Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter'S Memoir (47 page)

‘We weren’t with Mir
baba
for the money,’ Mauli continues. ‘We were in jail, in chains, and we didn’t leave him. We were there for love – this scared Benazir’s people a lot. We couldn’t be bought. One day in jail, Nabeel Gabol came to see me.’ (I know Nabeel Gabol. When I was writing a weekly column for Pakistan’s largest Urdu newspaper I attacked him in several articles over the lack of potable water in Lyari and the electricity power cuts that lasted whole summers. He’s a feckless man who was elected to parliament from Lyari and made a hefty amount of money in Benazir’s first government. He made enough to move out of the area, which is desperately poor, and into the plush suburb of Defence. In her second government, Gabol was elevated to deputy speaker of the Sindh Assembly. The very mention of his name makes me cringe.) Maulabux continued, smiling at the look on my face. ‘He stood in front of me and said, “Mauli, give a press conference and say Murtaza Bhutto’s policies are bad and that you’re leaving him.” I looked at him and asked, “Nabeel, what door did you come in from?” He turned around and pointed – there was only one door in the room – “OK,” I said, “now leave through it.”’ Mauli wheezes into laughter. I like him very much. He’s brave. He radiates courage. He and his wife, also Sheedi, run a free tuition centre on the roof of their apartment building designed to keep Lyari’s poor children off the gang-infested streets.

‘They offered money, lots of it, to our friends, other workers, in jail. Some were tortured very badly and gave in, but our feeling was, if we die, then we die, but we’re living for Murtaza. The jailers used to abuse us regularly. They called us “Al Zulfikar boys”, terrorists. They would taunt us as they beat us, saying, “What is your leader Murtaza Bhutto doing for you now?” It was us experienced workers who were on their hit list. When they saw that we didn’t respond to their blows, they would cut us and rub
masala
into our wounds.’

I know it’s painful for Mauli to tell me these things and for him and Shahnawaz to admit this humiliation and vulnerability. As we speak, I focus hard on my notebook, on getting their words down,
so I don’t have to look at them. Pakistani society is too traditional, too patriarchal for these grown men to share stories of their pain with a young woman half their age. I always imagined I had a high tolerance for disturbing truths and frightening stories, but I’m unable to be professional at moments like these, wanting to apologize instead of just nodding along seriously. As if noticing my unease, Mauli, always jovial, breaks the tempo of the interview and tells me about his encounters with Papa in jail.

They were both held in Landhi Jail, some two hours away from 70 Clifton. Papa was kept in solitary confinement, removed from the other prisoners lest he launch an in-house recruitment drive. He asked repeatedly to be moved to the common cells and was routinely refused. ‘We were in B class cells and Mir
baba
was in solitary. One day he sent the warden, a man called Durrani who was charged with guarding him, to our block to ask if Mauli was getting food and if I was eating properly or not. There were many Sindhis in our cells, belonging to other parties, and when they saw that they said, “
Vah!
We want to join Murtaza Bhutto too.” “
Bismillah!
” I said. Mir
baba
always looked after me and once he sent me clothes from 70 Clifton along with some
shalwar kameez
that were being brought for him. “These are for Mauli
sahib
,” I was told. People were shocked that not only was I getting clothes and food sent to me on Murtaza Bhutto’s behalf, but here I was being called
sahib
! They thought I was a religious leader or something – they couldn’t understand why Murtaza Bhutto would treat a worker with such affection!’ Mauli laughs and for once I can look at him and smile too.

Benazir, eager to show that she had no animosity towards her brother, even as he sat in solitary confinement in Landhi Jail, and that the stories of a political falling-out were
noorah kushti
, pretend feuds, offered Papa Eid parole. The government declared 70 Clifton a ‘sub-jail’ for the duration of the holiday. Papa refused his sister’s charitable invitation. ‘I will only accept the Prime Minister’s offer if all political prisoners are awarded the same parole for Eid and are allowed to be with their families too.’ Of course, Benazir said no. We, Mummy,
Zulfi, Joonam and I were kept – somewhat comically and somewhat frighteningly – under ‘sub-jail’ status for the first day of Eid. A special treat, I suppose, freed from the bizarre house arrest after twenty-four hours.

We reached Karachi from Damascus in mid-December, arriving at 70 Clifton at night. We were worried about Papa being in jail and wondered all the time what his conditions were like. Though he was kept in solitary confinement, in a cell with only a small cot and a urinal and sink in the corner, Papa downplayed the spartan conditions. He joked that he had made friends with the lizards who lived on his ceiling and the cockroaches that crept out of the drains at night. He told a magazine that it was a great feeling to be back home after exile, but pointed out that he was unsure of the government and his sister’s hostility towards him when he landed.

I was saying I hope they don’t torture me now when I am so sleepy. When I wake up they can do whatever they want. It took me sometime to adjust . . . They took me straight to jail. Sometimes I was awakened and there were guards outside speaking in Urdu. It had been so many years, I would say to myself, ‘Oh, there are Pakistanis outside.’ I thought I was still in Syria or some place. Then I would remember I’m in Pakistan. Of course, there are Pakistanis in Pakistan!
¹¹

The house at 70 Clifton felt empty when we arrived. Joonam had been its sole occupant for some time and she travelled frequently and didn’t have the energy to run the huge house in the manner that it had been accustomed to during the days it hosted state dinners and functioned as a Prime Minister’s residence. Mummy moved her and Papa’s things into the guest room downstairs, and I raced up the stairs desperate to claim my father’s old room. Sensing my eagerness, Joonam put her foot down and declared that I had to move into the old girls’
room. I didn’t want to live in Benazir’s old room. It was painted black. The bookshelves – only three – were full of her Mills and Boon romance novels and there was no space for my things. In my annoyance at having to move into the one room I didn’t want, I asked Joonam if my aunt could come and take her things. I didn’t want to keep them.

I enrolled at the Karachi American School, starting in the second semester of sixth grade. Unlike in Damascus, everyone knew who I was. My aunt was Prime Minister and my father was in jail. I wasn’t anonymous any more. The school was enormous, with a swimming pool and tennis courts and a football field the size of my old school. I missed Damascus and my friends more than I thought possible. I spent all my free time on the telephone to my friends in Syria, racking up huge bills.

A few days after reaching Karachi, we finally saw Papa, in court. He was being brought to the High Court near the American consulate and we went with Joonam to see him for the first time since he’d left that early November morning. We were all so excited, Mummy dressed up and I imagined a family reunion with Joonam at our side. But the minute we reached the courts, I felt out of my depth. There were reporters everywhere and hundreds of men who had come to meet Papa and shake his hand and have a picture taken with him. There was almost no space for us. We sat behind him in court and I leaned forward, not understanding a word of the court proceedings. Papa was wearing a starched white
shalwar kameez
, which I’d rarely seen him in. He was seated at a bench with his lawyers but his co-accuseds in the case, young men, were standing in the dock, their arms and feet shackled in large rusty chains. I’d never seen anything like it. Papa leaned over to talk to them in between proceedings and joked and laughed with them, his way of reaching out and breaking the barriers that kept him seated on a bench and them standing in chains.

Shahnawaz Baloch told me later that the first time he met Papa after his return was in court. He was in custody too at the time, jailed by Benazir without warrant, and appearing as one of the co-accused in
Zia’s ninety or so cases against the Bhutto brothers. ‘He hugged me’, Shahnawaz said, ‘like a bear. He told me, “Shahnawaz, don’t worry. Now I’m back, everything will be fine.”’
¹²

Everyone flocked to see Murtaza in court – it was the only glimpse of him that they could get: parliament was too secure and the gates guarded against citizens coming in. Hameed remembers how after not being able to see Murtaza land at Jinnah Airport, he and some fellow workers prepared to receive him on his first showing in court. ‘We were in our area, Malir, and we had gone and bought rose petals. We parked on a street that we knew the police car carrying him to court would pass through, and sat there right in the middle of the road! We didn’t want to miss Mir
baba
this time. We covered the flowers in the back seat with fabric so that the police wouldn’t stop us, and got out of the car and waited. We showered the street with rose petals when Mir
baba
passed, we shouted
Jiye
Bhutto, and he saw us. He raised a fist to us, we knew the signal. Be strong. Then when we got to court, he hugged me and said, “Hameed
bhai
, what name are you using here?”’ Hameed laughs, expecting me to understand the Kabul connection, but I don’t. He has to explain it to me. I am learning the codes of this language, it has taken time but after enough
nom de guerres
are bandied about you eventually start to think in double identities.

We had to share Papa in court that day. I wanted to have him all to myself and I kept trying to squeeze my way closer to him. Finally the court broke for a recess and we went into a side room for Papa to smoke and for us to finally be alone. We hugged and I cried. He seemed larger, taller, stronger here. He was more formal. He told us, when everyone had left, that we had brought too much luggage from Damascus, which rather annoyed Mummy and me. After all the trauma we’d been through that’s the first thing he thought to say to us? But we didn’t dwell on it. We were so happy to see Papa and to know that he was OK. We had all felt so stranded in 70 Clifton without him, as if we were in a waiting room, in transit, living unofficially until he returned. We spent a lot of strange moments in courtrooms while Papa was imprisoned. Mummy and I both spent
birthdays in court, watching bail hearings being postponed. We had our first – our only – family portrait taken in a Karachi courtroom. We experienced Papa in public, as a politician, in those rooms for the first time.

{
18
}

I
n an interview with the local
Weekend Post
, Murtaza was asked what had become a frequent question. His sister, the Prime Minister, insisted there were no problems between the two siblings. Everything was fine. He’s in jail, yes, I had him arrested, but aside from my brother being a terrorist we have no problems, only personal ones here and there. She projected their differences as trivial, familial ones. ‘There is no personal conflict between me and Benazir,’ Murtaza answered – sometimes he called her Mrs Zardari, because he said she had long since stopped behaving like a Bhutto. I’m a feminist, I kept my name, Benazir would return, infuriated at being called by her husband’s name. If the Prime Minister is a feminist, it prompts the question as to why she hasn’t repealed the Hudood Ordinances, Papa would retort. The argument usually met its end at this point – ‘There, however, exist differences in political perceptions, concepts and method.’

The question that followed was, again, typical; was this all a show then? Some sort of inter-family drama being played out on the national stage? And Murtaza answered as clearly as he always did.

As far as the ‘drama’ is concerned, I can assure you that . . . had it been a drama, my plane would not have been turned back. I would not have been arrested without a warrant, locked in jail without formal charges, wouldn’t have been brought to the court until after a lapse of seventy hours. I should have met my lawyers the next day and not after twenty days. We should have got all the papers pertaining to my cases immediately. At the time of writing this, my lawyers still do not have them. If all this had
been a drama, the champions of justice who believe that ‘the law should take its own course’ would have not arrested thousands of my supporters, my reception camps (at the airport) would not have been uprooted, my supporters’ houses would not have been bulldozed. I would not be sitting and writing these answers to you from solitary confinement in the former punishment ward of Landhi District East Prison.
¹

Murtaza was taken to the Sindh Assembly to swear his oath and when he rose to speak for the first time in parliament, the
Daily Nation
newspaper noted that ‘the hall of the Sindh Assembly was in a state of pin-drop silence when a new voice intended to introduce itself in the House for the first time, the voice of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, jailed brother of the Prime Minister.’
²