraps of English I threw in his direction were worthless words such as ‘thyme’.

Murtaza shook his head at me. ‘You citywallahs. You don’t understand. I thought at least you, because of your family background … For centuries your family ruled over its people with the same attitude as we have. What happened to you?’