The date was October 17, 2007. I was in Karachi to report for The Hindu on Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan the next day from her self-imposed exile after striking a deal with General Pervez Musharraf. Through the day busloads of people were pouring into Karachi for the welcome rally. In Dharavi-like Lyari, a traditional Pakistan People's Party stronghold, there was singing and dancing. After a while, I headed towards 70 Clifton, the historic house that Benazir's father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto built, where an entirely different song was playing.
The huge house looked gloomy. I was led in through a large hall to a smaller sitting room, where I met the serious-looking Fatima Bhutto, daughter of Benazir's brother Mir Murtaza, and his (Murtaza's ) widow Ghinwa. Murtaza was shot dead outside this very house on September 20, 1996. Throughout our conversation, both Bhuttos pointedly referred to Benazir as “Mrs. Zardari.”
Fatima was the quieter of the two, letting the Lebanese-born Ghinwa do most of the talking. But she described the people pouring into Karachi that day as “rent-a-crowd”, contrasting this with the spontaneity of the welcome Benazir got on her first homecoming in 1986. Benazir was a second-time Prime Minister when her brother was killed, and Ghinwa and Fatima said they wanted her to “at least take moral responsibility” for the killing.
Tragic
Two months after her return (in 2007), Benazir herself was killed. Her young niece has made sure that in the hagiographic haze over her aunt since her assassination, the story of Mir Murtaza's controversial death during his sister's watch as Prime Minister will not be forgotten.
Songs of Blood and Sword by Fatima Bhutto is a profound love story, and a tribute to Murtaza by a daughter who adored him to bits. It is the immensely sad story of a woman's futile search for closure to the violent death of her father. It is the tragic story of the Bhuttos, whose political aspirations were always at odds with that of the “establishment”, seen by their supporters as the main reason behind four untimely deaths in that family. It is a book that seeks to blame Zardari for Murtaza's killing. And, it is a bitter, angry and unforgiving condemnation of Benazir, seeing all events through the unique prism of the author's love for Murtaza and her dislike, bordering on hatred, of her aunt.
This has led to some problematic and questionably-evidenced assertions in the book. One such is Fatima's conclusion that Mir Murtaza's decision to set up an armed resistance group called ‘Al Zulfikar' against Zia's dictatorship was spurred on by his father from his jail cell; predictably, this has been contested by other members of the Bhutto family. Even though Fatima maintains she does not believe in dynasty, the subtext of her book, oddly, is that Murtaza was the rightful heir to the Bhutto legacy.
Glimpse
The value of the book is that it is perhaps the first about Murtaza and provides a good glimpse of his life, although it does not give much detail about his politics or about the shadowy ‘Al Zulfikar' group that he and his brother set up to fight Zia. It places on record some of the correspondence between Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the second of his four children, giving fresh insights into the life and personality of the founding leader of the Pakistan People's Party. Fatima writes freely of the political rivalry between her father and his sister, describing how her grandmother Nusrat balanced her love for both, but eventually blames Benazir for Murtaza's death. Daniel Lak of the BBC, who was an accidental witness to Nusrat's terrible grief at losing Murtaza, 12 years after Shahnawaz, told me it was one of the most unbearable things he ever saw in Pakistan, describing her wailing as “animal cries.”
Moving
While an Alzheimer-stricken Nusrat may not remember anything now, her granddaughter's vivid account of the events of the day her father was shot dead is both chilling and moving. The poignant story of the frantic and unsuccessful efforts a 14-year-old girl made to reach her aunt, the Prime Minister, on the telephone, and her futile hope — as she waited in the hospital — that her father would emerge alive from the operating theatre lays open the wound of loss, as if it all happened just yesterday.
A commission of inquiry found that Murtaza's killing was a pre-meditated murder by the Karachi police on orders from “the highest level of government.” Zardari and the police officers who stood charged in the case have been acquitted. Fatima points out that on becoming President, Zardari appointed one of those police officers as Intelligence Bureau chief. All in all, this deeply personal and autobiographical book, written with a child's love, anger and helplessness, leaves the reader saddened for both the author and her country.
