THE PRODIGIOUS DAUGHTER The Pakistani political scion was in India recently to launch her new book Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir. HELLO! caught up with the writer for a tête-à- tête on her tumultuous relationship with her family’s history and Shahnawaz, Benazir, Murtaza, Sanam, Nusrat and in Northern , in one of the home country last photographs taken of the family all together

ou can see the blood in her ink as you flip in 1996, her husband was semblance of order in Fatima’s young life. to run her articles, which are highly Ythrough the pages of Fatima Bhutto’s Songs detained for having a part in Murtaza’s Today a highly self-confident journalist, critical of Pakistan’s rulers as if she was an of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir. A hefty assassination. However, no charges were the vivacious and attractive Fatima has independent journalist, which she is not. 450-page campaign for justice, it tells the ever proved for want of evidence, as the wowed newspaper and magazine editors What she is, understandably, is a committed story of a rather traumatic family history. scene of Murtaza’s assassination was wiped in the US, UK and elsewhere for several campaigner out to avenge her father’s Her grandfather, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali clean before police investigators could years with the same ease that Benazir death and, therefore, to damn current Bhutto, was hanged in 1979 by a military arrive. Her father’s killers were never Bhutto charmed them in the past. She is Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari (also dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, after what many brought to justice. When we ask her how no stranger to the West and has a resume her uncle). “You can probably say anything consider to be a kangaroo trial. Her uncle she coped during that period and the not dissimilar to her aunt’s. If Benazir was you like in Pakistan and no one powerful Shahnawaz, 27, was found dead in Nice in subsequent attempts at cover-up by her Harvard, Fatima is Columbia. Benazir: is going to worry because they know you July 1985 under mysterious circumstances, aunt’s then administration, Fatima says, Oxford. Fatima: School of Oriental and can’t do anything about it,” said Fatima in and the Bhutto family firmly believed he had “When you’re faced with violence of that African Studies (SOAS) at the University an interview ahead of the book’s release in been poisoned. No one was brought to trial for the nature, so brutal and so frightening, what of London. If she had fond memories of Delhi. “But if you embarrass them in front murder. Her aunt Benazir too was assassinated in pulled us through that period of fear and moments with her father, unlikely though of their benefactors in the UK and the US, December 2007. Her genealogy – boldly printed on insecurity was a phenomenal amount of it may seem now, she says she’s had a few of that certainly creates a different situation.” the book’s cover – explains it all. It’s clear who is telling love. My mother Ghinwa made sure love those with her aunt Benazir as well. As the While she has denied political ambitions this story and why. A sometimes warm, sometimes chilling was the force we surrounded ourselves first Bhutto child of her generation, she was many times in the past, many in her home account of her violence-scarred family and of Pakistan’s with. She’s a very brave woman, and she often taken for ice cream and read stories country believe she is the rightful heir to a political upheavals over four decades, at its very core the had huge battles ahead of her because she by her aunt. She’s been told she is like dynastic political legacy left behind by her 28-year-old Bhutto’s book is a lyrical ode to the father she wasn’t willing to be silent about injustice.” her aunt several times. But what she once family. However, she avers that she will be loved and lost as a precocious 14-year-old girl. In fact, Ghinwa Bhutto is Fatima’s considered a “compliment” now sounds far from tempted to give politics a shot even Mir , Benazir’s other brother, was stepmother (her parents split when she was like an “admonishment”. if Pakistan were to one day return to some brutally gunned down near his home on 20 still an infant), who met her father while Fatima’s success – and she is a capable sort of peaceful politics. Her family history September 1996 in a police gun battle. On 3 December the family was living in exile in Damascus writer – has been to persuade editors of feudal politics notwithstanding, dynasty 2009, a Karachi court acquitted 20 policemen charged and . Ghinwa, a Syrian-Lebanese ranging from Tina Brown’s Daily Beast could still be her destiny. with the killing. After Benazir’s government was dismissed and former ballet dancer, brought some website in the US to the New Statesman in Extracts from the interview: 44 45

HELLO! MAY 2010 HELLO! MAY 2010 ‘I’m a Bhutto. I’m writing about people I lived with, people I loved. It’s an insider’s look at a family and a country. That said, Songs of Blood and Sword isn’t a diary account of this family and country. It’s a journalist’s book’

Wadi Bua was a brave, vulnerable woman on a quest that she risked her life to be a part of. Benazir, the Prime Minister, was a woman enraptured by power who sacrificed her principles to be a part of a corrupt and oppressive system. They are two very different people for me.” You’ve very publicly held your aunt and uncle “morally responsible” for your father’s murder. Asif Zardari is now Pakistan’s president. How did you react to the news when you heard it? “It’s not the first time criminals have come to lead nations, so I can’t say I was shocked, but I was very sad for my country.” Did you ever discuss your father’s murder with her? “Yes. It made her very angry.” When people make comparisons to your aunt, do they trouble you? “I feel it’s cosmetic and very superficial to say, ‘Oh you’re both women, you both lost your fathers, you’re both blah, blah...’ but we are very different people. We have totally different political ideologies, philosophies, backgrounds and lives.” What compelled you to write Songs of Blood and Sword? I read somewhere that you’d promised your father you would One of Fatima’s favourite pictures is this one of her and Murtaza taken in Geneva, where she got a write a book on his life? cast only because her father had one too. Some informal portraits (right) “Yes, that was my last promise to my father, made hours before he was killed.” Can you take us back to your earliest lambasting your aunt after he was killed. – he named the book Whispers of the Desert The cover is quite chilling when it says memory of your father growing up? Tell us about that period. – and ended after his murder. My aunt, ‘granddaughter to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, “He was the light of my young life. It was my “I started writing poetry when I was very when she found out I was speaking to executed 1979’, ‘daughter of Mir Murtaza father who cut my hair and dressed me up young, 11 years old. My father read my Oxford University Press for publishing the Bhutto, assassinated 1996’ and ‘niece to for school and did my homework with me, poems and was very encouraging – he collection, suggested that I let her publish , assassinated 2007’. Was but he was also my best friend. We used to always supported me and really pushed me the poems. I obviously refused.” this gory history lesson intentional? have water fights, play silly pranks on each to keep working on the poetry. It was after Talking about your aunt Benazir, what are “Well, publishers have design teams other, write plays for each other to star in… his death that I wrote some poems about your thoughts on her book Daughter of the and they are the ones who put covers my father created a world filled with love my father’s murder as a way of dealing with East? Did you relate to it at all? together not the authors. But certainly and laughter for me as a child. I was very the pain, as a form of grieving. But Karachi “I was very young when I read it. I related one of the things that stood out to me lucky. One of my favourite pictures, which I at that time, during my aunt’s second term to the fact that this was a woman who when I was starting this book was that included in the book, is a photo of my father in power, was a very frightening place. It watched a state kill her father…but then, it’s once every decade that a member of with his arm in a sling – he had broken it – was a bloody city and my poetry was a way she was able to do the same thing to her this family is killed. They do not die of While in India for her book and I wanted one too so off we marched to of dealing with that fear.” own brother.” natural causes. They do not live to see launch, Fatima dressed in the doctor and got a sling for my arm. The How did your aunt and people around you You’ve mentioned that there were two their children grow and prosper. There Maharashtrian silk sarees for photograph has both of us sitting together react to that book? Benazirs you knew…one was Wadi Bua and is a violence that is constant and it’s the Mumbai and Pune launches, in our slings laughing.” “The people around me were very the other was this political figure with few simply not acceptable.” and a South Indian silk one for You published a book of poems at nurturing, they knew it was a project that morals. Did you ever reconcile the two? When did you start writing/ the Bangalore one. “A good 14, lamenting your father’s death and had started with my father’s encouragement “I don’t know if they can be reconciled. researching the book? cultural relations strategy, don’t 46 you think?” she says 47

HELLO! MAY 2010 HELLO! MAY 2010 ‘I love Karachi, it’s a ‘I’m a real homebody. place I carry always I love spending time in my heart. But at home with my it’s a troubled city. brothers and mother, Sometimes it frightens having friends over me, sometimes it saddens me, but it’s for dinner and sitting home so I could never around chatting and leave it’ watching movies’

“Six years ago, I was in London has to suffer their excesses silently studying for my Masters degree – that we say those excesses are [at SOAS], and I realised that I not acceptable.” was ready to start the search. I Tell us about your life in Pakistan… was an adult, independent, and what is your relationship like with the time had come for me to start your hometown Karachi? the process of finding people and “I love Karachi, it’s a place I carry asking questions. It was a journey. It with me always in my heart. But it’s a had to be done thoroughly but also troubled city. Sometimes it frightens at its own pace. So it was in 2004 that me, sometimes it saddens me, but I started what was a bit of a private it’s home so I could never leave it.” detective search for people from my Do you ever fear for your life there, father’s past.” especially now with the kind of press One reviewer described the book your book is getting you? A portrait of Ghinwa and Murtaza Bhutto taken while in court “as a monument to the father she “I think there are risks. There are idolised,” while another said it was people who will go to no end to t was past eight in the evening and he I responded. Satisfied with my grunts and decidedly partisan. How do you obscure the truth. But silence is Ishould have been back home, but we tried promises that everything was fine, the ADC view your work? more dangerous.” not to worry. I grew more agitated with every put me on hold. “I’m a Bhutto. I’m writing about What do you love about Karachi? minute. Not for one instant did I imagine Papa The music on the other end of the line was people I lived with, people I loved, And what do you feel let down by had been hurt. Maybe he had been arrested soon interrupted by a click and silence. ‘Hello? people I knew up close. It’s an in the city? and the firing was the police signalling their Wadi?’ I said, calling my aunt the name only I insider’s look at a family and a “I love the spirit of the city – it’s a victory. I worried out loud – there had been used for her. ‘No, she can’t come to the phone country. That said, Songs of Blood survivor. It’s beautiful underneath a lot of gunfire, more than the typical burst right now,’ came the reply. It was Zardari. It and Sword isn’t a diary account of the surface, beautiful because of its of bullets one heard in Karachi in those days. was no secret that none of us in the family liked this family and country – it took me people, its energy, its possibility. I ‘Don’t worry, Fati,’ said Zulfi as he swung Asif Zardari, my aunt’s oleaginous husband. six years to research. I interviewed don’t feel let down by the city, I feel playfully behind Papa’s green armchair, ‘it’s On the few social occasions where I saw him, policemen, judges, journalists, let down by those who have taken only fireworks.’ It must have been close to we shared nothing other than a cursory hello. politicians, both allies and critics over and transformed my beautiful nine, forty-five minutes later, when I’d had ‘I need to speak to my aunt,’ I said tersely, of my family, and travelled across city into something dangerous enough. I couldn’t wait any longer. I told not quite wanting to speak to Zardari. ‘You four continents. It’s a journalist’s and hard.” Mummy I was calling my aunt, the Prime can’t,’ he replied, equally brusque. ‘It’s very book. There are pages of footnotes Do you have much of a social Minister. By that point I was convinced that important, I need to speak to her now.’ ‘She and bibliography. So I find both life there? Benazir had had Papa arrested and I wasn’t can’t come to the phone right now,’ Zardari statements funny!” “It fluctuates really. But I’m a real going to sit by while my father was taken to replied. ‘It’s very important and I don’t want How has your book been received homebody. I love spending time at jail. I picked up the red intercom phone and to talk to you, I need to talk to her,’ I insisted, in Pakistan? You launched it just home with my brothers and mother, asked whoever answered in the office to my voice quickening. I had wasted enough before coming to India. having friends over for dinner and connect me to the Prime Minister’s residence time on this phone call already. ‘She can’t “I launched it first in Karachi, it was sitting around chatting and watching in Islamabad. ‘Don’t take no for an answer,’ I speak, she’s hysterical,’ Zardari replied. As if very important for me to launch movies. Otherwise, I’m a real nerd. said fiercely. ‘I have to speak to Wadi.’ on cue, there was a loud wailing sound in the Songs of Blood and Sword first in my I love old book stores and rifling The phone rang minutes later, much background. It had been quiet before, with country. We launched the book in through book bazaars that pop up sooner than I thought it would. It was usually no indication that anyone was in the room the park outside which my father around the city on weekends.” a considerable hassle getting through to the with Zardari, and all of a sudden there was an and six of his associates were killed You’ve denied political ambitions Prime Minister, even – or especially – if she almost desperate crying shattering the silence. and hundreds of people came. It was many times in the past. But don’t was your wadi bua, or father’s elder sister in ‘What? No, I have to speak with her, please very heartening.” you think a voice like yours needs Sindhi. I picked it up and was placed on the put her on the phone,’ I continued, growing What do you hope to achieve with to be heard on a more political line with the Prime Minister’s aide-de-camp. confused at what seemed like a theatrical the book? platform in Pakistan? I sat down in Papa’s armchair to take the attempt to keep me from talking to the one “Justice. Justice is not about blood “Writing is political so is activism, call. ‘Hello, bibi, is everything all right?’ The person who was in charge. ‘Oh, you don’t for me, it’s not about revenge. It’s but they are free of constraints. You ADC sounded shaky, scared even. I didn’t know?’ Zardari responded. ‘Your father’s about memory and history. It’s are not beholden to anyone, free to know whom I was speaking to – we certainly been shot.’ about making sure that through speak openly and critically. We didn’t have a relationship, this ADC and I. talking about the violence and need more of that, not less!” H Seven-year-old Fatima ‘Yes, everything’s fine. Can I speak to my aunt Excerpted from Songs of Blood and Sword: corruption of those in power we with her Wadi Bua in TEXT: ZAHRA KHAN Larkava during her first please?’ I was curt, but he kept speaking. ‘Is A Daughter’s Memoir by Fatima Bhutto, with prevent them from hiding their PHOTOS: BENJAMIN LOYSEAU your family OK? Is everything fine?’ Yes, yes, permission from Penguin India. crimes. We ensure that no one Family PHOTOS: PENGUIN INDIA visit to Pakistan 48 49

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