Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter'S Memoir (31 page)

The initial wave of political resistance, however, came uniquely from members of Bhutto’s own PPP. It is estimated that immediately after Zulfikar’s murder, some 3,000 party workers and activists were jailed in order to quell an uprising against Zia’s decision to execute the country’s first democratically elected Prime Minister. Former prisoners that I have spoken to described extreme measures being used against them in jail as a matter of principle. Male prisoners were often moved nightly to different cells, or in extreme cases to different jails, to disorient them; although political prisoners, they were made to share small cells with hardened criminals (who were luckily politically liberal and mostly anti-Zia); their food was searched in front of them before they were allowed to eat. And two prisoners I spoke to had their fingernails removed when they dared to shout pro-Bhutto slogans. Activists and individuals loyal to Zulfikar, in the Sindh province especially, continued to stage daring acts of resistance, setting themselves on fire and chanting slogans such as ‘Zia
hatao
’ – ‘remove Zia’ – in public squares. In one extreme case, party workers threw rocks at Zia’s army helicopter as it attempted to land in Dadu, in the interior of Sindh.
⁴⁸

Zulfikar’s widow, Nusrat, was famously attacked in Lahore as she attended a cricket game at Gaddafi stadium. She knew her presence would excite the large crowd gathered; furthermore, PPP activists had planned to unfurl a banner calling for Zia’s removal during the game and Nusrat offered herself as protection. Instead, when the police noticed that Nusrat Bhutto, the dictatorship’s public enemy number one, was in the audience and that her strong and stoic appearance was creating palapable ripples in the stadium, they came and demanded she leave. No, Nusrat replied, I’m here to watch the game. At that, the police clubbed Nusrat on the head with their batons. She suffered gashes on her forehead and head that required stitches and was photographed being carried out of the stadium, semi-conscious, her hair matted and her face stained with blood.

Not all PPP members, it is worth noting, sacrificed themselves in the fight against the junta. The party’s current Prime Minister, Yousef Raza Gilani – who bears more than a passing resemblance to Saddam Hussain – spent his time not in jail but serving on the dictator’s
majlis e shoora
or religious parliamentary council, rubbing shoulders with General Zia’s protégé Nawaz Sharif. Gilani’s junta background did not prohibit his entry into Benazir’s PPP; instead it earned him the secondhighest post in the land under the Zardari-led party.

As a response to Zia’s absolutist politics, the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy or MRD was formed in 1981 and included a hodgepodge of alliances. Spearheaded by the PPP, and eventually taken over by Benazir, the movement was comprised of the National Democratic Party, the Pakistan Democratic Party, the Islamic Jamaat ul Islami, the peasantbased Mazdoor Kisan Party, the Pashtoon National Alliance Party and several other organizations.
⁴⁹

The MRD’s programme, which called for the end of martial law through the holding of free and fair elections and the restoration of a democratic government through said elections, simultaneously inspired popular support and the concern of the military junta. Ultimately though, the MRD proved to be ineffectual, partly for reasons of its own creation and partly owing to government interference and infiltration.

At its inception, the MRD announced plans for country-wide agitation in February 1981. Fifteen thousand people were immediately arrested for breaking the junta’s ban on public rallies and political gatherings as they came out to support the movement’s first call to action.
⁵⁰
The regime acted quickly to suppress the nascent power of the MRD, and the hijacking of a PIA aeroplane the following month gave a perfect pretext. The junta’s jails had become too full. Human rights organizations the world over were calling attention to the overcrowding of Pakistan’s prisons and something needed to be done to rectify the situation. Through the hijacking, the junta found a way to do both – many of Pakistan’s most prominent political prisoners were released and the MRD was contained as its political leaders were placed under arrest and its supporters jailed, ending the 1981 protest before it had even begun.

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T
hroughout the tumultuous years that took Murtaza abroad, his studies at Oxford remained on his mind. The faculty and administration at Christ Church were sympathetic, having already educated a fair number of his family. After Murtaza moved from Oxford to London to work on the Save Bhutto Committee full-time, he received a letter from Professor Ian Stephens: ‘I write to offer you sympathy, and support if needed. You must be having a horrible time.’ Stephens remarks that a colleague saw Murtaza ‘on the telly trying to persuade some absurd man that he was quite wrong in his amiable assertions about the vile conditions your father is at present jailed in’.
¹

It had been a struggle for Murtaza to be away from his tutors and classes, but he didn’t shirk his studies. His supervisor was Hedley Bull, whose own work coincided with Murtaza’s sphere of interest. Bull worked in international relations and had published his first work,
The Control of the Arms Race
, on the very topic Murtaza was researching. Bull’s first supervisor’s report, written in the Michaelmas term of 1977, noted that the student – who was still living at Oxford at the time – ‘must have been under great strain, although as far as I can judge he
is working satisfactorily’.
²
Bull went on to note that Murtaza’s thesis, an expanded version of his Harvard dissertation on nuclear deterrence, needed more work on its case studies.

In the autumn of 1978, having submitted a draft of his thesis, Murtaza, who was in the midst of travelling and lobbying on his father’s behalf, was told that Oxford had lost the draft. Murtaza hadn’t made copies; nor, given all the movement and tumult surrounding the Save Bhutto Committee, had he organized his notes and index cards. He wrote to his supervisor, who in turn wrote to the college’s steward, who sent out an internal SOS: ‘I think you will have heard the sad story of Mir Bhutto’s thesis . . . The loss is serious to him because he most improvidentially failed to keep a copy . . . I think it may ease Bhutto’s mind if we could tell him another probe was afoot.’
³

Another letter followed, still addressed to Murtaza in London, assuring him that ‘no stone has been left unturned’
⁴
in the search for the missing thesis draft. Bull’s supervisor’s report for 1978 crisply noted that without the draft magically turning up Murtaza would have to start all over again. ‘I have not heard from Mr Bhutto since the beginning of term. His father’s affairs have of course reached a crisis. Mr Bhutto is involved in a crisis of his own furthermore since the copy of his thesis draft which I sent him back in July never reached him.’
⁵

Murtaza changed flats at least three times during his stay in London, partially for security reasons and partially because the continuous coming and going of people caused a degree of panic in the central London neighbourhoods he lived in. Somewhere along the way, the draft, caught up in the confusion and chaos, got lost.

By the time the missing draft was found, Murtaza’s life had been uprooted. Bull’s supervisor’s report for the following year noted, in the same scratchy handwriting, that ‘Mr Bhutto has not been in Oxford this term but rang me up from Afghanistan for an extension of his thesis, which has now been found.’
⁶
An extension of three additional terms was given. The drama of the thesis continued, now played out over the smoky city of Kabul.

At the start of 1980 Bull wrote an unscheduled report, this time typed in harsh black ink, recording the fact that he hadn’t heard from
his pupil since shortly before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. There was no way for student and supervisor to work together normally given that the Russians were cutting the phone lines and the Afghan postal service was totally unreliable. But somehow, in spite of the maelstrom of activity and resettlement, not to mention the liberation movement he was setting up, in the summer of 1980 Murtaza sent in a complete draft. Bull received the effort well. ‘It is clear that despite his distractions and political involvements, Mr Bhutto is still seriously pursuing his work.’
⁷

But it wasn’t enough. The thesis, though completed, was not in a good state. Professor Bull wrote that ‘while Mr Bhutto worked hard under difficult conditions’, for his thesis to be successful he would have no choice but to ‘return here to his studies on a full-time basis’.
⁸
That was not going to happen. Murtaza never replied to Bull; the case of the Oxford thesis was over.

At the start of 1981, Della, who remained in Athens, was hopeful of better times to come. She and Murtaza had weathered many storms together – the campaigns for their loved ones in jail, Zulfikar’s execution and the move to Kabul. She opened her purple Asprey’s diary and wrote at the top of the page some thoughts for the times ahead. ‘Don’t give any information out. Improve economics. Have own house by end of the year. Learn Urdu and Spanish.’
⁹
She had been thinking of leaving her husband, General Roufogalis, who had now been in prison for eight years. He had been arrested only three months into their marriage and Della had spent enough years waiting for him to be released to know that it wasn’t a possibility worth holding on to. Plus, she had fallen in love with Murtaza.

Murtaza had often asked Della to marry him, but she couldn’t desert Roufogalis while he was in prison. But Murtaza persisted, telling her of the mountainous areas in Pakistan that Alexander the Great had passed through with his troops, of the snow leopards in the Himalayas, of the land in Sindh where he had grown up, promising
that together they could build a new life. Murtaza told Della that they would have children together, he told her they would make angels. ‘Fix and clear my tubes,’ she wrote in the list, ending her thoughts with ‘Always love Mir’.

When Della received a letter from Murtaza on 26 January, she tore it open excitedly. He had written it twelve days earlier.

Ever since I have been here we have seen less of each other. And then, naturally, we have travelled less together. I get confused each time I think of all the promises I made: if nothing else one promise I will fulfil at all costs is your trip to Sindh and to the snow leopards.

Della read on happily, the snow leopards reminding her of their future, a little code they shared together.

My job is a far more difficult job than I thought it was. It is far more complicated than an outsider can imagine. It keeps me busier than I have ever been before in my life, but I am sure of success. Because the people are with us; the dynamics of history are with us. But in spite of all this I always think of you and I will always continue to think of you.

If Della had not sensed the tone of the letter till then, it now hit her like a slap in the face.