Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter'S Memoir (6 page)

It was evening. Mummy was in the kitchen cooking and I went into my parents’ bedroom and sat with Zulfi as he watched TV on the bed. He was a little child then and was always so easy to take care of with his easy-going and affectionate nature. We were lazily watching
Lost in Space
, a show made in the 1960s about missing astronauts; there was nothing else on. Zulfi was lying down on his stomach, his head in his hands, and I sat on Papa’s side of the king-size bed, reclining and resting my head against the headboard. It was close to eight when the intercom phone rang. It was Nurya, a girl from my ninth-grade class at the Karachi American School. She was calling to arrange for us to meet over the weekend to discuss a school history project. I slumped down, leaning against the bed but sitting on the floor with my knees bent talking to Nurya. We were speaking when I heard the gunfire. It was a single shot and it sounded very close. I moved the phone from my ear and waited to see if Zulfi had heard it.

The sound was still ringing in my ears when several seconds later, the echo of the first shot was interrupted by a barrage of bullets. They were coming from right outside the window; I could hear the shooting as if the guns were firing over our heads. ‘Nurya, I’ll call you back!’ I screamed into the phone. I leapt across the bed and pulled Zulfi into my chest. He was so close to the window and though I had no idea what was happening, I knew that was the one dangerous position to be in in the event of gunfire. I carried him, skinny six-year-old Zulfi, into the dressing room, a small windowless corridor. I slammed the door shut and went over to the bathroom door. The bathroom had
windows and connected to the dressing room. I closed the door tightly before sitting down with my back against the wall. Zulfi was small and gentle. His shiny black hair was parted neatly across his head. His bird-like features betrayed his sudden fear and confusion. While the shooting lasted, five minutes at the very least, and with no pause in the crack of the bullets, Zulfi huddled against me. I hugged him and pushed his face into my arms and chest, as if I could protect him from the sound. ‘Where’s Mummy?’ I didn’t know. I hoped she was still in the kitchen, it faced the other side of the house and the gunfire wouldn’t have been as close to her as it was to us.

We waited for a few seconds. It had stopped. I told Zulfi to wait for me; I was going to check where our mother was. As I stood up, Mummy burst into the bedroom screaming. ‘We’re here!’ I yelled and she threw open the door to the dressing room instantly pulling me into her arms and pulling Zulfi up off the floor. ‘Let’s go to the drawing room,’ Mummy said, breathing quickly. It too had no windows and was not as confined as the yellow dressing room we had been hiding in.

We sat in the drawing room for close to half an hour, waiting. The shooting had stopped and we asked our
chowkidar
, our gatekeeper, to check outside and tell us what had happened. The area was thronged with police, he said. They wouldn’t let him out of the house. ‘There’s been a robbery, there are
dacoits
outside,’ the police told the
chowkidar
. ‘Stay inside until it’s safe.’ Mummy sat on the sofa in the drawing room with her hands to her face. I paced up and down the room. There were no mobile phones in Pakistan then. They had been banned by the democratic government (who managed to keep a few for themselves before closing down the market for the rest of the country). We had no way of reaching Papa and no choice but to wait for him, patiently.

It was past eight in the evening and he should have been back home, but we tried not to worry. I grew more agitated with every minute. Not for one instant did I imagine Papa had been hurt. Maybe he had been arrested and the firing was the police signalling their victory. I worried out loud – there had been a lot of gunfire, more
than the typical burst of bullets one heard in Karachi in those days. ‘Don’t worry, Fati,’ said Zulfi as he swung playfully behind Papa’s green armchair, ‘it’s only fireworks.’ It must have been close to nine, forty-five minutes later, when I’d had enough. I couldn’t wait any longer. I told Mummy I was calling my aunt, the Prime Minister. By that point I was convinced that Benazir had had Papa arrested and I wasn’t going to sit by while my father was taken to jail. I picked up the red intercom phone and asked whoever answered in the office to connect me to the Prime Minister’s residence in Islamabad. ‘Don’t take no for an answer,’ I said fiercely. ‘I have to speak with Wadi.’

The phone rang minutes later, much sooner than I thought it would. It was usually a considerable hassle getting through to the Prime Minister, even – or especially – if she was your
wadi bua,
or father’s elder sister in Sindhi. I picked it up and was placed on the line with the Prime Minister’s aide-de-camp. I sat down in Papa’s armchair to take the call. ‘Hello,
bibi
, is everything all right?’ The ADC sounded shaky, scared even. I didn’t know whom I was speaking to – we certainly didn’t have a relationship this ADC and I. ‘Yes, everything’s fine. Can I speak to my aunt please?’ I was curt, but he kept speaking. ‘Is your family OK? Is everyone fine?’ Yes, yes, I responded. Satisfied with my grunts and promises that everything was fine, the ADC put me on hold.

The music on the other end of the line was soon interrupted by a click and a silence. ‘Hello? Wadi?’ I said, calling my aunt the name only I used for her. ‘No, she can’t come to the phone right now,’ came the reply. It was Zardari. It was no secret that none of us in the family liked Asif Zardari, my aunt’s oleaginous husband. On the few social occasions where I saw him, we shared nothing other than a cursory hello. ‘I need to speak to my aunt,’ I said tersely, not wanting to speak to Zardari. ‘You can’t,’ he replied, equally brusque. ‘It’s very important, I need to speak with her now.’ ‘She can’t come to the phone right now,’ Zardari replied. ‘It’s very important and I don’t want to talk to you, I need to talk to her,’ I insisted, my voice quickening. I had wasted enough time on this phone call already. ‘She can’t speak, she’s hysterical,’ Zardari replied. As if on cue, there was a loud wailing
sound in the background. It had been quiet before, with no indication that anyone was in the room with Zardari, and all of a sudden there was an almost desperate crying shattering the silence. ‘What? No, I have to speak with her, please put her on the phone,’ I continued, growing confused at what seemed like a theatrical attempt to keep me from talking to the one person who was in charge. ‘Oh, don’t you know?’ Zardari responded. ‘Your father’s been shot.’

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T
he Bhutto family, it is said, originated in the deserts of Rajasthan and was swept over time onto the banks of the River Indus in Sindh. Mitho Jo Mikam, a small village in between Mirpur and Garhi Khuda Bux, is where the Bhuttos first settled in Sindh. The village was named after its original settler, a fierce Rajput warrior. Rajputs, from the Sanskrit
Rajputra
or son of a king, hailed from Northern India and were known for belonging to the Kshatriya or warrior castes. They trace their lineage as far back as the sixth century and had historical dalliances with the Mughals and with the British through the Indian army. Mitho Jo Mikam fled Rajasthan, they say, due to a family feud. It is ironic that the Bhuttos of Pakistan managed to mould themselves out of a feud in the family, but fitting nonetheless.

As they settled across the province of Sindh, some Bhuttos scattering as far south as Thatta and others further north in the Punjab, Mitho Jo Mikam made a name for himself and his tribe settling land disputes. Whenever a problem occurred between two land tillers, one would invariably reach out to Mikam, who easily out-bullied the larger of the two bullies and settled the dispute, usually in exchange for land or a gift of produce.

Though they were only a minor tribe, it was water that serendipitously brought the Bhuttos into local prominence. Some time after the Mughal era, when the British were running India as they once ran the East India Company, the Raj found that it needed help managing large tracts of unirrigated land. In Begari, Jacobabad, on the border between Balochistan and upper Sindh, there was a large
watercourse, a
vah
in Sindhi, that had not yet been made into a canal. The water was open and abundant. At the time, however, there were no large
zamindar
in Sindh to exploit the water and till the land around it. The government wasn’t terribly fussed over who the land should belong to, but was certain that it didn’t want to take on the trouble of cultivating the open land alongside the large
vah
, so it offered up a challenge: anyone with enough manpower and guts to try was welcome to the land.

In stepped Doda Khan. Doda Khan believed himself a Rajput if ever there was one. He had four able sons and the warrior blood of their ancestors had not yet been diluted by their exile. Doda Khan called his sons forward and together they rounded up Bhuttos from across the province – if you can cultivate it, it’s yours. That was the promise. And so the Bhuttos came. Many men were wounded in battles over the control of the
vah
and the land, but they fought on. The nearby Baloch, themselves inflated with a proud warrior tradition, would not let the land go easily. And so they fought.

The Bhuttos fought and suffered casualties; wounded men who were returned to the villages were replaced on the battlefront by Bhuttos from other areas. They battled, led by Doda Khan, the brains behind the operation and not an easy man to confront, until the Bhuttos had secured themselves land that stretched fifty to eighty miles from Naudero, near Larkana, to the Sindhi–Baloch border in Garhi Khairo in Jacobabad. In those days the Bhuttos believed it was taboo to sell the land they had fought so hard to possess and so their holdings grew and grew. Ashiq Bhutto, a debonair man who was once a model with striking good looks until a devastating car accident robbed him of his career, and a cousin of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, told me the legend of Doda Khan. ‘You’re now known as the Bhuttos of Larkana, but make no mistake – the Bhuttos were all over the place in those days and most of the land was in Jacobabad, well, until Zulfi’s land reforms changed that.’
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Finally, the tribe settled into three areas, led by three distinct branches. In Garhi Khuda Bux, you have the Bhuttos of Larkana. In Garhi Bhutto there is the line that traces down from Ilahi Bux, down to Ashiq’s family and his brother, Mumtaz, the
sardar
or chieftain of
the Bhutto tribe currently. In the third town of Naudero, Amed Khan, the only son of the very wealthy Rasool Bux, carried the local Bhutto line. The three towns are within sprinting distance of each other, a worrying fact since Bhuttos are not known to share easily (or at all).

In a corridor in Ashiq’s house in Clifton there are photographs of all the Bhutto ancestors. The walls on both sides of the corridor are covered with photographs of the Garhi Bhuttos: Ilahi Bux, his son Pir Bux, his grandson, Wahid Bux who later became the Sardar, down to his son and Ashiq’s father, Nabi Bux. There are photographs of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as a young man, with his cousins, a photograph of my father Murtaza wearing a leather jacket, and pictures of Ashiq’s three beautiful daughters.

At the very end of the corridor, far away from prying eyes, is a little piece of Doda Khan. Ashiq shows it to me one sweltering Karachi summer morning. It is a certificate on paper so old, it has greyed. In sunburnt brown ink that must have once been red, it reads: ‘By command of his Excellency the Viceroy and Governor General, this certificate is presented in the name of her Most Gracious Majesty Victoria, Empress of India, to Doda Khan Bhootta in recognition of his loyalty and good service as a landholder.’ It is signed by the Viceroy and dated 1 January 1877. Uncle Ashiq turns to me and says, ‘I don’t like the bit about “loyalty” to the British, so I keep it here out of the way.’ And behind a rather large and leafy plant.

And so the Bhuttos multiplied, aided by the powerful empire of their time. The myriad of Bhuttos from the three branches continued to receive accolades from the Queen and presents of titles and land from the Raj. Rasool Bux, of the Naudero Bhuttos, had a ferocious reputation. He was a stout man with short white hair and a stubbly white beard. In a photograph on Uncle Ashiq’s wall, Rasool Bux is captured sitting on a simple chair in trousers, boots and what seems to be a long-sleeved undershirt. He is holding a conspicuously large hunting rifle in one hand and a dead deer, its throat bleeding, lies in front of his feet. In family lore there is a story about Rasool Bux, who bore only one son – the very rich Amed Khan. He had a particularly nasty habit of swearing; he cursed everyone in sight and everything
that crossed his path. One day, his
munshi
or land manager, a poor man who had crept into his good graces through years of servitude, approached him. ‘
Sain
’, ‘Sir’, he asked, ‘please don’t get angry at me, but could I ask a favour?’ Rasool Bux grunted. The
munshi
continued, ‘Could you possibly go an afternoon without cursing? I’ll offer prayers to Allah and all the saints in your honour if you would.’ Rasool Bux held his tongue. ‘And if I swear?’ ‘Then you will have to give me five months’ pay, but if you don’t,
sain,
then you can dock five months off my salary.’ Rasool Bux, the story goes, was endeared into the deal by his affection towards the loyal
munshi
and agreed. He finished his morning tea and headed off to take a bath. Five minutes later, as he lathered his face and began to shave Rasool Bux burst out into a barrage of swearwords: ‘
Haram zada!
You bastard! How dare you try to fleece money off me? Take your money you swine but the next time you try to play funny with me I’ll kill you!’

Then there was Ghulam Mir Murtaza Bhutto, my father’s great-grandfather and the man after whom he was named, the forebear of the Garhi Khuda Bux Bhuttos. They say he was a handsome man, dashing and charismatic. They also say he was having an affair with the white wife of a British emissary. Some debate remains over whether the woman was indeed a hundred per cent white or Anglo-Indian (‘they acted even whiter than the whites,’ Uncle Ashiq insists), but regardless it was a torrid affair. It was said in our family that the woman’s husband found out about the illicit dalliance and one afternoon invited Ghulam Murtaza to his house, where he offered him some refreshments. Ghulam Murtaza, not one to refuse the hospitality of a host, even a host whose wife he was planning to run away with, accepted graciously. He died shortly after the meeting; poisoned to death, legend has it.