Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter'S Memoir (50 page)

The first trip Papa took, several days after being released, was to Larkana so that he could pray at his father and brother’s graves. He planned to drive the 300 kilometres, stopping at some forty towns and villages on the way to meet and speak to people. It was a long and arduous journey, but an emotional one, marred only by the government’s constant attempts to delay and harass him and his workers as they travelled across the interior of Sindh.

‘All along the Super Highway from Karachi to Jamshoro people waited in the scorching heat of June to catch a glimpse of Mir Murtaza Bhutto,’ a local magazine reported. ‘From the Jamshoro toll plaza to
the city’s railway crossing, the road was so jam-packed that it took his motorcade a couple of hours to cross that distance of five minutes.’
¹

In Jamshoro, Murtaza was audacious, upping the ante in his criticisms of the government. ‘My sister Benazir and the party of
Shaheed
(martyr) Bhutto are besieged by a mafia of thugs, thieves, and Zia’s agents. We’ll boot them out of the party,’ he promised. ‘We are the real party of the
shaheed
.’
²
Papa’s convoy drove through cities large and small, pulling crowds along the way. ‘I was surprised when in a small village like Kakar, in district Dadu, which has a total population of 2,000, he was received by a crowd of at least 10,000,’ a Sindhi journalist covering the journey was quoted as saying.
³

But Larkana’s homecoming, that was something special. ‘It was a prince’s welcome,’ reported the press. Murtaza’s constituency was alive with the news of his imminent arrival. ‘Normally the people of the town go to sleep by 9 or 10, especially in this sweltering heat,’ a journalist commented. ‘It has been like this only twice before – once when Bhutto’s body came to Garhi Khuda Bux after his execution and the second time when Benazir returned from London in 1986.’
⁴

As Murtaza’s convoy reached the city limits, crossing the dusty roads of interior Sindh into Larkana’s lush agricultural land, chants of ‘
Chamki haider ji talwar, aayo Bhutto jo pagdar
.’ ‘The sword of Hazrat (saint) Ali shines, the successor of Bhutto has arrived’
⁵
and men and women cried, ‘
Aya, Aya Murtaza Aya
’ (‘he’s come, Murtaza has come’), while throwing flower petals on the passing cars.

Suhail, finally back in Pakistan and fighting the cases that Zia’s dictatorship had made sure to lodge against him too for his loyalty to the Bhutto brothers, accompanied Murtaza on the trip to the family graveyard at Garhi Khuda Bux. ‘Mir went first to Grandpapa’s grave and did the
fateha
prayer there. He laid rose petals on the tomb and spent some time standing over his father’s grave. It was very emotional for him. Then he went to pray at Shah’s grave and was visibly shocked and hurt to see how his brother had been buried. The grave, unlike their father’s, which had been encased in marble, was flat on the ground. It was untidy, there was dust and dirt around it, and it was circled by bricks that hadn’t been properly fitted. The stage outside
the
mazaar
that Benazir built for her rallies and public speeches was properly constructed, it was quite sophisticated. Papa was horrified.

‘It was such a shame to see him at Shah’s grave. His eyes welled with tears and he had to hold himself back from weeping.’ Suhail knew both the brothers well. He was Murtaza’s friend, closer to his age, but he too had regarded Shah as a younger brother. Angrily, which is not an emotion that comes easily to Suhail, he continued, ‘She usurped Shah’s land, took his Naudero house as her own, not leaving it for his daughter Sassi, and stood for elections on the NA 207 seat that their father had wanted for Shah.’ Was it not convenient then, I asked, for her to tend to his burial site? Suhail shrugged. ‘Papa called the manager of the
mazaar
then and there – he was an old man who took care of basic things. He told him to fix the
shaheed
’s grave properly and expected that when he next returned Shah would have a decent resting place.’ And it was done, finally, nine years after Shah had been interred in Garhi Khuda Bux.

After the emotional visit to the family
mazaar
Murtaza spent several days receiving condolences for his father and brother at Al Murtaza. In Sindh, condolences are paid religiously, no matter how many years since the bereavement has passed, and with Murtaza finally home, people flocked from across the province and beyond – from Quetta in Balochistan, from Gujranwala in Punjab, and Gilgit in the Frontier to meet Murtaza and offer their respects.

Benazir and her cronies were now backed against a wall. Murtaza’s threat was manageable for them when he was behind bars and access to him and his ability to speak to the people were restricted. Now that he was free, he was unstoppable. They did their best to subvert him as much as they could. The courts were ordered to hold his passport so that he was forbidden from leaving the country, a sort of reverse punishment for his return. He was constantly made to travel across Pakistan to appear at court hearings that continued against him in the various provinces, and his workers were routinely rounded up, arrested and viciously beaten.

In Karachi, Papa’s movements were watched by the Intelligence service, who parked outside 70 Clifton in a dilapidated beige car with
brown leather interior and followed him everywhere he went. But even they were no match for Papa’s sense of humour. Once, en route to a wedding, we got lost on the road. Papa stopped the Intelligence vehicle and asked them for directions.

Murtaza continued to travel across Pakistan. People wanted to meet him, to hear him speak, to see if they was any hope to be placed in this newcomer or whether he was another elite feudal landowner who had no political connection with the ordinary masses. Murtaza spoke bravely and openly against the government and their dismal economic record and violent stance on law and order. And people were listening. It seemed as if Murtaza was the only politician speaking against the status quo instead of lining up to join it.

Unable to answer Murtaza’s political criticisms of her regime, Benazir played the gender/sibling card, turning the political into the personal and the principled into the trivial. Speaking to the
New York Times
in the aftermath of the shooting at her brother’s house in Larkana and responding to the allegations that her police force had illegally barricaded the house and shot at her mother, Benazir sniffed, ‘Once my father died, I knew the day would come when, like all feudal families, they’d lock up the daughter so that the son takes over.’
⁶
She sulked further, saying that it was the ‘fear of male prejudice that prompted her marriage. She married “for a home” she said.’
⁷
It should be noted that feudal families intent on locking up their daughters don’t send them to Radcliffe and Oxford.

When questioned about the gender card, Murtaza answered directly. ‘I have never asked to be the chairman of the party. I neither wanted to be the chairman of the party nor the Chief Minister of Sindh (as constantly alleged by Benazir). I have simply demanded elections in the party at all levels. Is that an unreasonable demand?’
⁸

There is a lot of pain for me when I write about my aunt during this period. I stopped seeing her after the 5 January shootings. I wanted nothing to do with her; I was so shaken and completely horrified by what she had done. I lived in a city with crumbling roads, flooded with filthy rainwater during monsoon season because there was not even a rudimentary sewage system. Her corruption was evident, it was
all around us. I was disappointed. I was taken to see her, forcibly, once or twice. Inevitably they were photo opportunities. I would be made to have lunch with my aunt at the Sheraton Hotel, taken by my grandmother Joonam, who was somewhat stuck in between her two children, where there would be a contingent of cameramen to take our pictures. ‘Bhutto family feud a sham,’ the papers would scream, and my photograph with my aunt would be the proof.

I had gone with Joonam to Wadi’s house in Karachi in the first few months after our arrival, when everyone seemed intent on pretending that things were normal and there there was nothing strange about visiting your aunt who has just chucked your father in jail. We were sitting in Wadi’s bedroom, her on the bed and us all around her. Joonam was uneasy. She was doing her best to pretend too, but she was distressed over the way Papa’s return had been handled by the government. Joonam didn’t like the way her children were so easily pitted against each other. ‘I don’t like the way you’re fighting,’ she said to Wadi. ‘It’s bad for your father’s legacy.’ Zardari had been sitting in an armchair in the room, silently, until then. ‘As if there was a legacy,’ he sneered loudly, filling up the room all of a sudden.

Everyone went quiet, even Wadi. No one ever spoke about Zulfikar like that, dismissively, vulgarly. Not in the family, not ever. Joonam seemed shell-shocked, but more than that, she looked deeply pained.

At home, I told Mummy what I’d heard. She swore in Arabic. I didn’t know how to tell Papa, so I didn’t. He didn’t need the extra ammo in any case.

When he gave speeches or interviews, Papa often called Zardari a
chor
, a thief. He coined the term ‘
Asif baba and the chalees chor
’, ‘Asif Baba and the forty thieves’ which became an instant hit (it remains part of the popular parlance to this day, I’m proud to note). When Papa was out of jail and infinitely more exposed, Joonam would nudge him when he started on like that. ‘Stop, please!’ she’d beg him. ‘They’re tyrants, they’ll hurt you.’

‘There’s no question,
Begum Sahiba
was firmly with Mir’, Suhail says to me over dinner in Karachi. ‘But you must remember, Nusrat was the spirit of the PPP after ZAB was arrested in ’77. Zia wanted
to split the party and your grandmother played a very large role in keeping it together initially. She stood on trucks to give speeches, led rallies across the country, was beaten by the police and arrested – she was the life force of the PPP in those dark days. But as soon as Mir came back, Benazir ousted her mother from her honorary party post. She was terrified that her mother might try to overturn her decisions and welcome Mir into the party fold.’

I don’t understand my family, I tell Suhail. Are you sure they were Rajput warriors? They sound like wild beasts sometimes. Suhail clucks his tongue at me and laughs. ‘Yes, it’s strange,’ he admits ‘but your grandmother never gave up on one child for the other, she was genuinely stuck between them. She wanted Mir to have a chance to fulfil his role, as Benazir had, and that put her in a very difficult position when it came to her daughter.’
⁹

When I stopped accepting her invitations and finagled ways out of being forced into seeing her, Wadi tried to bribe me. One day, towards the end of sixth grade, I returned home from school to be told the Prime Minister urgently needed to speak to me. ‘Pack your bags, Fati,’ Wadi said excitedly on the phone. ‘I’m taking you to South Africa for Nelson Mandela’s inauguration. We leave in an hour.’ She knew Mandela was a hero of mine, she knew I was desperate to meet him. It wasn’t lunch at the Sheraton, she figured, there was no way I could refuse. But I did, even though I badly wanted to go. My father was still in jail at the time. ‘I’m not going with you while you’re imprisoning my father,’ I said. She was furious. I was the family’s first grandchild and my father treated me like a little grown-up. I got away with a lot and felt I had the right to speak my mind. I often did and it further distanced me from my aunt. The more I write, the more time that passes, the more my aunt becomes unrecognizable to me.

Papa and I in Geneva. He had broken his arm and I insisted on being fitted with a cast too, which I wore until his came off

Our own informal portraits with Papa joking around while I posed stiffly and seriously