A Season for Martyrs: A Novel (34 page)

“Don’t be silly. It’s my favorite!” She had always tried to watch her weight, what with her propensity for sweets, ice cream, and chocolate, but had given in when she realized that she would never regain the slim, willowy figure of her youth. She’d been interviewed by BBC reporters when she’d been prime minister, and one of them had asked her if she was pregnant again, after Bilawal’s birth.

“No,” she smiled, coolly umoved by the man’s intrusiveness. “I am not pregnant. I am fat. And, as the prime minister, it is my right to be fat if I want to.” That had shut him up, she thought to herself with glee, watching the reporter open and close his mouth several times. She giggled behind her hand when she was alone and thinking what a fool he looked.

They settled down to the meal, she and her closest circle of friends and colleagues, the inner circle, as they were called. Everyone seemed tense: she looked at the drawn, white faces, the hands that were only pushing the food around on their plates as they scanned her face for signs of a sudden loss of nerve. She felt calm, even concerned for those of her party who’d been traveling with her for months now, staying up nights in long vigils. “Please, Adda, relax and eat,” she told the man who was her right hand, a top official in the PPP, and he blushed like a schoolboy being told by his mother to clean his plate.

“Do you want to go over the speech again?” he asked her, trying to cover his embarrassment.

“No, let’s just enjoy the moment,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” But after the meal was over, she took her notes over to the window that overlooked the serene Margalla Hills, and she sat quietly in a large chair, reading them over and over again.
I call on my homeland of Pakistan to come out and fight for Pakistan’s future. I’m not afraid. We cannot be afraid.

There was still time for the post-noon prayer; she got up from her chair, leaving the notes on the table, and went to her bedroom, where she gathered her prayer mat and her
dupatta
. She stood on the mat,
dupatta
draped primly over her head, and began the cycle of prayers, the four
sunnat,
four
farz,
two
sunnat,
two
nafl,
prescribed by the Prophet, peace be upon him. Then she lifted her hands in
dua
and asked God to look after her children, her husband, her ailing mother, her country. Finally, she prayed for her own safety. And for her father’s soul.

I raise both my hands

And ask my children

To raise their little hands

Marvi, of Maru and Malir

In the mists of time

She raised her hands

While the world slept

To God

Full of hope

Praying to see her homeland.

Three o’clock: time to get dressed.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She hated having to wear the bulletproof vest, but her husband and children insisted, as did her head of security. “But it makes me look so fat!” she’d wailed, the first time she’d put it on. She’d grown used to it, eventually, although she couldn’t bear the weight of it, or how much it made her sweat. But when she was out there, in front of her people, listening to their cheers of
Jiye Bhutto! Jiye Bhutto!
and smelling the sweet scent of the rose petals they threw on her path, she forgot everything: physical discomfort, fear, thirst, hunger, heat, and fatigue. She only remembered her father, telling her to be strong.

Opening her closet, she took out the
shalwar kameez
to wear on top of the vest. She’d chosen a peacock-blue tunic: it offset the white
dupatta
perfectly and the silk material brought out the stark contrast of her pale face to her dark hair. The day she’d returned to Pakistan after those eight long years of exile, she’d worn a green one: green for Pakistan, green for Islam, green for the verdant farmland of Sindh. Today she’d chosen blue: honor, dignity, loyalty, serenity. She was no longer as young as she used to be, but she loved herself more: her confidence, her wisdom, the way she carried herself in the world. She smiled, reminded of the feminist diatribes in which she and her friends were so well versed, back in those heady days at Radcliffe when young women were just beginning to get a sense of their own potential.
A woman’s worth is not in her looks, but in her personality, her mind! It’s not youth that matters, but confidence, inner strength, wisdom!
What she would tell those raw, eager girls, if she could go back in time, share with them all the things she’d learned in the
thirty-odd years since she’d been a student. But she could share them with her daughters—there were so many things her girls needed to hear from her.

“Time to go, Lady,” said an aide, when she emerged from her bedroom into the drawing room once again. “It’s three
forty-five. Your car is ready.”

She looked around the room, at the sweeping view of the hills, the afternoon sun sending rays of light that slanted from heaven to earth, illuminating spots of land with the precision of a laser beam. How beautiful! As if God Himself had painted the scene, just for her. It had to be a sign. She was a firm believer in signs: it was all over the Quran, that God had littered the universe with signs of His existence, His power, His mercy.
Verily, in all this there are messages indeed for those who can read the signs.

She closed her eyes, thought once more of her children, said a small prayer. Then Benazir Bhutto gathered up her notes in her hands and called to no one in particular: “Come, let’s go. I don’t want to be late.”

Children: Hear the desert wind

Hear it whisper

Have faith

We will win.

December 27, 2007

RAWALPINDI

“Dammit, I can’t see her.”

The press pit was in the wrong place: Ali craned his neck to get a view of the podium, but it was impossible from behind the crowds, a great sea that stretched from one end of the public park to the other. They wouldn’t stand still; they surged up and down, heads rising, lowering, arms stretched out, people rising to their feet en masse, making Ali feel as though he were on the deck of a ship being tossed on endless waves. “Let’s move around this way.” He urged the cameraman to follow him, and they pushed and shoved their way through the gaps in the crowd till they found a space in which they could not only breathe, but also see Benazir Bhutto as she stood at the podium, waiting to begin her speech.

They were a hundred yards away from the stage, but Ali’s vantage point was better now. He stood on top of a chair and directed the cameraman to start shooting even before she had begun to speak. The podium came midway up her chest, hiding most of her body, but they could see her white
dupatta
slipping from her head, and she had already begun to pull it up with her hands. She would have to perform this trademark maneuver at least two dozen times in the course of her speech, Ali knew from watching previous footage of her: she was too vain to pin it down, preferring to let it slip and slide around her face like a restless sea, while her carefully arranged hair remained visible underneath.

She was watching the crowd with a pleased look, waiting for them to quiet down. Ali thought she looked nervous, a young schoolgirl waiting to give her first speech in the school assembly. There was a sweet smile on her face, and she waved her hands excitedly above her head, stirring up the crowd, who began to cheer and whistle and stamp their feet in approval. Banners bearing the colors of the PPP fluttered in the wind, party workers clutched even more flags and posters in the audience, and the red chairs and red-carpeted stage made it look as though they’d all gathered for the biggest birthday party anyone had ever seen. All that was missing was a gigantic cake and the sound of “Happy Birthday” playing on the PA system, he thought to himself wryly.

She was speaking now, but all they could hear was a muffled whine from the speakers. “Shit,” said Ali to his cameraman, Rasool, who doubled as driver and cameraman for the channel’s Islamabad bureau. Rasool had collected him from the airport at one, then brought him straight here to get in position for the rally. “Can’t hear a thing. Are you picking anything up?”

Rasool strained to hear through his headset, then shook his head. “Let’s go back to the press pit.”

“No way, then we won’t see. Just wait … Ah, that’s better.” Someone had reached forward and adjusted Benazir’s microphone and her voice rang out from all four corners of the park, strong and strident.

“I am happy to be here, to address you, at Liaquat Bagh … Rawalpindi is the home of the brave, of the simple people who are ready to sacrifice their lives for the cause of democracy … I used to live in Rawalpindi and I consider it my second home. When Bhutto Sahib was a minister, I lived here and went to school here. I have seen great happiness, and also great pain …”

“She’s speaking well,” muttered Rasool.

“At least she doesn’t make so many mistakes anymore.” Her lack of Urdu or Sindhi had been a running joke in Pakistan for years, but to Ali it seemed she’d finally conquered her linguistic failings, and had found a working compromise between the heavy political phrases and the simple speech of her heart.

As she went on, Ali faced the camera and addressed a short commentary to its opaque eye. The feed would be sent to Ameena in Karachi; they’d edit it there and package it for the six o’clock news. “We’re here at Liaquat Bagh Park, where Benazir Bhutto is addressing a political rally consisting of her loyal party workers. She’s talking about how Rawalpindi has been the site of many brave sacrifices in the face of dictatorship and authoritarianism. She’s naming some of the prominent party workers who took up the struggle for democracy: Abdul Majeed, Idress Baig, and of course, her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged almost thirty years ago here in Rawalpindi, the scene of many difficult memories for Ms. Bhutto.”

Rasool cut back to filming Benazir; Ali knew that the sight of the woman, in her dark blue tunic, garlands of jasmine and roses around her neck, would make for an arresting visual. She had always been photogenic, but today it seemed as though something else emanated from her: a depth and solidity that he’d never recognized in her before, a gravitas that had little to do with her statuesque frame, but everything to do with her squared shoulders and her strong hands firmly gripping the podium. He wrapped up his remarks for the camera, then stood back and let out a long breath. He took out his phone, shot a text message to his father:
In Islamabad. Benazir rally
. He paused, then pressed the buttons to type out:
She’s speaking very well.

The phone beeped back, almost instantly:
Ok. Take care.

Ali listened to Benazir’s speech carefully, taking each word and measuring it in his mind, trying to regard her as if he’d never seen her or heard of her before. Everyone deserved a fair trial, after all. This was hers, in his mind: her chance to convince him that she was sincere, in this, her third attempt to seek the seat of power.

He heard her description of the travails of the people of Rawalpindi, of her father’s attempts to establish the PPP in the name of the poor, the disenfranchised. And then she said, “Even in the face of all this, you have never left your sister alone … Bhutto Sahib recognized the importance of Rawalpindi. It is the heart of the Punjab, and Punjab is the heart of Pakistan.”

Yes,
thought Ali to himself.
She’s right
. But there was something that she wasn’t saying, and he wanted more than anything to tell her the all-important truth that everyone had forgotten about Pakistan: if Punjab was the heart of Pakistan, then Sindh was its soul.

Benazir put down her notes and stared intently into the crowd. Ali could feel the shiver starting from the top of his head and moving down his arms. He was too far away to be able to meet her eyes, but her intensity reached out and pushed into them all, as if she were alone in a room with each one of them, and taking them into her confidence. The connection between her and them began to sing and hum, as if wires were sparking and growing hot with energy.

“Wake up, my brothers! This country faces great dangers. This is your country. My country! We have to save it.”

The men roared as if they had received an electric shock. To his astonishment, Ali found himself clapping, nodding his head. Even Rasool had put down his camera and was raising his fist in the air.

Benazir continued: “We have to have hope, no matter what. And never surrender.”

The passion was irresistible. The crowd erupted in chants.
Jiye, Bhutto! Jiye Bhutto!
She surveyed the crowd, with an expression that Ali could not begin to recognize, filled with elation, fury, confidence, power. And yet he could see the sadness, like a dab of paint dropped into the clear water that slowly changed it from neutral to a different hue, start to wash from her eyes and color the other emotions struggling on her face.

The speech had ended. She was accepting congratulations from the party workers that surrounded her on the stage. Her smile chased away the clouds on her face, and Ali thought that he had only imagined the wistful look. She began to climb down from the stage, and Rasool was prodding him with his microphone, which he had unknowingly dropped on the ground.

“Ali? Ali, let’s go. Let’s finish up here. Come on. Let’s go!”

“No. No, wait.” Ali rubbed his forehead with his hand. The moments were passing; he might never have this opportunity again. “Let’s follow her. Come on, let’s just get a shot of her leaving.”