You are beautiful,” journalist-turned-novelist Henry Porter compliments Fatima Bhutto by way of opening his on-stage interview with her in London.
Fatima, who will be 28 next month, also laughs easily and has a sense of humour which accentuate the Bhutto glamour.
After her tour of India, Fatima has come to the UK to publicise Songs of Blood and Sword.
“It strikes me you are much older for your age and that is because you have lived a very varied life,” adds Porter.
Fatima appears prepared for all likely questions, principal among them being, “Was your aunt, Benazir, responsible for the murder of your father, Murtaza?”
The answer, according to Fatima, is yes, Benazir did authorise her brother’s assassination on a dark night in Karachi on September 20, 1996, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, was also complicit in the killing.
Compared with India, what is different about Britain is that the audiences here contain a significant proportion of Pakistanis who desire an audience with the Bhutto princess. They want to know her policy on this, that and the other. How will she go about getting justice for her father’s murder?
“This is what I am doing for justice,” she replies, pointing to her book.
Fatima makes it clear she is a “struggling journalist” who will keep the money from the book sales and that she has no intention of going into politics.
“I tried to be very open and honest in the book — and so that should automatically disqualify me from any politics,” she quips.
The book cover emphasises that Fatima is “Granddaughter to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, executed 1979; Niece to Shahnawaz Bhutto, murdered 1985; Daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, assassinated 1996; Niece to Benazir Bhutto, assassinated 2007.”
“I have no intention of being the fifth member on that list at all,” she declares.
When a Bangladeshi introduces himself as coming “from the enemy camp”, Fatima’s little joke produces laughter and applause: “When you said you were from the ‘enemy camp’ I thought you were going to say you are an aide of Asif Zardari.”
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment