Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter'S Memoir (27 page)

Murtaza clowning around in Karachi during his college days

Benazir, Shahnawaz, Murtaza and Sanam Bhutto in Shanghai, China

Murtaza and Bill White at their Harvard graduation

Police arresting a student in Lahore during General Zia ul Haq’s martial law

Workers of Pakistan People’s Party chanting slogans ‘
Bhutto Ko Raha Karo
’ ‘Free Bhutto’ in Thatta, Sindh

Nusrat after being attacked at Gaddafi stadium in Lahore during a protest

Murtaza campaigning for his father in Larkana during the 1977 elections

Shahnawaz in Kabul

Murtaza leading a rally of the Toronto chapter of the Save Bhutto Committee (Photograph courtesy Milbry Polk

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I
n Pakistan, Nusrat and Benazir were being shuttled between jail and house arrest in Karachi and Larkana. Whenever a moment of political uncertainty approached, the junta locked them up, setting them free only when the tension had passed. One afternoon while in Al Murtaza house in Larkana, I decided to clear out some space for my books and started rummaging around in the old closets in my room, where I came across a stack of old registers. I dusted them off and opened them gingerly to find that they were Benazir’s diaries and notebooks from this period. The diaries were only sporadically dated and were written between the autumn of 1979 and sometime in 1981.

Like the Benazir I knew in life, the entries in the notebooks are conflicting and divergent. They often read as though they have been written by two entirely different people. A letter from 18 November to the jail superintendent at Larkana who oversaw Benazir’s house arrest is fierce and bold.

For several days I have not been feeling well. When my health worsened yesterday, I asked for a doctor. Twenty-four hours have passed but no doctor has come. Is it part of your policy to ensure that political detenus [sic] should be so maltreated? You better look into your Jail Manual for Allah and the people of Pakistan will judge you according to your duties . . . Your attention is also drawn to the fact that a) reading material has been illegally stopped from reaching me; b) eatables are being stopped by the Frontier Force from reaching me; c) writing material has been stopped
from reaching me; d) my sister informed me that my lawyer has not been allowed to visit me.

But another note written in her register displays a different sort of prisoner. ‘There are so many mosquitos around. Waking at noon. Massage for an hour. Lunch. Massage for another hour. Wash up. Dress. Make up. Read a book. Tea at four. Feed the deer. Walk. Wash the windows or walls. Play Scrabble. Read a bit. Dinner at 8:00. Read/Scrabble. What a waste.’
¹

There is the Benazir who suffered the horrific death of her father and saw herself as a political apprentice, hungrily pulling together shreds of local knowledge and political notes, names and dates. ‘A couple of evenings ago, we decided to draw up a tentative cabinet,’
²
Benazir writes in her tight cursive script. Another day she draws up a list of local bodies’ leaders, noting names and by how many votes each man had secured his position. At other times, she writes of her father and Zia: ‘With the end of term of the corps commanders in March, it seems that Zia won’t be able to “settle things” in his narrow personal way until at least then. That bloody murderer, the
Yazid
of the twentieth century.’
³

Then there is the Benazir who is generally easy-going, sounding more like someone on a life enhancement course rather than under house arrest. ‘It took ages to mate the good quality roses,’ she writes on 14 November, days before her letter to the jail superintendent. ‘Made buddings of the blue rose and have called it Machiavelli the Blue Prince, the yellow rose is the Blonde Borgia, the maroon red velvet Enchantress’ and so on and so forth. Three days later she notes, ‘Today they stopped candy floss, food from
Bua’s
(aunt) and any other cooked food from coming to us.’

And then at other times, she is a bit of both. Complicated, infinitely so, and manipulative. ‘Sugar,’ Benazir starts, writing on a Friday, ‘came meowing at the window demanding to be let in. She had caught a mouse which she wished to show us. Sugar behaves like a human so often. It’s almost as if she can communicate. Sunny’ – Sanam, her younger sister – ‘came on the 23rd. Was rude and upset

me. Her selfishness knows no bounds. She does not think what it is like for us to be cooped up. What would it have cost her to be polite?’
⁴
Or else, she is ominous. On an undated page, Benazir summarizes a book she has recently read. ‘The man who reached the top reaches it by
climbing
. . .
The qualities of a leader:
he observes. He reads. He listens. He thinks’ (he does a lot of stuff). ‘
Advertising
when you advertise, write as you talk. A well-written advertisement, with a striking illustration and a good headline, placed in the right publication, has the best impact.’

The choice of Kabul was made for Murtaza. His father directed him to Afghanistan in his last letter, knowing that to be there was to be as close as possible to Pakistan. ‘There is a historical tradition of exile in Pakistan,’ explains Suhail, who joined Murtaza in Kabul that September. ‘During the Khilafat movement in the subcontinent around the Second World War there was a fighter named Obaid Ullah Sindhi – he too was Sindhi – who based his resistance against the British Empire from Kabul.’
⁵

There is also a family tradition of exile in the northern borders of Afghanistan. Murtaza’s great-grandfather, Ghulam Murtaza Bhutto, after whom he was named, had been carrying on with the wife of a British commissioner during the Raj. When their dalliance was discovered, Ghulam Murtaza fled to Kabul and was received as a guest of the city’s Emir. He was eventually offered a peace by the British (and his lover’s husband) and returned to Larkana, where he was promptly killed.

As well as the Bhutto connection, Afghanistan was full of Baloch and Pushtun nationalists banished by the federal government. It was a country that shared a cultural and religious affinity with Pakistan, even some ethnic heritage, and it was considered a far more manageable option for Pakistani exiles than India or Bangladesh.