The Bhuttos and their books by Saba Imtiaz

Over the past four decades, the name Bhutto has come to symbolize -- depending on which version of history you believe -- Pakistan. It has become our lot in life to obsess over the Bhuttos, discuss their macabre deaths -- Zulfikar was hanged, Shah Nawaz poisoned, Murtaza and Benazir shot -- and wonder how many more Bhuttos will come to rule over Pakistan.

The latest author to chronicle the Bhuttos is Fatima Bhutto, Murtaza's daughter and the much-fawned over columnist and poet whose book, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir, was recently released in Pakistan, India, and the United Kingdom. Songs of Blood and Sword is Fatima's attempt at writing a memoir of her father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who died in 1996 when the Karachi police fired on his convoy while his sister, Benazir Bhutto, was prime minister.

On first read, this memoir often feels like a rehash of Daughter of the East, Benazir Bhutto's 1988 autobiography that documented her life in prison under General Zia ul-Haq's regime and the events that preceded it, including her father being hanged by Haq's administration, simply because Fatima is as defensive of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's domestic and foreign policies as Benazir was.

But Fatima Bhutto's grief is palpable on every page -- anyone who has lost a parent can empathize with her pain, and anyone who hasn't will still commiserate. But in her attempt to document her father's life from his birth to his years in exile in Syria from the early 1980s and eventual return to Pakistan in 1993, Fatima tries to wipe the slate clean and goes down the same route that Benazir did in Daughter of the East: selectively using quotes from those who agree with her worldview.

Fatima traces Murtaza's history and finds witty gems and beautiful ex-girlfriends as she travels to Boston and Athens to discover her father's life. She finds professors reminiscing about their talented young student, and old friends sharing anecdotes and letters written by Zulfikar to Murtaza.

She writes at length about their shared memories, their bond as father and daughter, strengthened further by the fact that he brought her up almost single-handedly, since her parents divorced shortly after Shah Nawaz Bhutto's death. Fatima's account of their life in Damascus is poignant, peppered with their shared interests, anecdotes of Murtaza's boisterous sense of humor and conversations about life and love. These parts are engaging, make for a compelling read and deserve to be documented. He writes a poem to her in a letter while he was in jail, excerpted here:

Here is a small one on Wadi [Benazir] and Slippery Joe [presumably Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir's husband]
Inky, Pinky, Ponky
Her husband is a donkey
Both loot the country
Her husband is a monkey
Inky, Pinky, Ponky.

Fatima also paints a chilling narrative of the night Murtaza was shot dead along with several of his supporters, an account that explains why this book is laden with not-so-quiet rage. In the epilogue, she writes of an occasion when President Asif Ali Zardari and his entourage were being received at the British consulate, close to Fatima's residence, as she stood at the same spot her father had been shot. "Here I was, standing where my father was murdered, and the man who I believe was in part responsible for the execution was across the road from me, being received diplomatically. I felt my knees buckle. I sat down on the curb."

She transports the reader back to the streets of Karachi and the frenzied scenes in the hospital where doctors tried to save Murtaza's life. It is the story of yet another Bhutto trying to come to terms with yet another strange and unexpected death, the fourth in as many decades. These are the losses that have shaped Pakistan's history to a great extent and will be an influential factor for the foreseeable future.

But given that this is a grieving daughter's memoir of her father who was killed at the young age of 42, it is clear that she does not intend to criticize his actions in any way. Fatima Bhutto glosses over the time he spent in Libya as a guest of Colonel Gaddafi or in Kabul, as the alleged head of the Al-Zulfikar Organization (AZO) that was set up to avenge the death of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Unsurprisingly, Murtaza is absolved of all responsibility for AZO. The famed 1981 hijacking of a Pakistan International Airlines plane in Kabul that AZO took credit for is explained differently. Fatima quotes a friend of Murtaza's extensively, who claims that the hijacker, Salamullah Tipu, was not a member of the AZO and that Murtaza was actually negotiating with the hijackers to release the women and children on board. It is an account that is widely disputed by former members of the AZO (Raja Anwar, The Terrorist Prince, 1997).

But in this new episode in the saga of the Bhutto dynasty that Fatima has chronicled, the blame -- as well as the acerbic barbs and the retorts -- are all directed at her aunt Benazir Bhutto. Fatima criticizes Benazir from her choice of room décor at the Bhuttos' Karachi residence to Benazir's decision to wear a head scarf and her wit -- anecdotes all dissected to form a portrayal of a self-centered, power-hungry woman who Fatima squarely holds responsible for everything that has gone wrong in the Bhutto dynasty.

In her quest to absolve Murtaza of lingering criticism surrounding his name and paint Benazir as the "bad guy," Fatima blames her aunt for everything from Murtaza's incarceration after he returned from exile, to alienating Nusrat Bhutto, Benazir's mother and Fatima's grandmother, from the PPP and being hungry for power. She does share anecdotes of her memories with her aunt, but writes that "since we returned to Pakisan I had seen a different, ugly side of my aunt," citing an incident where Fatima asked her to visit Murtaza in jail with her and Benazir refused, saying "I couldn't get permission from the jail to come." Fatima couldn't fathom this, given that Benazir was prime minister at the time, and writes, "I couldn't shift the blame from her any more. She was involved. She was running the show." The final blow came after Murtaza's death, when Benazir reportedly called his widow, Ghinwa, a ‘bellydancer' from the ‘backwoods of Lebanon.' Fatima writes, "After Papa was killed, I never saw that old Wadi again. She was gone."

In her quest though, Fatima even attempts to hold Benazir responsible for the death of Shah Nawaz, Benazir and Murtaza's brother, who died under rather strange circumstances in France in 1985. (While the Bhutto family was on holiday in Cannes, where Shah Nawaz lived with his wife and daughter, they was alerted by his wife one morning that Shah Nawaz had "taken something" (p.250, Daughter of the East). They discovered he was dead, allegedly having taken poison, but the Bhutto family believes he was murdered while his wife was charged (and then cleared) of not assisting Shah Nawaz in time.) Her source? The observations of the lawyer Murtaza and Benazir engaged to fight the case in French courts, Jacques Verges. The insinuation that Benazir may have ordered Shah Nawaz's killing and the remarks she chooses to include by Benazir (such as indulgent postcards she sent to Murtaza at university) sour the book. It no longer feels like a memoir, but yet another blame game in the history of the Bhutto family that is still at odds with each other. Their conflict shows no signs of dissipating or staying within the family. Last week, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's nephew Tariq Islam sent a letter to the Dawn newspaper disputing at least one account in Songs of Blood and Sword by quoting conversations he had with Zulfikar before Zulfikar was executed in 1979.

Fatima Bhutto's rage at Benazir, who she believes was either involved in or complicit in covering up the killing of her father, Murtaza -- the woman she once thought of as her favorite aunt -- is understandable. But it is a niece's anger, not a historian's or a memoirist's.

Songs of Blood and Sword is not, and should not be treated as, a chapter in the Bhuttos' history. It is a self-serving charade discounting other versions or characters because they do not fit with Fatima's take on events that occurred in Murtaza's life.

The book has reportedly sold well in Pakistan (Express Tribune), but the reviews in the Pakistani press have been rather scathing (The News, Dawn, Express Tribune). It is hard to gauge Pakistani public approval or disapproval of the book, given that Fatima Bhutto flew out of Pakistan for a book tour after it launched and has reportedly refused to sit down for face-to-face interviews with Pakistani journalists. Conventional readings and Q&A sessions would have given insights, but this is no conventional book. It will continue to sell well -- anything with the Bhutto name does -- but whether it can spark any negative public reaction to Fatima or Zardari remains to be seen.

Ultimately, Songs of Blood and Sword is yet another in the series of books written by the Bhuttos about their versions of history as they see it. Mark your calendars: 22 years from now, another Bhutto will be penning a memoir. As Tariq Islam says Zulfikar Ali Bhutto told him in jail, "I will go down in history. Songs will be written about me." He probably didn't expect the songs would be written by members of his own family.

Source: http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/26/the_bhuttos_and_their_books

Not Reading Fatima Bhutto

I had been quite taken in by Fatima Bhutto when I came in two years ago. Her website was dead then, but I read every word of what she wrote in her weekly column for a local daily.

I liked the way she presented her case when her aunt Benazir Bhutto was alive, and also after she was assassinated. I found the reams about her villainous uncle Asif Ali Zardari very convincing too.

I enjoyed her rare anecdotal takes, which had little to do with her famous surname – my favourite being the piece she addressed to her fans some of whom had wanted “to make friendship with her” and some others who had emailed marriage proposals to her.

Post-Benazir, Fatima was seen as the next Bhutto to reckon with. She reminded everyone of a young Benazir and soon enough she was the foreign media’s darling baby.

Her column for the local daily was suspended shortly after and she started writing for thedailybeast.com and thenewstatesman.com and occasionally for internationally renowned newspapers.

That’s when I started dreading her writing. Though still lyrical, Fatima’s well-packaged pieces became rather predictable. I was, of course, moved by her accounts of what she had to suffer as a little girl – but the overdose, week after week, was beginning to turn me off.

The writings were almost always about how her father was killed; how news of his death was broken to her; how the powers-that-be had embarrassed her by asking her real mother to meet her at school when she was in grade 9; how she had no plans of plunging into politics; how she had never misused her magic surname; how Zardari-Bhutto kids were not the real Bhuttos; how the country is being led by corrupt criminals (read Mr Z); how little they (read Mr Z) have done/or plan to do for the nation; and how demonic her late Wadi Bua was.

Towards the end of 2008 she made a deal for her tell-all tome on the Bhuttos– which she lovingly calls SOBAS. I was happy for her.

While she was working on the book, she continued to write for thedailybeast and thenewstatesman – pegging her column on the news of the week, draconic cyber laws to drone attacks, and then going back to the Benazir-Zardari-PPP rant.

Some months ago, I got to see the real Fatima Bhutto. Well almost as real as she can get for me.

Fatima, who detests Facebook (she would rather have “lunch with David Milliband every day of the week than be on FB”), surprised everyone by showing up on Twitter October last.

“I despise Twitter. But I'm tired of strange Fatima Bhuttos posting as me. I won't be very active - I hate unnecessary abbreviating FB,” read her first tweet.

I, of course, decided to follow her. Initially, she tweeted about stuff she was reading and then soon enough she was trying to settle scores with the fake Fatimas on Twitter.
“Twitter has been wildly useless in removing the fake me…and is no longer enjoying the Kafkaesque irony of it all,” she tweeted. “That's a new fake. How do these people have the time?” read another tweet.

I was quite amused. Fatima wasn’t. After wasting time in a one-on-one fight she got the fake Fatimas suspended. “Twitter victory is mine!” she tweeted excitedly one day.

In between she tweeted about her acts of charity: “Bringing our total of computers given to community centres and schools to 11…If I knew how to put pictures up here I would, but am hopeless.”

In February, she got busy publicizing her book on Twitter. She regularly listed upcoming international events; uploaded links to interviews she had given to famous people; how she “squealed, blushed and ran” when she saw her book cover; how her book was sold out everywhere.

“Finished filming a book promo with two very brave filmmakers who flew in and out of Karachi most quietly to do the filming,” she tweeted another day. She even graciously thanked India for making her book a bestseller.

This isn’t Fatima’s first book (she has written two before) but with this one she has put her best foot forward. If her magic surname, which she has never ever misused, was at work when she was sealing the book deal or when she was giving interviews to A-list interviewees or when she was chalking plans for embarking on global book tours – it was obviously absolutely unintentional and totally coincidental!

The sailing has been smooth for Fatima all along, yet she has showed little grace when faced by critics, including an uncle, who claim that the book is full of glaring half-truths or that she has needlessly demonized her aunt to make a hero out of her dead father.

“Pakistani media is spitting blood over it – which is to be expected…” she tweeted. In another one she wondered what people who “hate” her have in common!

She even got petty with her followers on Twitter wondering how they had access to her account when she had blocked out “undesirables”. The real shocker, however, was when she ticked off an Indian follower in Mumbai who said he didn’t like her book with: “Why don't you get off my page?”

Source :
http://indiansinpakistan.blogspot.com/2010/04/not-reading-fatima-bhutto.html#comments

Fatima Bhutto and her dislike of "dodgy questions"

Andrew Buncombe
Fatima Bhutto, the smart, stylish and charming niece of the late Benazir Bhutto has been getting some pretty good press of late for her new memoir Songs of Blood and Sword. Much of the book is taken up with the by now well-known saga of the feud within the Bhutto clan and of the chilling murder of her father, Murtaza, the blame for which she directs at Pakistan's current president, Asif Ali Zardari, and his wife - Fatima's aunt -Benazir.

From all accounts it is a roaring, fast-paced tale told with energy and emotion and it has certainly been getting the young writer plenty of attention. In India, dressed in a green Sari with a red tikka painted on her forehead, she wowed the literatti of Delhi and Mumbai, as she sipped white wine and answered questions about her family and the evil uncle who now runs the country.

It has been pretty much the same in the UK, with lots of the British media also being won over by the writer and her tale. Janine Di Giovani travelled to Karachi and spent several days chatting and doing yoga with Ms Bhutto and wrote a very flattering profile of the young woman for the Daily Telegraph. For those seeking more balanced and less hagiographic accounts, I'd recommend a review in The Independent's book pages or else this detailed account by my colleague Omar Waraich. Both suggest that Ms Bhutto's presentation of events is rather one-sided and skips certain inconvenient facts. I wondered about this when it emerged that while Ms Bhutto was heavily promoting her book in India and elsewhere overseas, she had declined requests to speak to journalists in Pakistan.

Now, I hear word that someone in Ms Bhutto's team has been trying to blacklist a certain Pakistan expert from interacting with the young writer while in London. Farzana Shaikh, an associate fellow at Chatham House, had been due to interview Ms Bhutto for an "In Conversation" event organised by the alumni association of the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS). Although the event had long been fixed, the association contacted Ms Shaikh to inform her that Ms Bhutto's team was instead to be interviewed by a current staff members of SOAS.[Declaration of interest: Ms Shaikh has written some analysis pieces for The Independent on Sunday and last year I gave her latest book a pretty positive review in the pages of that same paper.]

You can see an original listing of the event that mentions Ms Shaikh here, while an updated advertisement for the "In Conversation", to be held on May 20, notes that screenwriter Michael Redford will now be in the chair.Anyway, it has emerged that Ms Bhutto's team also objected to Ms Shaikh interviewing the writer for a similar "In Conversation" that had been organised by Chatham House itself. The decision to try and replace Ms Shaikh followed an earlier interview she had done with Ms Bhutto for an article published in Chatham House's magazine, The World Today. Readers can have a lot at the piece and decide for themselves whether they think it is fair.

Unlike the organisers of the SOAS event, however, who agreed to the demand of Ms Bhutto's team, the folk at Chatham House thought that they would decide who would do the interview and not Ms Bhutto. As a result, the event was cancelled. Ms Shaikh has declined to comment on these events and emails to Ms Bhutto's publicity team at Random House, her UK publishers, as well as to the SOAS alumni organisation have not been answered. However, Keith Burnet, a spokesman for Chatham House told me by email: "We were working on two things with Fatima Bhutto. The first is an interview with our monthly magazine, The World Today, and the second an event for our members. The interview will be published in the May issue of the magazine but the event has been cancelled." As to the reasons for the cancellation, he added: "There was a disagreement over the choice of person chairing the meeting."

I've never met or spoken with Ms Bhutto, but I do follow her on Twitter, where she has 4,700 followers, and I've been reading with interest the updates of her promotional tour for Songs of Blood and Sword, or SOBAS in Twitter-speak. She appears genuinely moved by the largely positive response she has received. However, not everything has pleased the young writer and activist. In one post she comments: "Am constantly amused by the colourful lot of folks attacking SOBAS in Pakistan. What do they have in common, I wonder..."

More recently she has commented about a talk she gave at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In particular she drew attention to a question asked by the veteran South Asia watcher, Victoria Schofield, a long-time acquaintance of Benazir Bhutto and who was on the late prime minister's convoy when it was attacked in Karachi in October 2007. Ms Bhutto clearly did not appreciate the interaction with her late aunt's friend, saying of the Q&A session she gave: "Dodgiest question came from Victoria Schofield, who announced that we met at my father's funeral and then badgered...me about my cousins. Clearly the most important issue facing nuclear Pakistan today."

I subsequently contacted Ms Schofield, who told me:"The fact that Fatima might think my question was 'dodgy' shows that there is a whole agenda she does not want to confront which is essentially 'how to heal the wounds of the past'."

I wonder what is eating Ms Bhutto and why. Any thoughts?

Source:
http://andrewbuncombe.independentminds.livejournal.com/18595.html

The recurring nightmare

By Ardeshir Cowasjee
Sunday, 25 Apr, 2010

According to Khushwant the story of the House of Bhutto, written by Fatima in “impeccably beautiful prose would have been a joy to read if it had not been a gruesome tale of intrigue, treachery, treason, violence and cold-blooded murder.

The irrepressible, inimitable, 90-plus, Khushwant Singh, who has few peers in the subcontinental journalist community, is much taken with young Fatima Bhutto — mind you, he always has had and is renowned for his roving eye. He also has much to say about Fatima’s book Songs of Blood and Sword which he has reviewed twice.

Firstly, in the Hindustan Times on April 17 and then in the April 20 issue of Outlook, the latter under the somewhat gory title of ‘The burnt inside of Pakistan’s house of Atreus’. The House of Atreus is famed for the curse put upon it for murder, betrayal and sheer horror, one of the most enduring of Greek legends.

Atreus of Argos was the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus who respectively married Clytaemnestra and Helen of Troy, and heaven knows there is abundant tragedy and gore in their stories. But the most repellent part of it all concerns the quarrel between Atreus and his brother Thyestes over the affair the latter had with Atreus’s wife which resulted in his banishment from Argos.

Thyestes wished for reconciliation and after some time was allowed to return. Atreus prepared a huge banquet in celebration at which he served up to Thyestes the cooked flesh of his two slaughtered sons. The unknowing father ate and was then informed by his brother of what he had just done — the origin of the term ‘Thyestian Banquet’. Thyestes, horror-stricken, put a curse upon the family of Atreus and fled. The curse, as legend records, worked to perfection.

According to Khushwant the story of the House of Bhutto, written by Fatima in “impeccably beautiful prose would have been a joy to read if it had not been a gruesome tale of intrigue, treachery, treason, violence and cold-blooded murder. It is one long nightmare ….”. Strong stuff, and with justification as we who have followed the Bhutto saga down the years well know, and the betrayal continues with the man we now have in the presidential palace in Islamabad, accompanied by his resident soothsayer.

Fatima is “beautiful, highly gifted and gutsy”. When she called on Khushwant, after launching her book in Delhi earlier this month, he wrote “I could not take my eyes off her. I kept gazing at the pinhead of a diamond sparkling on the left side of her nose and her long jet-black curly hair falling on her shoulders. I hope I see her at least once more before my time is up.”

He is not so enamoured with other member of the family and has harsh words for Zulfikar for “indirectly helping East Pakistan become an independent Bangladesh” because he found it unacceptable that if unity was maintained the East Pakistanis would far outnumber the western lot. So much for democracy! Khushwant also slams him for pandering to the archaic laws of the clergy merely to hang on to power.

He is scathing of Bhutto’s betrayal of Manzur Qadir, Ayub Khan’s foreign minister. As a fellow cabinet minister, Bhutto denounced Qadir as being a free-thinker and not a good Muslim. He was consequently dropped from the cabinet and ultimately Zulfikar moved into his slot. Khushwant also touches upon the J.A. Rahim incident, and his beating up by PPP goons merely because Rahim left a dinner after waiting for two hours for Bhutto to turn up.

As for Zulfikar’s son-in-law, he shares Fatima’s “low opinion” of him, refers to his indulgence in shady deals and terms him “uncouth and foul-mouthed”. He blames Benazir for doing little in her two terms to improve the lot of the common people. His closing lines in the Hindustan Times: “Incidentally, I also added a new word to my vocabulary which fits both Pakistan and India. It is ‘saprophytic’, which means feeding on decaying organic matter. Both nations rely on all that is rotten in their past.”

The book was also reviewed in London’s Sunday Times on April 4, by Max Hastings, who likens it to a Jacobean drama rather than a Greek tragedy, cataloguing the list of hanging, poisoning, terrorism, murder and assassination — “hate and blood” he terms it.

The content to him is “emotional, partial, naïve and wholly unreliable about who really did what to whom. But it possesses readability from those with a taste for family horror stories”. He is totally unsympathetic to all the characters, and spells out his factual reasons citing acts of omission and commission perpetrated by Fatima’s grandfather, her father, her uncle and her aunt, all of whom in ways most discernible were flawed characters.

Hastings is unforgiving to Fatima for her “blind rejection of any pretension to insight or judgment”. This may be unkind, for it would take an extraordinarily strong character to be objective about a hanged grandfather, a murdered father and uncle, and an assassinated aunt. She must be given leeway for having had a childhood and youth so tainted by tragedy and violence as to make the admittance of hard historical fact difficult indeed.

As admits Hastings, the “book’s virtues derive from the author’s passion and some vivid pen portraits”. Hastings’s own vivid pen portrait of Asif Zardari, Benazir’s husband, is that he is “considered by some to be the most notoriously corrupt figure in the subcontinent” and that he “climbed over her corpse to become Pakistan’s president….”

As strong a stuff as that of Khushwant! And his ending must make us all, including those who sit atop us, pause and think: “But she conveys a terrifying sense of the ungovernability of Pakistan and its 180m people, exposed to the competing violence of rulers and rebels. Another army coup must be due some day soon.”

arfc@cyber.net.pk

Source :
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/ardeshir-cowasjee-the-recurring-nightmare-540

Songs of Blood and Sword by Fatima Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari are blamed for the killing of Mir Murtaza in this explosive memoir, discovers Roderick Matthews

• Roderick Matthews
• The Observer, Sunday 25 April 2010

Fatima Bhutto's father was killed by the Pakistani police in 1996. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

Fatima Bhutto was 14 years old when her father, Mir Murtaza, was shot dead by police after a gun battle outside his Karachi home in 1996. Songs of Blood and Sword is an account of his life seen through her eyes. In clear and unpretentious prose it gives a vivid impression of the brutal and corrupt world of Pakistani power politics, which has resulted in the violent deaths of four members of the Bhutto dynasty in the past 31 years.

1. Songs of Blood and Sword
2. by Fatima Bhutto
3. 480pp,
4. Jonathan Cape Ltd,
5. £18.99
6. 

1. Buy Songs of Blood and Sword at the Guardian bookshop

Murtaza's adult life, we learn, was dominated by two great causes. The first was to avenge the death of his father, ex-president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, at the hands of the man who ousted him, General Zia-ul-Haq. Then, after Zia's own death in 1988, the second was to protect his father's political legacy from his sister, Benazir. The rivalry between the energetic and idealistic Murtaza and the calculating and ambitious Benazir gives the book its central dynamic.

Fatima was not witness to any of the central political events described in the book, so most of the detailed narrative is recounted secondhand, recovered from Murtaza's friends and colleagues. Her general description of him is affectionate and largely uncritical – rather as one might expect from a young girl who adored her father.

Murtaza fled Pakistan in 1977 after the Zia regime took power, and did not return until 1993. This prolonged absence gave Benazir a free hand in Pakistan, allowing her a clear run at the leadership of Zulfikar Ali's political creation, the Pakistan People's party. It was only gradual disillusionment with Benazir's conduct, principally her ineffective premiership from 1988 to 1990, that prompted him to return from exile, determined to clean up the country in line with his father's original modernising, anti-feudal, socialist vision. His return therefore represented a threat to Benazir's status; he became "the only politician speaking against the status quo, instead of lining up to join it".

The book's depiction of Benazir is a nuanced affair. Fatima adored her aunt as a child, but slowly a distance opened up between them as ambition lured Benazir into Pakistan's military governmental machine. Fatima identifies two key decisions that set the course of Benazir's life. The first was to make peace with the Zia regime in 1986 by agreeing to participate in elections; this brought her into the military-political establishment, from whose grip she could never then escape. The second was her marriage in 1987 to Asif Ali Zardari, playboy scion of a feudal family.

Fatima's descriptions of her aunt become increasingly damning. This builds into a classic clash of good versus evil, with the author eventually joining up all her father's and grandfather's enemies into one secretive coalition – an army-Benazir-feudal-US alliance. Into this unpleasant stew she then adds the cynical and greedy Zardari.

But Benazir's treachery becomes much darker even than this. Fatima points out that her father was shot while Benazir was prime minister, and that the policemen accused of killing him were acquitted when Zardari was president in 2009. These acquittals were what prompted her to publish this book, in order to publicise the evidence contradicting the official version of her father's death. There are indeed highly suspicious circumstances surrounding the so-called "shoot-out" with police. There was no warrant for Murtaza's arrest; only police bullets were fired during the so-called "gun battle"; Murtaza and six of his guards were killed that night, but no policemen; evidence was destroyed, witnesses were arrested, suspects went free. The only official inquiry was a purely advisory tribunal that declared that "the order to assassinate Murtaza Bhutto must have come from the highest level of government". On this basis, Fatima awards Benazir and Zardari "moral responsibility" for her father's death.

And the accusations do not stop there. Fatima also believes that the mysterious poisoning of her uncle Shahnawaz in 1985 was the work of some combination of the Zia regime, the CIA and Benazir.

This book is not an explicit prosecution of the Pakistani government; there are no damning documentary revelations. But for those who like their history presented in personal terms, it will not disappoint. Hope, injustice, drama and grief are all ably captured and conveyed in what is a highly readable introduction to the grim realities of domestic politics in Pakistan.

Roderick Matthews's The Flaws in the Jewel: Challenging the Myths of British India is published by HarperCollins India next month.

Source :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/25/songs-blood-sword-fatima-bhutto

Fatima Bhutto's review on Night of the Golden Butterfly by Tariq Ali

Poet of the Punjab

If Pakistan is a land of untold stories, whispered conspiracy theories and closed-door mutinies, then thank heavens for Tariq Ali, whose access to its innermost secret chambers has made him the country's finest historian and critic.

Night of the Golden Butterfly is the fifth and final volume of Ali's Islam quintet. His intricate historical novels have spanned the Moors in Spain, the Ottoman empire, medieval car-tographers in Palermo and the battle for Jerusalem, before finally bringing us to modern-day Lahore, the cultural heart of the "Fatherland" (the name Pakistan is never mentioned), where four college students begin a friendship based on shared Marxist fantasies, a love of Punjabi poetry, irreverence and the hormonal palpitations of young love.

The narrator, the writer Dara - named, one assumes, after Dara Shikoh, the imprisoned Mughal poet and prince - brings the four friends back together decades later, drawing them from London, Paris, Lahore and Beijing. In order to weave their tales together, Ali uses the mystery of Mohammed Aflatun, known as Plato, one of the Fatherland's most renowned and reclusive painters, who calls in a favour in the form of a
biography, to be written by his old chum Dara.

The quest for Plato's story brings to light the "four cancers of the Fatherland": America, the military, mullahs and the corruption of politicians. Politics saturates every page, whether Ali is writing about the Muslim rebellion in Yunnan or the current war in Swat, the parties to which he compares to a "hydra-headed beast". There is the violence of the Fatherland's rich and powerful - from the Sindhi feudal lords who marry the beautiful and brave Zaynab to the Quran and the authorities' inept reliance on "Detectives Without Borders" to solve its most notorious murders, through the trigger-happy politicos who knock off a general who has got in their way, to the revenge visited on women who collaborate with foreign enemies.

Ali's polemics are leavened with subversive wit and mimicry of ludicrous public figures. Look out in particular for a hilarious caricature of Bernard-Henri Lévy and a surreptitious mention of the world's best-known Muslim apostate, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

It is this transgressive ability that makes Ali's treatment of sundry media simplifications digestible. "Don't you find wearing the hijab crushes your thoughts?" asks an earnest Naughty Lateef, Muslim Barbie du jour and darling of Europe's closeted Islamobigots (arguably one of the book's best characters). "No," comes the reply from a veiled Frenchwoman. "I wear it as a sign of my resistance, as a gesture of defiance."

As Night of the Golden Butterfly develops, it becomes sharper. The irascible Plato's doomed love affairs, first with Alice Stepford, a London art critic and lady about town, and then with Zaynab ("Mrs Koran") Shah, take a tragic turn. And then there's the changing face of Lahore - no longer a city of lovers, fresh fruit juice stalls and midnight meanderings, but a megalopolis of bearded weirdos and their hangers-on. In an especially bravura episode, Zahid, one of the central characters, and a former Fatherlandi idealist, becomes a card-carrying Republican doctor in Washington, DS ("District of Satan"). Heaven help the Americans and French in Ali's hands - though, God knows, they deserve a good lashing.

The novel is rich with the personal stories of an array of vividly drawn characters - not least Jindie, the Punjabi-Chinese butterfly of the title. Writing a tale of the Pakistani "Fatherland" in English can be accomplished gracefully only if the author's linguistic abilities are up to the task. Give or take the occasional scatological reference, Ali's are, and he is able to extricate Punjabi poetry and history from a narrowly provincial frame.

It is odd to hear of Ali described, as he sometimes is, as one of Britain's national treasures. For we in Pakistan wish to claim him unequivocally as ours. Without Ali, Pakistani literature is written and published in fragments, scattered over time and space, and often told only through the ubiquitous storyline of a Pakistani immigrant struggling with national identity. One hopes that, although this is the last book in a series, Ali won't stop writing his unusually lyrical historical fiction.


Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2010/04/ali-butterfly-pakistan-night

Profile - Fatima Bhutto: Fatima's Feuding, Feudal Family

They can be found from Pakistan to the Philippines and in many countries between. Their names are closely associated with the political fortunes of their nations and often with violent conflict: among them Aquino, Gandhi and, of course, Bhutto. The newest name in that particular political dynasty has been offering her thoughts on the phenomenon to Farzana Shaikh.

Fatima Bhutto is on record as saying she does not believe in 'birthright politics.' Yet many doubt she will resist the lure of a political career that can be expected to rest squarely on her membership of Pakistan's most celebrated, if tarnished, political dynasty - the Bhuttos. As the proud bearer of the family name, Fatima has found it hard to build on her reputation as an implacable foe of the very system that guarantees her the kind of public attention of which others of lesser birth can only dream.

The publication of her new book, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir, in which she tells the story of Pakistan through the prism of her feuding and feudal family, provided just the opportunity for me to put to her this central conundrum.

I asked Fatima how she felt about using and jealously guarding the Bhutto name while denouncing those like her aunt, Benazir Bhutto, who had sought to do likewise - but whom she accuses of creating a 'saprophytic culture' based on 'bloodlines, genetics [and] a who's who of dynastic politics.' Could she, I wondered, have it both ways?

ORDINARY
'I had an ordinary childhood,' she told me, 'in which the issue of dynastic rights hardly figured.' Born in Kabul in 1982 and educated in exile in Damascus until she finally settled with her family in Pakistan in 1993 allowed her, she believes, 'the freedom to escape the pressures of growing up in Pakistan, where family name determines who you are.'

In Damascus, by contrast, 'few knew or even cared about my background; most of my school friends couldn't even pronounce my [family] name.' Nor she insists, was there any expectation on the part of her father, Murtaza Bhutto, who was gunned down in Karachi in 1996, that Fatima would 'carry on the family name.'

But this version of her childhood as 'ordinary' is unlikely to wash with those persuaded that the Bhuttos were no ordinary family. Owners of unimaginable wealth - it is said that the size of Bhutto land-holdings in Sind even defeated census officials of the Raj - influential counsellors to Indian princes, and the privileged recipients of knighthoods for services rendered to the British empire in India - the Bhuttos took their entitlement to power for granted. The glittering careers of Fatima's grandfather, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and his arguably more famous daughter, Benazir, were judged merely to endorse this culture of entitlement.

The Bhutto's meteoric rise did not go unnoticed outside Pakistan. There were friends in high places, especially in the Arab world. Former Palestine Liberation Organisation Chairman Yasser Arafat, Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and then-Syrian Presiden tHafez al-Assad were all close to the family and generously hosted Fatima's father during his sixteen year exile. Their patronage ensured that the fortunes and fate of the Bhuttos was common knowledge. 'The whole Arab world,' Fatima's step-mother Lebanese by descent - told her, 'was nauseated' by the decision of Pakistan's military ruler, General Zia ul Haq, to hang Fatima's grandfather, Zulfiqar, in 1979.

That Fatima was expected by her father to tell the story of how this extraordinary family fell from grace and was corrupted by greed is also in no doubt. In the book she freely admits that she agreed to honour a promise to her father to 'tell his story' one day. But timing was of the essence or else, as she told an audience at the launch of her book in Karachi, the story could be 'hijacked' by those she calls 'murderers and thieves' acting at the behest of Pakistan's President, Asif Ali Zardari - Benazir's widower - whom she accuses of orchestrating her father's assassination.

Fatima insists, however, that these blood feuds, especially those that famously divided Murtaza from his elder sister, Benazir, had nothing to do with dynastic rights. When I asked her whether she might have felt differently about dynasties if Murtaza, the eldest son, had been allowed to assume his father's mantle, she appeared to bristle. 'I am not arguing,' she told me, 'that my father had an inherent right over his sister to claim the Bhutto legacy - no one has the right to claim a legacy, which is a dirty word, anyway.'

Their differences, she insists, were 'political.' The idea that Murtaza was driven by personal rivalry - he followed his sister To Harvard and Oxford - or that he might have been motivated by personal resentment against his sister, who is widely believed to have been her father's favourite, is sharply dismissed by Fatima as 'a myth fabricated by Benazir.'

Her grandfather, she wanted me to understand, 'was a progressive man, who treated all his children equally,' adding 'in fact, his favourite was Sanam [Benazir's younger sister, the third of the four Bhutto children].' At the same time, she was at pains to demonstrate that, if anything, Zulfiqar intended his political mission to be continued by his sons: she told me: 'he had set aside two constituencies for his sons rather than his daughter in which to be elected.'

JUSTICE DENIED
When I asked how she felt as a self-proclaimed feminist about the dynastic 'politics of patriarchy' and whether she suffered from any tension involved in reconciling her outrage over her father's loss of his 'birthright' with her personal commitment to a world free of a culture of entitlement on grounds of descent and gender, she remained calm. 'There is no tension,' she assured me. 'My outrage has nothing to do with denied birthrights; it is to do with the denial of justice, with the fact of my father's extra-judicial murder.'

For her part Fatima has tried hard to carve a non-dynastic niche for herself. Breaking with family tradition, she headed to study not at Harvard or Oxford, but Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She has also broken ranks by opting, so far, for a literary rather than a political career, and denied she has any political ambitions. As if to underscore the point, she told me that she would have no hesitation in surrendering her family name if she were to marry.

Will she stick to this course? It is too early to say.


Source: http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publications/twt/archive/view/-/id/2026/

ZAB’s nephew challenges Fatima’s version

I REFER to Fatima Bhuttos’s book Songs of Blood and Sword. I feel it is incumbent upon me to set the record straight on at least one story.

Fatima tells us how Z.A. Bhutto wrote to his son Murtaza to go to Afghanistan to set up a militant base for waging a war on the military dictator, Zia.

I challenge anyone to produce that letter. Because there is none!

The fact of the matter is that at Mir Murtaza’s request I flew from London (where I was a student at the time) to Islamabad on March 24, 1979, to meet my uncle ZAB and convey Murtaza’s urgent messages.

The messages were to seek permission for Murtaza to base himself in Afghanistan to wage a guerrilla war on the invitation of the then Afghan government headed by Hafizullah Amin.

The other message was from PLO leader Yasir Arafat who viewed Bhutto as the soldier of Islam and was ready to use his resources to spring him from Rawalpindi’s central jail.

I first met my uncle in his death cell on March 27. I was allowed only 30 minutes and we had to whisper across the cell bars (I was not permitted inside the tiny cell) as it was heavily bugged and police and military officers stood all around us, straining to hear.

ZAB flatly refused both options. On the case of Murtaza’s relocation to Kabul, ZAB flew into a rage. His words, which I recall clearly till this day, were “Did I send Mir to Harvard and to Oxford to learn about all this stuff? Already they are calling me a murderer and a smuggler (on account of the book If I am assassinated, which was claimed to have been smuggled out of prison to be published abroad).

“Next, they will be calling me a terrorist. Tell him that I forbid him to go to Kabul. No matter what happens to me, he should concentrate on his studies and complete his course at Oxford”.

I had to get the message across to Mir but in those days, far from the mobile phones we have today, there was no direct dialling either. Amina Piracha (PPP MNA in BB’s first government) took me to her family office, Ferozesons in Pindi , from where we booked a call to London. In coded language, I gave Mir his father’s message.

Mir was extremely distraught and disappointed and pleaded with me to seek another appointment with ZAB. “You have to convince my father. You must do it for my sake. I don’t care how you do it, but please don’t come back empty-handed,” he urged.

I managed, with great difficulty, to see ZAB again on March 30 (Apart from BB and Begum Nusrat Bhutto, I was the last to see him in his death cell before the execution). I conveyed Mir’s desperate message again. The reaction was the same, but I persisted. Time was running out. In sheer frustration, ZAB remarked with great prescience: “I think Mir has boxed himself into a corner. He has made some commitments to the Afghans and is finding it difficult to back out now. Tell him to go if he wishes but I am not at all happy. The Afghans are too shrewd; they have fooled two superpowers for so many years. They are master diplomats and schemers and they will manipulate Mir for their own reasons ..., and sell him down the river when it suits them. He must be very careful in what he does and says. I leave him in God’s hands. But ask him to complete his studies at Oxford”.

The much quoted man in the book, Suhail Sethi (who also has been my very good friend for nearly 40 years), was in Pindi at the time. We went out to eat dinner together that evening, and I told him about the meeting.

He can set the record straight even at this late stage. I flew to London on March 31. I conveyed all the messages to Mir. Bashir Riaz (Mir’s aide and press spokesman and subsequently one of BB’s closest aides) and the former Punjab Governor, Mr Ghulam Mustafa Khar, were witnesses.

On April 4 Mr Bhutto was executed.

It is not only a distortion of history but also a great travesty to accuse a statesman and visionary of ZAB’s stature of condoning a bloody and militant route and placing the lives of his own son in danger when he did not even call upon his party men to go out into the streets to fight the dictator.

As he said to me in jail: “I am too big a man to ask others to place themselves in jeopardy so that my life may be saved. I will go down in history. Songs will be written about me.”

TARIQ ISLAM


Source: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/letters-to-the-editor/zabs-nephew-challenges-fatimas-version-240

Fatima Bhutto with BrightWide-Video

Fatima Bhutto with BrightWide


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fd5Xz2ZlrI

Video Clip of Khushwant Singh on Fatima Bhutto

Khushwant Singh talks about Fatima Bhutto.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWK28iOefEY

When Fatima held everyone’s gaze

Khushwant Singh, Hindustan Times

April 17, 2010

"I have been to dozens of book launches, but I have yet to see one on as grand a scale as this one,” said my daughter Mala Dayal as she came home from the launch of Fatima Bhutto’s Songs of Blood and Sword (Penguin Viking). She continued “There must have been nearly 1,000 guests; it was a packed house. On the stage sat William Dalrymple in white kurta-pyjama and the Bhutto girl. She is a stunner. She was very craftily dressed to please her Indian audience and also maintain her Pakistani identity. She was draped in a sari instead of salwar-kameez and wore a red bindi on her forehead. That warmed the hearts of her Indian audience. Her sari was green — the colour of Pakistan. She spoke in flawless English about her country.”

My daughter had not read her book. No one in the audience had till after the launch. But some of her history is known. She introduces herself on book jacket in a few lines printed in red:

Grand-daughter to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto — executed 1979

Niece to Shah Nawaz Bhutto — murdered 1985

Daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto — assassinated 1996

Niece to Benazir Bhutto — assassinated 2007

On these four skeletons Fatima Bhutto fleshes out the saga of the Bhuttos.

Their forefather Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto, Diwan of Junagarh, migrated back to his ancestral town, Garhi Khuda Baksh in district Larkana. His son Zulfiqar Ali rose to power in Pakistan before being hanged. Zulfiqar’s daughter Benazir out-manoeuvred her brother to grab her father’s political legacy and acquired vast amounts of real estate in Europe and America, to which her husband Asif Ali Zardari added a lot more. He came to be known as ‘Mr 10 per cent’ because he is said to have charged this as commission for brokering deals between the government and investors.

The assassins of Benazir Bhutto remain unidentified. But Fatima has named Asif Ali Zardari for four murders and having himself acquitted by a subservient judiciary. She has invited trouble, as if she harbours a death wish. She is as gutsy as she is beautiful.

She did me the honour of calling on me before she took her flight to Karachi. I could not take my eyes off her. I kept gazing at the pin-head of a diamond sparkling on the left side of her nose and her long jet-black curly hair falling on her shoulders. I hope I see her at least once more before my time is up.

Fatima ends her book in memorable prose: “Amidst all this madness, all these ghosts and memories of times past, it feels like the world around me is crumbling slowly, flaking away. Sometimes when it is late at night, I feel my chest swell with a familiar anxiety. I think at these times, that I have no more place in my heart for Pakistan. I cannot love it any more. I have to get away from it for anything to make sense, nothing here ever does. But when the hours pass, and as I ready myself for sleep as the light filters through my windows, I hear the sound of those mynah birds. And I know I could never leave.”

Incidentally, I also added a new word to my vocabulary which fits both Pakistan and India. It is ‘saprophytic’, which means feeding on decaying organic matter.

Both nations rely on all that is rotten in their past.

Source:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/When-Fatima-held-everyone-s-gaze/H1-Article1-532658.aspx

Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir by Fatima Bhutto

A touching love letter to Fatima Bhutto’s murdered father

Brenda Maddox

Fatima Bhutto with her father Murtaza

A bloody tale, awkwardly told. Fatima Bhutto is most easily, if unfairly, identified as the niece of Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani Prime Minister killed in 2007. She is also, at 27, a poet, a journalist and a beauty.

But it would take more than all these gifts to make a coherent narrative of the much-assassinated Bhutto family. Indeed, one searches the pages long and hard to find a mention of a natural death.

The author was born in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, in May 1982 while her father, Murtaza Bhutto, was in exile during the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq. Her parents divorced when she was young and she formed an immediate bond with her stepmother, whom she called and still calls “Mummy”. With her father and stepmother she moved to Damascus, where she spent much of her youth. In 1988 the family returned to Karachi, safe again for Murtaza after the assassination of Zia.

The killing opened the way also for Benazir, then 35, to become Prime Minister for the first time. As Prime Minister, Benazir (her niece observes somewhat cattily) made the decision to wear a white head shawl (dupatta) — the first woman in their family to cover her hair.

In Karachi Fatima completed her secondary education, then went to New York to take a bachelor’s degree (in Middle Eastern studies) at Columbia University, then came to the University of London for a master’s degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Today, acclaimed for her writing (and for a much-publicised friendship with the actor George Clooney), she says that she has no interest in politics. She remains in Karachi, with her stepmother and half-brother, in the family home in Clifton, the poshest suburb.

The purpose of this painful biography is admirable and touching. It is a daughter’s loving recollection of her murdered father, Murtaza Bhutto, political leader of a radical party, shot dead by police in Karachi in 1996. Who ordered the killing? One explanation of this book’s obscurity is the author’s reluctance to point the finger at her aunt, then Prime Minister for the second time, for ordering the assassination of her own brother. All Benazir would say later was that it was Murtaza’s own fault that he was killed. She then brought a case against Fatima’s beloved stepmother for refusing to go into seclusion under an Islamic prescription for widows.

The author does not forget that Aunt Benazir (known in affectionate moments as “Wadi” and “Pinky”) was herself assassinated (in Rawalpindi in December 2007). Benazir’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, was later tried for the murder of the author's father, and acquitted. Zardari is now President of Pakistan.

Against such a background of horror, the more gripping parts of the story are the human details. Aunt Benazir and her niece were good friends when they were young. They spent birthdays together — even when that meant Benzair coming to Damascus — and loved mint chocolate-chip ice cream and sugared chestnuts. “Wadi” introduced her niece to Beatrix Potter and Jemima Puddleduck, and would hug her when she left (“her hair smelling powdery soft”), promising to come back soon.

Fascinating also are the author’s expressions of love for the father “who was the soul of my world. I was eager to do anything and everything for my father. I polished his boots and took the time to make sure they gleamed just like he wanted them.” He repaid this adoration with imaginative ways of frightening his daughter and son. He would ring the doorbell, pretending to be a mad dentist come to pull out all their teeth. One day, as Fatima was walking in the garden wearing her best dress, he picked her up and hurled her into the swimming pool. She also recalls him telling her, when she was 6 and going to sleep, that he’d kill himself if anything happened to her.

Death was, and perhaps remains, a bedtime story for the famed political dynasty of a troubled country born in 1947 and divided in 1971. For those who know its history, this book will be essential reading. Newcomers to the subject of Pakistan will find themselves wishing for what may be impossible: apparatus such as a clear family tree and a timetable of events to lead them through the bloody maze.

Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir by Fatima Bhutto (Jonathan Cape, £20; Buy this book; 470pp)

Source:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article7091823.ece

Scenes of chaos

The memoir is another attempt by a Bhutto to rewrite history
By Huma Imtiaz

Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir
By Fatima Bhutto
Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd.
Pages: 470
Price: Rs 1395

The Bhutto family's tale is one that would prove to be a blockbuster film and be a bestseller… if told well. Fatima Bhutto's Songs of Blood and Sword is the third attempt by a Bhutto to detail their family history and their achievements, the most memorable being Benazir's Daughter of the East. In all the books, the Bhuttos are the saviours, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto a model leader and hero -- and focuses on their struggle to rise beyond politics, repression and violence.

To be honest, one doesn't understand what this book is meant to be. Touted as a daughter's memoir, the book, for the first four and a half chapters, talks about the history of the Bhutto family and traces their rise as an influential feudal family during the British Raj. It quickly moves on to Murtaza's life as a student in Karachi and at Harvard, trying to campaign in Europe for his father's life to be spared, to Afghanistan where he founds Al-Zulfikar, Syria where he meets his second wife Ghinwa, and finally Pakistan, where Murtaza met a death so brutal that one is left in horror at the memory of that fateful night.

But while chapters have been devoted to the rise and fall of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the author has glossed over certain aspects of Bhutto's political career. The description of the fall of East Pakistan quickly assigns all blame to the Pakistan Army, cleverly leaving out mention of Bhutto's role in the political crisis.

The author's selective amnesia continues throughout the book. While a memoir is based on one's personal knowledge and analysis of events, one is disappointed by the lack of details and facts that this book so sorely required. For example, the author takes pains to exclude Benazir from certain parts of history; the omission of Benazir at the side of ZAB in the Simla Delegation in the book being one such example.

Songs of Blood and Sword is not just about the amnesia, but also about conspiracy theories. Fatima Bhutto insinuates, based on a single interview, that Benazir was somehow involved in Shahnawaz's murder. And as we read on, the author seems to adopt a far more forgiving tone when describing Shahnawaz's daughter's Sassi's denial that her mother and Shahnawaz's wife Rehana was involved in the event. And that is what the reader is left with: no investigation, just insinuation.

The most appalling chapter in Songs of Blood and Sword is Bhutto's account of the Al-Zulfikar Organisation, a movement founded by Murtaza and Shahnawaz in the 1980s. Her dismissal of the 1981 hijacking of a PIA flight as propaganda created by the Zia regime and her denial of Al-Zulfikar's involvement in certain acts of violence and terror are a travesty, to say the least. For someone who calls herself a journalist, this book and perhaps Bhutto's credibility would have been well served had she chosen to investigate the matter more closely, and spoken to more than just a few people Murtaza surrounded himself by at the latter stage of his life.

The redeeming part of this book is the chapter detailing the assassination and the aftermath of Murtaza Bhutto's death in 1996. Even though the Mideast Hospital in Karachi has since been torn down to make way for a glittery new building, one can successfully imagine the scenes of chaos that must have pervaded there once. The news spread that Murtaza Bhutto had been brought there.

It is Sabeen Jatoi's account of being unable to find her father's body that strikes a chord, the sense of horror and loss and helplessness is something one can never forget and the author must be credited for bringing, as painful as that memory must be, to life.

Nevertheless, throughout the book, it seems that Bhutto chose to interview the people that would fit her interpretation of history. While one must always take events in Pakistani politics with a pinch of salt, Bhutto's attempt to rewrite history and portray Murtaza as the true heir of the PPP, a noble politician and a confused angry young man who never hijacked a plane are based on a very shaky foundation indeed -- and her arguments fails to strike a chord with the reader.

There is a sense that Bhutto has over-dramatised certain incidents in the book, which may serve her western audience well, but are not unique in Pakistan. The tone itself is hardly engaging, and at times, the author's unnecessary descriptions distract one from the subject at hand. It was not important to know that the author was eating a cookie when she met her father's college roommate, nor does it add to the quality of the writing. What one really enjoyed were the brief insights into Murtaza's jovial character and his wit, and the anecdote of Asif Ali Zardari making a snide remark against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

At the end of the day, it has become tiresome to read members of the Bhutto family harp on about their achievements, presenting their loved one as the saviour and calling themselves a true heir of the legacy of the Bhutto family. One wished that perhaps there would be a Bhutto who would not try this tried and tested pattern, but perhaps that is too much to hope for.

Huma Imtiaz is a journalist based in Karachi and can be reached at huma.imtiaz@gmail.com

Source:
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2010-weekly/nos-18-04-2010/lit.htm#2

the bhutto boondoggle

Nadir Hussain

Karachi: Featured review of the week

As a work of journalism, which is what the book purports to be, Songs of Blood and Sword is about as useful as Mein Kampf. Fatima Bhutto prefers lyricism over facts, yes-men over dissenting opinions and vendettas over reconciliation.

Bhutto’s hagiographic treatment of her grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, is particularly jarring as it creates contradictions at nearly every turn. Thus, Ayub Khan’s rule is condemned as the country’s first dark dictatorial era but ZAB as foreign minister – under that very despot – was the catalyst of a “shining period” in Pakistan’s history. And on it goes. General Tikka Khan is rightfully condemned as the “Butcher of Balochistan and East Pakistan” but, because it would be inconvenient to Fatima’s narrative, no mention is made of the fact that he served as chief of army staff under ZAB and even became an important PPP leader after his retirement from the army.

When it comes to ZAB, the young author, raised on family tales of his greatness, succumbs to her blind spot. So, ZAB is praised for resigning from Ayub’s government after the military ruler signed the supposedly humiliating Tashkent Declaration. Never mind that Bhutto himself was a part of the negotiations, and when Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died just before the agreement became public, ZAB publicly boasted that Shastri was so humiliated at being outwitted by the Pakistanis, he suffered an instant heart attack.

She also takes great liberties not just to minimise ZAB’s role in the secession of East Pakistan, but to deny any involvement in it at all. She simply says, “Any constitutional settlement hinged on the two parties [PPP and Awami League] reaching an agreement to share power” and leaves it at that. She doesn’t mention that the Awami League had enough seats to form a week government and that ZAB, in connivance with Yahya Khan, refused to allow parliament to meet. She also sees no need to take note of ZAB’s infamous “Idhar hum, udhar tum” remark.

Bhutto’s hero-worship of her grandfather is matched only by the venom she directs at her aunt, Benazir Bhutto. She reproduces the standard litany of complaints – corruption, highhandedness and the alienation of PPP stalwarts – and comes up with some new theories. By now everyone is wearily familiar with Fatima Bhutto’s accusation that Benazir was responsible for her father Murtaza’s murder. But she adds a new charge to Benazir’s rap sheet: the curious death of Shahnawaz Bhutto. All she offers by way of evidence is an interview she had with a lawyer, Jacques Verges, who looked into the case.

She approvingly quotes him: ““She didn’t want to fight the CIA and the Pakistani Intelligence service, who your father was always convinced were behind his brother’s death.” Why not? I asked, genuinely curious. Verges laughed again and made a face at me that I understood. Because she worked with them. Because her power was always based on their approval.” When reading this, keep in mind that Shahnawaz died in 1985, when Ziaul Haq was still in power and the intelligence agencies were hounding Benazir. Recall, too, that Benazir’s first term was plagued, and eventually terminated, by a military establishment that never trusted her.

Bhutto is at her best when writing about her father. Sure, she exonerates him of all responsibility for the hijacking of a PIA plane by his rebel group, al-Zulfikar, but that can be forgiven as a daughter’s love. Her fond childhood memories show Murtaza as a kind, doting father which is a welcome change from his public persona: that of a gruff politician who never let niceties interfere with his politicking. The stories that emerge from behind the boundaries of 70 Clifton are fascinating enough to make one wish Fatima had chosen a career as a memoirist rather than a journalist.

Source:
http://tribune.com.pk/story/7535/the-bhutto-boondoggle/

I am a Bhutto & a survivor’

I have only one mother. That’s what I always say and that is also why I have dedicated my book Songs of Blood and Sword to her. Yes Ghinwa is not my biological mother, but she is the only mother I know and certainly the only one I love. I owe whatever I am to her. She has been there for my brother Zulfikar and me, and taught us what it is to be warm and giving. We were born into luxury no doubt, but we’ve also had to live in exile with our father (Mir Murtaza Bhutto).

That the family has been involved with politics and its by-product, violence, has made us see the good and the bad side of things. But never were we raised to hate another human. For the kind of violence we’ve seen; my grandfather was executed, my father was murdered and my aunt assassinated; it wouldn’t have been surprising if our anger had festered. But mom raised us to be compassionate people and to make bonds based on love. She has this tremendous spirit and is a very generous person. She has been a survivor herself what with her Syrian-Lebanese roots. She knew how to deal with the situations around her and most importantly she kept us rooted.

My mother is a very brave and principled woman. Soon after my father was killed in 1996, it would have been an easy option for her to leave the country with us. But she knew by doing that, she would be leaving the battle halfway. She needed to avenge my father’s death, not through violence but by showing the perpetrators that we too are Bhuttos and will not succumb. She knew it would be grave injustice to my father if we walked away. The turmoil leading to his death had in some way prepared her for the aftermath.

We knew my aunt and then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had a role (if not for directly) to play in my father’s killing. We had in any case never warmed up to her husband Asif Ali Zardari. My interaction with him was restricted to a cursory “Hi-hello.” With Wadi (short for Wadi Bua or father’s elder sister in Sindhi, in this case referring to Benazir) the transformation was so drastic. She has always been a bit aloof but that didn’t stop her from being warm and affectionate at times. Power and marriage changed her. She became someone totally unrecognisable. No change happens overnight but to witness such a volte-face is unnerving. To me Benazir was two persons: one who was caring and the other who was completely ruthless. I was very young then but was quite mature for my age. I could see what was becoming of her and it was totally unacceptable. Towards the end, my father didn’t quite know what to make of her and since we didn’t trust Zardari, we didn’t know what to expect either.

Even after he died, it wasn’t easy. I’ve studied in the US, lived in the Middle East, and yet I was very clear that I would return to Karachi. Rumi once said, “I move in many directions, but my compass always points towards home.” That, I think, is how I explain why I live in Karachi despite staying and studying in various countries. That is probably the main explanation to the fact that although there has been a threat to our lives, and as Bhuttos that has been a well-documented fact, we will continue to live here. A Bhutto has been killed in every decade since the 70s (grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed in 1979, uncle Shahnawaz Bhutto was murdered in 1985, father Mir Murtaza Bhutto was assassinated in 1996, aunt Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in 2007). Does it scare me that we’re in the new decade? Not really. I don’t look at it as a pattern; it is an unfortunate history we have to live with. History has shown how bloody our (Bhutto family) past has been, but to embrace it as a trend is something I find highly unacceptable, no matter how probable it seems to statisticians or enthusiastic media persons.

I’ve had my fair share of the media, especially the talk about my link-up with Hollywood actor George Clooney. I found it so amusing and frivolous. I mean, here I am sitting in Karachi and writing about politics and corruption, and there is a man who is living in a completely different world with a totally different social circle belonging to a profession so unlike mine. No, I was not dating Clooney. Our realities were so different that the media reports were glaringly farfetched.

The man I would like to settle with must not just be intelligent and passionate about what he does, but must also be committed to a core set of values and connected to his home, no matter where he travels or stays. I would say that given the kind of history I bring along, he should be a rather brave man to be able to deal with it! I’m a survivor, my mom is a survivor and I think only a survivor can survive a Bhutto! My family has always been liberal; as regards considering an Indian partner, I really wish I can comment on it but I’ve seen how much printspace Sania and Shoaib’s wedding has hogged and frankly I don’t want that kind of limelight.

As told to Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri

Source:

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/supplementary/%E2%80%98i-am-bhutto-survivor%E2%80%99-949

Campaign for Justice for Mir Murtaza Bhutto-April

It is an empty slate, clean slate, you can write what you want on it, that is how we are born into this world

Slowly you try to remove the purity of this world, when power gets to you, slowly you try to silence the truth, slowly you try to run away from reality

Up until a time comes when all you can see is darkness. How your power has made lives seem so trivial. How you decide what the world should see. How you think purity does not need to live

When we try to show you that there is still a voice that cannot be silenced you feel as insecure and powerless as you have never felt before. You cannot believe there are still those that want to preserve the truth, the dignity and the honor of a nation, of a legacy.

You think this would stop it, that you can cover up everything with your insanity and cruelty and force silence

BUT YOU WERE WRONG
You can hijack a name but you can never own it. You can never be, what you silenced, in your greed to hold onto your power.

WE SHALL FIGHT, THE TRUTH WILL NEVER DIE

The ink of the pen will triumph over the bullets of the gun.

The voice of the conscience of the world will deafen the violence of your power and bloodshed

A day WILL come when we go back to the start, when the slate will be wiped clean and we start again. With a smile on our lips and a prayer in our heart that truth has won and justice is ALIVE. We shall leave it just as we were born with it..

The name will be owned again…

Continue to Seek Justice..

In Solidarity
Fatima Bhutto Fanclub

Disclaimer: None of the views expressed here are of Fatima Bhutto or any of her family members. These are views of the team...

Copyright: Fatima Bhutto Fan club.
Please do not reproduce this anywhere without permission.

Fatima Bhutto talks to Aminatta Forna

Event 138 • Monday 31 May 2010, 10am • Venue: Guardian Stage

Songs Of Blood and Sword
In December 2007, Benazir Bhutto, Fatima’s aunt, and the woman she had publicly accused of ordering her father’s murder, was assassinated in Rawalpindi. It was the latest in a long line of tragedies for one of the world’s best-known political dynasties.

Price: £5.00



Source: http://www.hayfestival.com/p-2249-fatima-bhutto-talks-to-aminatta-forna.aspx

The luxury of loving Pakistan

The sights and sounds of little luxuries in Pakistan.

I have been to Pakistan twice in the last two years and might go again soon. This, naturally, surprises a lot of people at home.

Why, ask some, do you go to Pakistan? Is there, say others, a new angle to terrorism?

To this, I like saying that I go to Pakistan to search, and satisfy, my interest in luxury. Luxury, exclaim many, what is luxurious in Pakistan?!

So this, then, is my little, colourful explanation (I wanted to call it ode but that word always sounds a little morbid, don't you think?) of the sights and sounds of all that is luxurious in Pakistan.

So here's five of the little luxuries of Pakistan in this column, and another five will come in the next one.

Expresso in Karachi

Fatima Bhutto goes there. How do I know? She told me last week. I said I have been to Karachi and it never sleeps. She gave me the weary all-knowing smile of someone who never does too. I said, I have spent many nights awake drinking coffee at… she completed the sentence, actually both of us said it together: Expresso.

It's a tiny place, only four or five tables when I first went there in 2008, and they are always full. This is where people come to talk, and love, and play. This is where the canoodling and the coaxing happen, where caffeine mixes with causticity, this is where the crying and the gentle coughing, the caressing and the callousness, this is where it all comes together. This, Fatima Bhutto's smile seemed to suggest, is where Karachi cohabits.

I asked Ms Bhutto if she knew a friend of mine who almost lives at Expresso, who, as it so happened, dated and decided on the man she wanted to marry, at Expresso. “This is that subcontinent thing, in India and Pakistan everyone assumes that everyone knows everyone, that everyone went to school with everyone.”

That's the magic of Expresso. Everyone here does know everyone. In a city bereft of alcohol and its associated bonhomie, Expresso, in turn explosive and demure, is the hotline to knowing everyone, sniffing every catfight and cosying up to every nook and cranny of Karachi.

Peeru's Café

Usman Peerzada, Pakistan's theatre man extraordinaire, is as expansive as the leading man roles that he once played.

Baritone, handsome in the salt and pepper years, he and his family run Pakistan's best known theatre and puppetry group, including their museum of puppetry and the legendary Peeru's Café where the performances could as varied as puppetry set to jazz, object puppetry, mixed media theatre.

If he likes you, Usman Peerzada will take you aside and tell you tales from his travels around the world, to him taking on conservative authorities and how his festival survived bomb attacks.

The idea is to see the puppets, lounge in the cottage like dens that are sprinkled across the garden and watch the garden light up in the evenings. I could say magical but Usman Peerzada would never use such a boring term.

Fujiyama

Yes, I have eaten and drunk there. Haven't you? There is no place that brings out the joy of red wine smuggled in in brown paper wrappings and poured out in the perfect Bordeaux glasses to go with endless plates of sushi as that bubble to beat all bubbles haven Fujiyama at Lahore's old Avari hotel.

Everything about the hotel, from the faux Mughal meets more faux Raj reeks subcontinental opulence, everything about the experience suggests giggle and nod, wink and cheer, everything suggests fun, though not quite on the run.

If you are at Lahore, find a kohl-and-catty damsel to take you to Fujiyama. Let her choose the wine and the sushi. Let her bring in the girlfriends.

Let them be blissfully catty. Intersperse with self deprecatory humour. Be a gentleman and pay the bill. Guffaw later about it all in your dreams.

Cukoo's Den

Iqbal Husain, born of a nautch girl in Lahore's ever red Hira Mandi, has built, from his inherited haveli, the city's every-night-new-applause restaurant with the fall-in-love-instantly view of the Badshahi Mosque.

The meat is murderously soft. The Dunhill smoke pure and poisonous, the food comes up from the ground floor to the terrace restaurant in a rope and pulley system and when you walk up three floors to reach the restaurant, you can see canvas after canvas of the nudes of real nautch girls painted by Husain and bits and pieces of Hindu and Buddhist artifacts that he has gathered over the years.

Enough to get him threatened with suicide bomb attacks from time to time but he is usually busy eating and feeding and painting.

The Bhutto suit

No, it's not because Feeha Jamshed is a cross between the Vogue cover and the Guardian books page. No one in Lahore will believe me but it's really not because of her. But this time when I am back in Lahore I shall hunt, once again, for that idyllic man's kurta in black and white with a military shoulder strip held on with a single monotone button.

By far one of the most elegant pieces of clothing for men, first invented, as Feeha told me last time, for her father for their iconic brand TeeJays. Worn by politicians, including by Fatima's grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, this is that head-over-heels thing: comfortable, elegant, hard to dirty (if in black) and slimming.

Five more to complete the list next time. Till then salaam from hindol.sengupta@gmail.com.

Welcome to Pakistan.

Source:

http://beta.thehindu.com/life-and-style/travel/article399991.ece