Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter'S Memoir (24 page)

After reviewing the case files and documents pertaining to Bhutto’s trial at the hands of the military regime the jurists issued a statement that would be released to the international press. They agreed that Bhutto’s trial clearly failed to meet several necessary standards of justice in ‘at least’ the six following ways: maintaining a distinct bias in regard to the trial judges and lawyers, the failure of the junta to hold an open trial, the failure of the courts to maintain an accurate record of Bhutto’s trial, the failure to institute a proper trial structure, and the court’s decision in moving ahead with clear evidentiary improprieties and insufficiencies. Lastly, the jurists noted that Bhutto’s physical maltreatment at the hands of the state was ominous and a cause for international concern.

Spring began with a letter from Zulfikar to his eldest son. A messenger came to London with the news that Zulfikar’s health had worsened. He had lost a lot of weight and had asked to see a dentist; his teeth
were rotting. I remember my father telling me that Zulfikar used to find shards of glass in his prison food and that his gums would be cut as he ate, mixing his blood with the prison gruel. The messenger also delivered a letter, the last one Murtaza would receive from his father.

Della was with Murtaza when he read the letter. ‘Go to Afghanistan,’ directed Zulfikar, ‘be close to your country.’ Afghanistan was still a socialist country, not yet invaded by the Russians or the bearded fundamentalists that would follow. Zulfikar’s letter took a more serious tone, one of vengeance. ‘In the letter, which I saw and read many times with my own eyes,’ insists Della, ‘Zulfikar told Murtaza, and through him Shah, “If you do not avenge my murder, you are not my sons.”’
²

‘Mir began to prepare immediately,’ remembers Della. ‘I would tell him that I felt the military government wouldn’t kill his father, but he would answer me back seriously, “Yes they will. You don’t know Pakistan.”’
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In the span of a year, Murtaza’s hope that his father would be spared from the gallows dimmed. Tariq Ali, the prominent Pakistani writer, historian and activist, was based in Britain at the time. Though he had a somewhat rocky history with Zulfikar – he had refused to join the PPP on the grounds that it was not radical enough and had been open in his criticism of the feudal landlords who had continued to prosper in the party – Ali became very involved in the Save Bhutto campaign. ‘Once the death sentence had been passed, it became obvious that we had to save his life,’ Ali told me. ‘The whole thing was corrupt to the core. The army wanted to kill the country’s first elected Prime Minister – it was unacceptable. Whatever disagreements Bhutto and I had became irrelevant. Murtaza knew that I had differences with his father, but it wasn’t a problem for him. He was pleased, rather, that we were participating in the campaign. Many a time he would give me a hug and say “Thank you for what you’re doing.”’
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The campaign had grown exponentially. The Save Bhutto Committee was holding large rallies across the United Kingdom and galvanizing Pakistani communities in cities across the world – in Sweden, in France, in the Gulf states, and in Canada and the United States.
Stories of the international protests against Zia’s junta were carried across to Pakistan on the BBC overseas service, bringing news to a country whose own press had been brutally silenced. ‘Deep inside, despite everything,’ recalls Tariq Ali, ‘there was a feeling that they couldn’t do it – they couldn’t kill Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – that something would stop it from happening. I think, initially, Murtaza and Shahnawaz felt that too. He was the most popular leader, there’d be mass uprisings, people would storm the prisons . . . but what we didn’t take into account was how badly Zia had brutalized the population.’
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Public floggings, stonings and humilitating displays of torture were being carried out in Pakistan. There had never been such an overt display of the state’s capacity to commit violence towards its own people before. There couldn’t be a mass uprising to save the country’s first Prime Minister, people were too frightened.

Murtaza and Shahnawaz addressed the question of the Pakistani people’s resistance, or lack of it, at a press conference in London before Zulfikar’s death sentence had been handed down. A journalist with a faint Australian accent asked Murtaza to comment on the lack of public support for his father, to which Murtaza replied, ‘There is little unrest. First of all, thousands of his supporters have been arrested. There have been large-scale arrests. Troops have been called in from the border regions, border patrol units have been called – the security measures are truly overwhelming, truly oppressive.’
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Shahnawaz was seated next to Murtaza at the press conference. He was wearing a dark brown suit but had not yet grown a moustache like his brother. Shah’s voice was deep and resounding and he spoke slowly, measuring his words. ‘I hope General Zia does bow down to the international pressure . . . but if he does not then I fear very grave consequences for Pakistan.’
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Neither of the brothers mentioned the idea of armed resistance, not yet.

But it was percolating through their minds, given urgency no doubt from Zulfikar’s letter. ‘It was at one of the campaign gatherings that Murtaza first brought up the idea of guerrilla war with me,’ remembers Tariq Ali. ‘He asked me what I thought of the notion and I said to him, “Murtaza, I’m not sure this is the correct tactic,
but even if it is you cannot do these things in public – everything is being watched – you can’t operate like that.” I didn’t think it would have worked and Murtaza said to me, “What else is left to save my father?” I told him, “It’s not going to do that. It won’t work. He’s surrounded.”’
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Rawalpindi, situated in the Potwar Plateau, is a short distance from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. It is, and always has been, a garrison city. Home to the Raj’s British forces and since independence the Pakistani Army, Rawalpindi sits higher up than the land surrounding it, instantly cooler and breezier, but it has a sinister reputation, at least among politicians. It was once the home of the exiled nineteenth-century Afghan king Shuja Shah. It is where the man Mohammad Ali Jinnah had appointed as Pakistani’s first Prime Minister, Liaqat Ali Khan, was assassinated, and it is where the army had taken Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to die. Almost thirty years after his murder, his eldest child, Benazir, would also lose her life in Rawalpindi. I’ve never liked the place. It’s a desolate, eerie town.

Rawalpindi jail has long been destroyed; Zia razed it to the ground in the 1980s, wary of its potential to become a Bhutto-ist symbol. Only one of the prison’s original walls remains now, old red bricks covered with deep green ivy. The rest of Rawalpindi jail has been turned into a banal shopping mall. Situated in between the old Prime Minister’s residence and various military offices, the jail has now been renamed Jinnah Park and it is home to a McDonald’s, a Cinepax cinema and a Pappasalis pizza joint franchised from Islamabad. At the entrance of what was once Rawalpindi jail is a two-storey yellow building. The top storey is covered by a sign that reads ‘Blacks’ next to a large photograph of a women’s eyes, maybe it is a beauty parlour, I don’t know. The bottom half of the building just reads ‘Tequila City’, and it’s anyone’s guess what goes on there in alcohol-free Pakistan.

It is here that the army killed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and then erased all traces of his blood.

Della remembers the night before 4 April 1979 as a busy one. The Stanhope Mews house that Murtaza and Shahnawaz were living in in central London had been packed with people. The flats the Bhutto brothers lived in were always full of Pakistanis – men visiting from home and carrying letters and news, associates and supporters of the SB Committee, journalists and political activists from Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds. That night there were people sleeping in the living room and the corridors, and home-cooked Pakistani food had been communally eaten with everyone gathered to share a meal sitting on the floor. It was between six and seven in the morning when the phone rang.

‘Is this the Bhutto household?’ asked the voice on the other end of the telephone. Della, careful not to wake Murtaza, answered that it was. The man on the line identified himself as a BBC reporter and asked Della if she was aware that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had been killed at two in the morning, Pakistani time. She was careful not to repeat what the reporter was saying; no, she answered quietly, she wasn’t aware. The BBC reporter asked to speak to Murtaza, the official family spokesperson. Della didn’t answer; she was in shock. She nudged Murtaza awake and handed him the telephone. ‘Mir, it’s for you,’ Della told him, and then to soften the blow of what he was about to hear, ‘It’s the BBC.’

Murtaza sat up, his legs bent over the bed. He took the phone and Della moved to sit opposite him. Immediately, his hands and face started to shake. His teeth chattered. Murtaza was overcome with emotion and instantly swore revenge. ‘They have killed a hero,’ he said. ‘They will pay for this.’ Murtaza put the phone down. Della remembers that he looked like a bird about to break. She held Murtaza and tried to comfort him, rocking him in her arms and telling him to be calm, to be careful.

They had been expecting this. Murtaza had begun to prepare himself since receiving his father’s last letter in March.

He rose and went into the bathroom to shower and change into a white
shalwar kameez
, the Muslim colour of mourning in South Asia, sent especially from Pakistan for this day. By the time Murtaza went to the next room to speak to his brother, he was back in control.
He went into the room alone, woke Shah and told him that their father had been killed. Murtaza handed his younger brother another white
shalwar kameez
and told him to wash. There were already mourners outside and the media were beginning to gather.

Murtaza, normally so at ease in front of the press, didn’t want to go outside. ‘What am I supposed to say?’ he asked Della, his head in his hands. ‘Not what you said on the phone,’ she advised him softly. ‘You have to be careful, your mother is still in Pakistan.’
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Followed by Shahnawaz, Murtaza went out to face the press. The cameras were already rolling as Murtaza opened the door. The brothers looked tired and defeated. Murtaza cleared his throat and began to speak. ‘I don’t want to say much. I came just to tell you that of course it’s a personal tragedy. They tried to break our father, they tortured him for two years, they couldn’t do that. They tried to ruin his political name and now they have killed him. We have nothing to be ashamed of. They have buried a martyr today.’
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The military buried Zulfikar before announcing the news of his execution. His family never saw his body. There is no proof, medical or otherwise, that he was hanged as the military junta claimed he was. The family have long believed that he was tortured and killed. Bobby Kennedy Jr remembers what a shock the assassination was for Murtaza. ‘It was devastating, it really challenged his faith in government, his country – in all the things he believed in.’
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In Pakistan the news of Bhutto’s killing was met with an outpouring of grief, despite the strict measures the army had put in place to prevent a public show of mourning. Men set themselves on fire in Zulfikar’s constituency of Larkana and the roads across the provinces were full of cars, driving in a spontaneous procession to the Bhutto ancestral home of Garhi Khuda Bux to pay their respects at the Prime Minister’s freshly dug grave.

There were, however, people who celebrated. Nisar Khuro, a member of the Khuro feudal family from Larkana had been agitating for Zulfikar’s imprisonment and murder; Abdul Waheed Katpar, one of the PPP’s founding members and another Larkana native, recalls Khuro chanting, ‘First hang Bhutto then try him!’
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at gatherings
around the city. ‘And when they killed Bhutto
sahib
, Khuro distributed sweets,
mithai
, around the city – it is well known,’
¹³
Katpar says, clenching his teeth. The story is painful for him to recall. Nisar Khuro was brought into the People’s Party after Zulfikar’s death by his daughter Benazir, and was made head of the Sindh branch of the party. Khuro remains an integral part of the PPP till this day, currently serving Benazir’s and her husband’s PPP as the speaker of the Sindh Assembly.

Later that morning, the mews house was once again filled with people, this time crowding in to offer their condolences. Margaret Thatcher, not yet Prime Minister but well on her way, came to see Murtaza and Shahnawaz, and gave them a letter to pass on to Nusrat. Various MPs and supporters of the Save Bhutto Committee made up an endless stream of mourners. The anger, partnered with people’s grief and shock, was palpable. ‘If the United States had said, let’s be blunt, if they had come out and said this is wrong and we don’t want you to execute Bhutto, the junta wouldn’t have done it,’
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Tariq Ali says, summing up the feeling among the Pakistani community. Henry Kissinger had made good on his promise: a horrible example was made of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.