Memories of her late father shadow Fatima Bhutto wherever she turns. In Songs of Blood and Sword, her non-fiction debut, Fatima has chronicled her many memories of late father Murtaza Bhutto and highlighted the alleged conspiracy behind his tragic death. “Every decade someone in this immediate family of Zulfikar Bhutto and Nusrat Bhutto’s children is killed…” she writes, referring to her grandfather, the late prime minister and founder of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). During the interview, Fatima’s striking beauty and warm smile reveal little of her family’s traumatic past, but the mask slips as she glances at her book on the table beside her.” It’s remarkable how every 10 years we have to bury a murdered Bhutto,” she says, quietly.
She has no personal memories of her grandfather’s death – as she was born three years after. “But I learnt of many things related to his assassination from my father,” she says, calling it her first exposure to the influences of power. In 1985, Zulfikar’s youngest son Shahnawaz was found dead in France. Fatima watched Murtaza and Benazir’s frayed relationship come apart as her father struggled to understand his sister’s reaction to a sibling’s death.
Shahnawaz’s death was also the fist time Fatima saw Murtaza cry. “Up until then everything was bearable because they had each other,” she says, revealing the brothers were very close. “My father became a sad person. He lost weight, and he lost his smile, and his ability to laugh and joke.” Her stepmother Ghinwa told Fatima that though she was only three years old at the time, her uncle’s death left her with nightmares concerning her father’s safety. “My mother tells me the sight of my uncle lying face down on the carpet stayed with me and that once, when I found my father sleeping in that position, I was terrified,” she recalls.
She could not have known that just a decade later, she would be confronting those fears – on Sept. 20, 1996, Murtaza was killed in a police encounter near his Karachi residence. The day he died, she wanted to accompany him to the public meeting he was attending. “I just wanted to be with him but he said it was not safe,” she says. “I said I would stay in her car and not trouble him but he did not take me. To this day I wish I had gone with him, maybe I could have saved him somehow. But I was a child. What could I have done?”
Having endured a lifetime of violence at age 27, Fatima believes today she is very sensitive to suffering and pain. “It makes it impossible for me to ignore any act of violence,” she says, explaining her activist agenda. But she says it also makes her appreciate kindness, happiness, beauty and all the things that sustain a person trapped in the midst of that violence. She credits parents Murtaza and Ghinwa for instilling in her that love and optimism. “They were the most generous people, they had a wonderful spirit, and amidst tragedy they taught us to enjoy life come whatever,” she says of her parents, who married in 1989. “This upbringing protects me always. It has kept me optimistic because I saw the bravest side of people in the worst of times.”
Among the brave she would count Ghinwa, a pillar of strength for both Fatima and Zulfikar after Murtaza’s death. “She is a phenomenal woman,” says Fatima, emotionally. “She has never sought revenge. She told us anger is destructive and made it clear that violence is not normal at all. She made sure we led as normal a life as possible, whether in London or Karachi. We loved going to restaurants, theater, movies, reading books and enjoying music. We did everything to be a regular family.”
Fatima believes her strength today comes from her family. “We are blessed to have each other and that is what saved us all,” she says, adding, “People have gone through much worse. I have lots of privileges and a wonderful mother and brother.” She believes in the Sufi philosophy that teaches love is above all. “I believe how you live and treat others reflects on you.”
Which is why she was deeply saddened at the death of aunt Benazir Bhutto. “It was tragic that a fourth member of our family died a violent death.” I was grieving for who she was before she became a public figure. In power she was unrecognisable from the woman I loved as a child,” she says, adding, “I believe a lot of violence was done to her and she did violence.”
And that is not how Fatima sees her own life playing out. For now, she’s happy at home in Karachi with Ghinwa and Mir, Ghinwa’s adopted son (Zulfikar is studying in London). The siblings are close-knit, and never fight. “Zulfi is the kindest person I know,” says Fatima of her 20-year-old brother. “He is truly mature and now I go to him for advice. When he was younger I would dominate him and when my mother objected he would say, ‘It is okay – she is doing it for my good’. Now my baby brother Mir bosses us all around,” she says, laughing.
Having had a wonderful father and brothers who are “dignified and kind” Fatima, currently single, has great expectations from any other man in her life. “I think the man I would share my life with would have to be a survivor, to go through the worst and come out generous and unscarred,” she says, adding, “So far, I haven’t found anyone like that. And yes, he would have to have a great sense of humour, like my father.” And while she’s happy with the attention the book’s been getting, she doesn’t see it kick-starting a career in politics. “I am political, but I don’t think of becoming a Member of Parliament,” she says. But never say never, she thinks, adding, “If I ever became an MP, I would want it to be on my own merit. Not as a member of a dynasty.”
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