Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter'S Memoir (56 page)

Papa’s career was on the up. He was no longer the inexperienced politician that people initially perceived him to be, justly or unjustly, when he returned to the country. He was now seen as a force to be reckoned with.

Mummy, Zulfi and I went away for the summer to visit friends and family in Damascus and Lebanon and Papa and I exchanged our usual letters. Because of the increased violence in Karachi, we spent extra time in Damascus. It was too volatile for us to be in Pakistan, he said, and asked us to remain in Damascus for a little while. In one of the last letters Papa sent me before we returned to Karachi in the winter of 1995 he wrote:

As you know, in our country’s politics people love to introduce you to fortune tellers, ‘holy men’ and the like. I get to meet my share of such people. They then expect me to ask them about
my political future, prospects of power, and so on. Being a firm believer in God, fate and my own abilities, I refuse to do so. I do, however, ask about you and Zulfi (not that I doubt your abilities). Recently I met one such ‘holy man’ and he advised me to always keep you beside me. He told me that even when I reach a position of power I should make sure you are always with me and that I should take your advice and listen to your views. I guess that means kissing university goodbye. I will have to chain you to my desk in whatever office I hold.

I had sent Papa some photographs I found of us during the old exile days and he responded to my excitement over the snapshots.

It was lovely to see the sweet pictures you sent me of when you were a little baby. I have always told you that for me you will always be my little baby. There is nobody more precious and dear for me in this life than you and Zulfi. May God look after you and may you live to be 150 years old. I adore you and love you both very much.

We returned to Karachi and spent the New Year together as a family. Papa harrumphed when I came into the drawing room wearing dark maroon lipstick. ‘Aren’t you a little young for that?’ he asked. I was going to be fourteen that year. I was a grown-up now, I insisted.

1996 passed with Papa building up his party, speaking to young activists and old stalwarts from across the country in the hope of bringing them on board. He had been working night and day and finally, it seemed, things were looking hopeful.

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A
t around 7.30 in the evening on 20 September 1996, four cars left Surjani Town on the outskirts of Karachi and headed back towards Clifton. In front, leading the convoy, was a red double-cabin pick-up truck with four of Murtaza’s guards in it, Mahmood, Qaisar, Rahim and Sattar. At twenty-three, Rahim was the youngest, though his rugged face and prominent moustache made him look older. He had always been politically committed. When I asked his cousin many years later about Rahim’s life before politics, he seemed genuinely baffled at the notion. ‘Before politics?’ he asked. ‘It was always politics.’
¹
But he was, given his young age, also a warm and jovial man; those around him always found Rahim good company.

Sattar had excelled in his studies, graduating with an honours degree in engineering from college in Khairpur. Though he too had always been political, he’d never joined any parties or movements in his youth. The youngest child in his large family, he had grown up wanting to become a teacher. But though he worked for some time as a primary school teacher in his village, he was never to pursue the career he had always dreamed of. In 1995, Sattar was arrested by the police. He had been carrying copies of the PPP (SB) manifesto, along with posters and pamphlets. Sattar was taken to Hyderabad Central Jail – without a warrant, a registered police case or any prior offences to his name – where he was regularly beaten. He spent three months there, never signing any of the ‘confessions’ or repudiations of the new party that the police brought before him. He was, everybody concurred after his release, lucky to have made it out alive.

Qaisar, who sat in the back of the pick-up with Rahim, remembers
the drive back from the rally towards Clifton. ‘The police followed us from the
jalsa
,’ he says, his voice deep and strong. ‘When one police district came to an end, that police car would stop and be immediately replaced by the next one which was waiting for us. They followed us like this, in formation, the whole way.’
²
There had been a large police presence at Surjani Town that evening. ‘There were so many police,’ Qaisar says, nodding when Mahmood estimates that there were some thirty police cars stationed near the area where the public meeting was taking place. ‘They were in the gulleys, behind the stage, ahead of us, on each side. There were, besides the police cars, large trucks and armoured cars but they didn’t put their hands on us then.’

Earlier that day, before leaving for the
jalsa
, Murtaza had spoken to his guards and had been clear regarding the possibility of danger that lay ahead. ‘He explained to us that we might be arrested,’ Qaisar says, his voice unwavering. ‘Don’t resist, he told us. Don’t be afraid, it will be fine. Let them take us in. I’m ready to go to jail.’ Papa’s black briefcase with his books, magazines and papers was in his bedroom. It had been ready for several days. ‘We told Mir
baba
that we would do as he instructed,’ Qaisar says and for the first time I sense a break in his strong, clear intonation. On the drive home, Qaisar and Rahim sat in the open back of the double cabin and watched my father in car behind. ‘He was smiling and laughing,’ Qaisar tells me. ‘He was talking to Ashiq Jatoi the whole time. They looked very happy.’

The second car was Ashiq’s blue Pajero jeep. It was the car he used to drive his children to school and that evening he sat at the wheel with Murtaza next to him. Ashiq too had packed a small bag just in case he was arrested. In the back seat of the Pajero, directly behind Murtaza, sat Yar Mohammad, Papa’s personal bodyguard. Yar Mohammad was in charge of Murtaza’s security, even though he had a master’s degree in political science, it was a job that he did out of his devotion to Murtaza. Yar Mohammad, like Ashiq and many others in the party, had been active in the MRD movement in the 1980s and had spent time in Zia’s prisons for his role in the pro-democracy
agitations against the junta. At thirty-eight he was the oldest of Murtaza’s security detail. Yar Mohammad was tall and distinguished; he often wore dark aviator-style sunglasses and had six children. He was fiercely protective of my father.

Along with Yar Mohammad was Asif Jatoi, Ashiq’s family driver from their ancestral village of Beto in Dadu, and Asghar, a bearer from our house who often travelled with Papa to take care of the food arrangements. Papa would tease Asghar that no matter the weather or the transport, he would always bring Thermoses of hot tea along. Jokes aside, Papa earnestly appreciated Asghar’s domestic arts and often brought him along on his political tours.

A small white Alto drove alongside Murtaza and Ashiq to protect the car. It was part of Yar Mohammad’s security arrangements and carried several party members who had been in the audience at Surjani Town that evening along with Sajjad, another of Benazir’s former MRD workers who had joined Murtaza upon his return to Pakistan. Sajjad was thirty-five years old and had, like Yar Mohammad, named one of his sons Shahnawaz after my uncle. He too had volunteered to be part of Papa’s security detail even though he had recently been elected to the post of the party’s finance secretary for Sindh.

The last car in the convoy was a white jeep belonging to another party member who had joined Murtaza that evening. It carried the last of Murtaza’s five guards, Wajahat. He was thirty-five and single and had an MA in political science. Out of all of Papa’s guards, Wajahat looked the least like a bodyguard. He had curly-ish hair and wore thick wire- and plastic-rimmed glasses. He, like many of the others there that night, came from a middle-class family and his brother remembers him as ‘always being interested in social work’. Wajahat’s brother pauses, then concedes, ‘Though he had always been interested in politics too, we didn’t know how political he had become until it was too late.’
³

As the convoy of cars reached the
Do Talwar
or Two Swords roundabout that marks the main road leading to 70 Clifton, Murtaza noticed that Rangers were prominently stationed near the Caltex petrol station on the main Clifton road and around the roundabout itself.

The street lights had been turned off and Clifton was cloaked in a quiet darkness. The guards of the nearby embassies that lined Clifton road, including the Italian, Iranian and British high commissions, had been visited by the Rangers and police and told to go indoors; their guard posts were eerily empty.

To Murtaza and the men driving back to 70 Clifton with him, the number of police officers stationed in armoured vehicles and cars along the road became increasingly apparent. There were approximately seventy to a hundred policemen there that night: on the roads, blocking traffic, and in sniper positions in the trees. In front of Clifton Park, one house number away from ours, a police car drove in front of Papa’s car and cut it off from the pick-up ahead of it. The police officers’ club, directly across from the park, was surrounded by policemen. They were everywhere.

Asif Jatoi saw their car being separated from the others in the convoy. ‘
Raste band hogaya
,’
⁴
he told me – the path was blocked. Many of Karachi’s most notorious police officers, high-level officials, were present at the scene that night. Shoaib Suddle, an expert in criminology known for his handiwork in Operation Clean-Up, was there, as was Zeeshan Kazmi, a notorious torturer within the Clean-Up team. Wajid Durrani, who led the shooting at Al Murtaza on 5 January, was stationed by the roundabout and his position would become significant as the night progressed. Rai Tahir, Shahid Hayat, Shakaib Qureshi, Masood Sharif – then head of the Federal Intelligence Bureau that reported directly to the Prime Minister’s office – were all said by witnesses to have been on the cordoned-off road that night. Witnesses recalled their heavy-handed presence and survivors remembered their faces. The policemen have always denied any wrongdoing, painting themselves as the unfortunate victims of a law and order situation gone wrong. The police would claim later that they had come to arrest Murtaza. No warrants were ever produced to back up their claims. Fourteen years later and we’ve yet to see a warrant.

Murtaza realized what was happening and rolled down his front window to speak to the police. As he did so, Yar Mohammad opened his door and jumped out of the back seat and stood in front of
Murtaza’s window, placing his body between Murtaza and the police. Murtaza turned his upper body to lean out of the window, holding his arm up. ‘Don’t shoot,’ he said in Urdu to his guards. Yar Mohammad had only just repeated Murtaza’s directive to the guards in Sindhi when a single shot struck him in the forehead. He fell to the ground and died instantly.

Murtaza opened the car door and got out. As he did so, a policeman – reports vary on who it was – yelled ‘Fire!’ and a burst of gunfire rang out in the night. The police were firing wildly from all directions. Ashiq was hit in the arm. From his vantage point in the driver’s seat he could see that they were surrounded.

As soon as the firing started, Sajjad got out of the Alto and ran to cover Murtaza. As he tried to push Murtaza back into the car, he was shot. The bullet hit Sajjad squarely in the chest, in the heart, killing him instantly. Rahim, the youngest of the guards, jumped from the red pick-up which had been separated from Murtaza’s car and ran to replace Sajjad by covering Murtaza with his body. He too was felled with a single sniper shot to the head, dying instantly.

‘They were targeting us,’ Qaisar tells me. ‘Everyone who went to protect Mir
baba
was hit precisely.’ Sattar, who had been in the pick-up with Rahim, had also been shot, but he was still alive. He’d been hit by a single shot to the torso and lay on the road bleeding. ‘Sattar was alive,’ Qaisar remembers. ‘We saw the police kick him to check if he was dead or not. They put their shoes on him. We saw it.’ There’s no greater insult in our culture, being shown a shoe is tantamount to a slap in the face, and for Qaisar to tell me these things, these humiliations that no one had ever told me before, unsettled me and I felt my face flush with anger and my heartbeat quicken. How could I not know this? How were these details kept from me? Wajahat, the last of the guards in the fourth car, was shot in his back, also with a single shot. Three of Papa’s guards were killed instantly, two lay bleeding in the road. Others in the convoy were injured, some badly so, the rest were unharmed but very shaken.

My father had been shot several times. His face had been hit, his beautiful smiling face, and he had superficial wounds on his chest
and arms. None of the shots in the hail of gunfire hurt him seriously. He was still alive.

Ashiq was sitting in the front seat pressing his palms down on the car’s horn. ‘Call an ambulance!’ witnesses heard him shout. He was yelling, screaming, ‘Murtaza Bhutto is injured! Get help!’ But none of the police responded.

Two of the police officers at the scene, Haq Nawaz Sial and Shahid Hayat, both shot themselves in the foot and leg respectively. The police were going to claim that there had been a shoot-out, but it wouldn’t look right that seven men were killed – five of them on the spot and two murdered later, while no policemen had any injuries. Forensics later showed that both men’s wounds were self-inflicted. Furthermore, the ballistics and forensic examination proved that there had been no crossfire. The only spent ammunition came from police-issued weapons. Haq Nawaz Sial later died mysteriously. The police insisted it was suicide, but those close to him insist that he had been killed. No investigation into his death was ever carried out. Shahid Hayat is currently still employed in the police force, as all the others are, in high-level, government-sanctioned posts.

All the wounded, Qaisar, Mahmood, Asif Jatoi and Asghar, who had been shot in the arm, were face down on the road. According to Asif Jatoi there were eight of them. ‘We were made to lie on the footpath,’ he tells me. ‘The police – there were so many of them and they were all armed – turned on the searchlights on one of their vehicles to scan the road and see who was dead and who was alive. A car drove over from
Do Talwar
and surveyed the area too. When they saw it was clear, they came on foot. Rai Tahir, Shukaib Qureshi and Shahid Hayat – still walking at the time – checked the bodies that lay on the street. They kicked the dead with their boots to see if they were moving.’