JANINE DI GIOVANNI TALKS TO FATIMA BHUTTO

Ghosts by Daylight, the latest book by award-winning foreign correspondent and war reporter Janine di Giovanni, is a memoir about war and the sharp edges of ordinary life – dealing with addiction, the pain of miscarriages, replacing one set of challenges with a different sort. For di Giovanni, who constantly follows stories that other journalists are too afraid to cover, from Rwanda to Algeria to the Balkans, travelling to report on the second Palestinian intifada while pregnant isn't necessarily as trying as giving birth in a Parisian hospital.

Fatima Bhutto: East Timor, Kosovo, Somalia, Afghanistan – what separates war zones for you?
Janine di Giovanni: There are no separations... meaning human misery is human misery, whether it is in Asia or Africa. But there are places in the world where I’ve reported that are closer to my heart, for whatever reason. Some places you feel utterly powerless to do anything – that is beyond frustrating.

FB: I mean, how does one leave Grozny behind when Tripoli is the next port of call, or is that impossible?
JDG: I think it's impossible. You don't forget people or images. They haunt you. For instance, in Sierra Leone I once saw a six-month-old baby who had been amputated by the RUF rebels so that she – and all the people amputated – would be grotesque reminders of their power and to instil fear. I see that child in my dreams at least once a month. Sometimes I respond to places less than others. Afghanistan never got under my skin the way it does for others. I think because the treatment of women is still so horrific, the abuse of children... even among the educated classes.

FB: How did you balance the difficulties of writing about the “sharp edges” of normal life in Ghosts by Daylight while living them?
JDG: It was a very, very hard book to write, for many reasons. Mainly because the characters who are the central ones are still alive – my mother, my friends, my husband. And it was writing about real pain and suffering, but this time my own. I felt very vulnerable exposing myself but at the same time I knew it was a part of healing, not just for me, but for other people who are spouses of alcoholics or who suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). After I finished it, people who know me very well, my closest friends, wrote to say, “Why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you ask for help? We were here for you.” But I kept it very quiet. On many levels, I just don't tell people things about myself, I internalise a lot – on every level – stress, pain, suffering. The only thing I am very open about is love. When I love someone, I really love them. And I tell them. A lot.

FB: Where were you when you thought, “That's it – this is my last war?”
JDG: Well, for sure I thought I would die in Chechnya. So I wondered whether I would ever walk out of that country alive, let alone cover another war. I think the moment passes; you almost forget what you were feeling and then there is the terrible pull of going back to a place like Somalia or Zimbabwe, where you think there is darkness and you want to give a voice to people who have none. I have been frightened many times. But you forget it, the same way you forget the agonising pain of childbirth.

FB: Bosnia changed all the journalists who lived through it. You recently wrote an essay for Granta about returning to Bosnia and searching for a young boy, Nusrat, you met there. How do you carry Bosnia with you today?
JDG: It is in the face of the little boy I love most in the world, my son, Luca. He is seven, and I met his father there in 1993. If that meeting never happened, that life would not come to be. But aside from the personal reasons, I feel that country pulled me into its vortex – I fell in love, deeply, with this wounded place and I felt so much the horror and the injustice that happened there. I was completely and utterly gutted that the carnage and suffering people endured could have and should have been stopped. Let’s just say I did not emerge the same person I was when I first landed there in 1992. It changed me.

FB: You write about the first “real” death you saw, in Bosnia, and the autopilot mechanism it produced in you. About not knowing how many dead bodies you'd seen over the course of reporting from places like Rwanda and Sierra Leone. How does that sort of mechanism evolve the more wars you live through and the more violence you witness?
JDG: The French psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik, who has done extensive studies on resilience (and who himself survived losing both his parents in the war), says that the people who survive such things just have an innate button that they push in order to keep their souls intact. I have no idea, but I do know I managed to stay sane on some level and I saw plenty of my friends and colleagues go down. I’m not stronger than them, I just think some people have more resilience in their make-up than others...

FB: Does the new sanitised language of war still allow you to do what it was that made you set out to become a journalist in the first place – giving a voice to people who had none?
JDG: I am just not built to be told where to go, what to write, what to look at. 
I don't respond well to authority. I grew up in the 1970s, the “question authority” generation. And I think journalism has definitely suffered. Compare what was written in Vietnam by reporters such as Gloria Emerson or David Halberstam to the reporting that came out of Iraq. Just not the same quality.
FB: Which newspapers do you read when at home in Paris?
JDG: I read le Figaro and le Parisien, because I get them free at the gym. I don't watch TV but will check the 8pm news on France 2 and occasionally CNN and the BBC. I listen to the radio, France Info, and I check the BBC website. But I am not 
a news junkie any more.

FB: General Patton said that the object of war isn't to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. How has new technology, epitomised by American drone attacks, changed the nature of war?
JDG: What a terrible line. I am not sure war is worth the loss of a single life. I think technology has moved us so far militarily that we seem to have disassociated the victims. Drones are nearly freakish, science fiction-like vehicles operated by someone back in Arizona who has no clue what life is like on the ground. I remember reporting from a remote village, a wedding party in Afghanistan that had gotten bombed “accidentally” and finding pieces of people's lives scattered everywhere – their bloody clothes, the food they were eating, the smashed house. And the few living just sobbing, grabbing my arm and asking, “Why?”

FB: Why do some people escape PTSD while others are consumed by it? 
Your husband Bruno's trauma from covering wars as a photojournalist was of a different form than yours. Is it the peculiarities of how one witnesses that kind of violence?
JDG: They say it's genetic, like alcoholism. They also say that you do not get it until you have a second jarring trauma – then the memories of the first come back. I am a great believer in old-fashioned Woody Allen-style therapy. It’s painful, it goes 
on forever, it hurts like hell, it makes you feel worse before you feel better – but 
it works. But you have to stick with it, and you have to be honest. Personally, 
I have been tested relentlessly and thought I did not have it. Now, looking back over my reaction after the traumatic birth of my son, I think I might have. I mean, 
I behaved like a madwoman hoarding water and medicine and afraid people on the street were going to harm me and my baby... But I would never put myself in 
the same boat as someone in Srebrenica or Kigali who saw their family massacred.

FB: Where to next? Martha Gellhorn said she didn't write, she just wandered about. But she also wrote of this almost obsessive need to follow war wherever she could reach it. Which one is it for you?
JDG: At the moment, I would like to get to northern Kenya and Mogadishu to report on the famine. I can't believe I am seeing the same images from nearly 20 years ago – 1992 – that some of my friends took, and they are taking the exact same ones right now. Don’t we ever learn anything from history?

Ghosts by Daylight is out now, published by Bloomsbury Press.
janinedigiovanni.com


Source: http://www.tankmagazine.com/issue-53/talk/janine-di-giovanni.aspx

Fatima Bhutto has guts

The Bhuttofamilie is the most powerful political dynasty in Pakistan. Fatima Bhutto is averse to. "My uncle, President Asif Ali Zardari, is a criminal, liar and murderer."

Fatima Bhutto (29), the headstrong niece of the 2007 assassinated Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, the current president, is "an unguided missile". Say the friends of the president. Fatima late in her columns for The Daily Beast and including New Statesman, blogs and any chance go to the corrupt practices of her uncle revealed to.

"Fatima has guts," says Zubair Areesh (24), leader and guitarist of the popular pop group in Lahore Rizer, enthusiastically. "Our leaders shamelessly filling their pockets, dancing to the tune of America, do not care to poverty. Look at the floods in the south. Again, thousands of people displaced from their homes.Fatima would have to go into politics. " The three remaining band members, dressed in jeans and their hair stiff with gel, nodding furiously along. | Photo: Dutch Height

Pakistani Kennedys

In the family house of Bhutto in Karachi, once by her famous grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto designed laughs in New York and London trained Fatima to thank her fans. Once it was her grandfather, one of the most charismatic leaders in Pakistan's history, at the head of the Bhutto dynasty. The most powerful political family in the country, because the chain of doom and disaster that struck them, the Pakistani named Kennedy.

But just as averse as she is of her corrupt family, so she is averse to the political dynasty. "A dynasty is against change, excludes others outside the political process and makes people apathetic. Pakistan is the land of the silent majority has become. While we are on the streets en masse should go. "

Fatima Bhutto fights passionately the one-dimensional image in the West Pakistani youth there. "Most of the youth is liberal and peaceful." The U.S. war on terrorism after the attacks in New York in part on Pakistani territory served, and the widespread corruption in American aid money intended for the economic crisis, floating in her hopeless youth in the arms of the Taliban.

The brighter cousin Benazir President Zardari in the media for criminal, liar and murderer belongs, the more support she receives her blogs. She plays the voice of young people, now more than half the Pakistani population.

For every business deal would be a fixed percentage claiming Zardari. "When his wife, my aunt, Benazir was prime minister the first time, he was known as" Mr. 10 Percent ". During her second reign, he was upgraded to "Mr. 50 Percent".Since he is in power, we call him 'Mr. 110 Percent ". The New York Times, the couple would Benazir-Asif 2 to $ 3 million cash are diverted.

Before this former Playboy came to power in 2008, there were cases of corruption against him in Switzerland, Spain and England, and was in his own country accused of four murders. According to Fatima, he also had a hand in the murder of his brother, her father, in 1996. "Among the corruption in Pakistan Zardari has reached epidemic proportions," said Zardari Fatima.Ook muilkorft the press more and more. Any journalist who ridicules the president, risking the cell. Regularly go Facebook, YouTube and Google on black.

Apple and egg

But Fatima does more than just her uncle nailed to the pillory. In the slums of Karachi, she tools up for the poor. In the women's prisons brings them regularly used computers.

They still believe in Pakistan. Stability in the country turns its eyes back until the Americans withdraw from Afghanistan. The bombing militants to operate off extremism. U.S. aid crane can also be closed better, according to Fatima disappears 70 percent. "The international business community to invest in Pakistan. We need jobs. So the desperate youth, now for a song blow up from the street. "

This is a translation from a dutch source : http://www.depers.nl/economie/614966/Fatima-heeft-lef.html

‘Taliban never scared Pak, our federal laws did’

What is it like to rediscover a parent as a grown-up ? "Full of surprises ," admits Song of Blood and Sword author Fatima Bhutto on the day two of The Times of India Literary Carnival. She was surprised when her father's first love, a Greek woman called Della, suspected that there was "somebody else".

And that they broke up only 10 months before Fatima was born. And she was shocked when she learnt that her father's thesis advisor in college was Samuel Huntington. Actor Kabir Bedi brought out more from Fatima in an informal chat at a session aptly called 'Fathers and Daughters'. Did the direct exposure to violence leave her scarred? "Violence, direct or indirect, scars."

Fatima stands for a clean Pakistan, but it's not something she means to achieve by joining politics. Perhaps, an anti-graft movement like Anna Hazare's , prods Bedi. "We have not seen such a movement in Pakistan yet, but there are movements to the contrary like the National Reconciliation Ordinance 'or National Robbers Ordinance' that grants amnesty to the corrupt." When asked if she bought into rumours that her father Murtaza Bhutto was killed because he shaved off Asif Ali Zardari's moustache, she said conspiracy theories were a South Asian speciality. So, why was Murtaza killed? "For pointing out corruption, for being an alternative and when politics revolves around a name (Bhutto), there is no space for two." Fatima isn't complaining only because her father was killed, "but because 3,000 people have been killed in Karachi in encounter killings".

Had her father lived would he have changed Pakistan? "I hope so, maybe, but power corrupts and he, probably, would not have been untouched by it," she says. "But he was a secular man, opposed the brutality of the Zia years when Hudood, (which holds a raped woman, and not the rapist, guilty) blasphemy laws and obscene powers came to be. Taliban never frightened Pakistan , our federal laws did that."

What about the father in Kabir Bedi? He was away during his daughter Pooja's formative years, after divorcing from her mother Protima Bedi, but he sees in her "the same strong, assertive, independent and outspoken streak; I see a lot of Protima in Pooja."

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Taliban-never-scared-Pak-our-federal-laws-did/articleshow/10976813.cms

Power not politics divided the Bhuttos: Fatima

Mumbai: It was power, which is more destructive than politics, that divided Pakistan's powerful Bhutto family, feels the writer-poet scion Fatima Bhutto.

"Power is more destructive than politics. Everybody in the family had different ideologies from the start but when the family became powerful, things began to fracture," the 29-year-old niece of slain Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said at the Times Literary Carnival.

Fatima, who finds penning memoir a strange process since it entails researching one's own family, says she took up writing because of a promise she had made to Murtaza, her father, who like her grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and aunt Benazir, died a violent death.

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.

"I took up writing because it was the last thing I promised my father Murtaza hours before he was killed," she said speaking on "Selective Nostalgia: Memoir Writing and Charitable Deception of Memory".

"I asked him (Murtaza) why doesn't he write about himself. He told me to do it after he was gone and few hours later he was killed," she said and described her father as a "fascinating figure".

About her latest book "Songs of Desert and Sword", which is an account of Murtaza's life seen through her eyes, she said it was strange to research about her own family while writing the book that dwells on the brutal and corrupt world of Pakistani power politics which claimed the lives of four members of the Bhutto dynasty in the past 31 years.

She said her target audience was the young Pakistani who viewed her writing with "sympathy, solidarity and curiosity".

While conceding that it was not possible to be neutral about people you love, Fatima said she had critically analysed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's handling of Balochistan.

"He could have made a difference by ending the repression of Balochi people but it continued," she said.

Source: http://zeenews.india.com/news/south-asia/power-not-politics-divided-the-bhuttos-fatima_745050.html

Sex, lies and the art of writing honest memoirs

When a celebrated psychoanalyst declares to a packed gathering that facts are the least important part of writing a memoir, the audience sits up in rapt attention tempered with disbelief. "What actually happened is not important-what you believe happened is," said Sudhir Kakar, replying to an audience question on Day One of the Times of India Literary Carnival on Friday.

If memoir-writing was about the subjective recollection of life events for Kakar, for Fatima Bhutto, granddaughter of former Pakistan prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, it was about the necessity to urgently record events as they happened. "We have this amazing ability to erase our immediate past," she said about her country. With some candid revelations peppering the discussion between the three memoir writers-Kakar , Bhutto and historian Zareer Masani-and moderator Patrick French, the postlunch session audience didn't need any caffeine kick to stayawake and fully attentive.

When the debate swung to the topic of honesty, the session saw a bit of cross-fire . Referring to Fatima's soft approach to the controversial parts of her grandfather's life, Masani said, "Unlike Fatima, I need to be honest, brutally honest." (To which she immediately riposted "That's unfair!") But it was Kakar-whose memoir according to French is "very frank by subcontinent standards" -who was the most honest, even at the session. The psychoanalyst had the audience in splits with anecdotes of his time spent in Germany as a wide-eyed , 20-year-old and his six-week-long sea journey from Calcutta to Hamburg where he found himself ogling "young women's legs" . Kakar's brutally honest confessions did not stop there-he went on to narrate the troubles he faced when he danced for the first time with a woman, a German woman: "I had to tie a handkerchief when dancing . I won't say where."

Despite the outpouring of candidness and claims of brutal honesty from Kakar and Masani, they did not contradict Fatima's contention that a memoir was never a tell-all . "There is a strong sense of private-public space. Anyone who has written a memoir will say that they always keep some things to themselves," she said. Kakar had an interesting angle to add to the debate. "The problem with memoirwriting is the voyeuristic pleasure that a reader looks for," he said. "Readers want to know about the writer and do not pay much attention to the writing ." Ergo: "In fiction-writing, you want to convince people. In memoirs, you want to seduce people and so memoir-writing is on the seduction side."

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Sex-lies-and-the-art-of-writing-honest-memoirs/articleshow/10965692.cms

'There's something strange about a name being a part of an identity'

As a 14-year-old , Fatima Bhutto loved listening to her father's stories about the ruthless politics of Pakistan. She urged him to write a book about his life, but Murtaza Bhutto merely laughed and said it would be too dangerous. "You write the book when I'm gone," he told his wide-eyed daughter, who readily agreed.

Neither father nor daughter could have known that this was to be virtually their last conversation. Hours later, Murtaza Bhutto was murdered in Karachi while his children cowered in their house, listening to gunshots. Small wonder then that Fatima grew up determined to keep her promise-and to write a book about his eventful life and suspicious death.

The outcome was the explosive Songs of Blood and Sword in which Fatima Bhutto relates the dramatic, tragic story of her family and country. Her grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, once Pakistan's most important political figure, was executed by General Zia-ul-Haq .

Before his death, he demanded that his sons avenge his humiliation. Shahnawaz and Murtaza embarked on this mission-but Shahnawaz was poisoned in France a few years later. Then Murtaza was killed in Karachi-possibly at the behest of his estranged sister, Benazir Bhutto. Later Benazir, herself, was assassinated.

This blood-splattered memoir catapulted Fatima Bhutto to the limelight-as did her trenchant criticism of Pakistan's leadership.

Watch the articulate 29-year-old discuss memoir writing with Sudhir Kakkar, Zareer Masani and Patrick French at the session Selective Nostalgia today , at Mumbai Fully Booked: The Times of India Literary Carnival.

How did it feel to grow up as part of the Bhutto family?

It didn't-and it shouldn't-feel like anything. I grew up in exile in Damascus so there wasn't any focus on my name. We went to school and lived and were raised without the shadow of our name hanging over us so it didn't really affect my brother and me as kids. I think there's something strange about a name being a part of an identity-it should be built upon what you do and what you think and feel rather than the random letters of a last name.

What was the story you set out to tell in Songs of Blood and Sword?

It was the last promise I had made to my father-that I would tell his story. It was something I always knew I would do, but when I began writing I was not only thinking of my father's life and death, but also the story of violence and politics.

You were born in Kabul, and have lived in Damascus , Karachi, New York and London. So where is home?

The experience of exile does strange things, it very much distorts the idea of home. You're never really at home anywhere, though you adapt easily to new places. I felt very at home in Damascus growing up. When I lived in London and New York, they were home. There's always a longing though, for somewhere else. My writing has largely looked at this part of the world-at South Asia, but this is where home is now.

Is there any way to quell the turbulence in Pakistan?

There's no easy answer to that question. Pakistan suffers from extraordinarily poor leadership-leadership that is pathologically corrupt and violent. It used to be that every once in a while, the faces changed though the politics remained the same. Now not even the faces change. Pakistan's people have no recourse against the state, no access to justice, no access to the most basic of services like health care or elementary education . Look at the floods. Months on from the second year of devastating flooding, there are still five million people who have been abandoned by the state. They have no medical relief, many are homeless, they have no food security. The turbulence doesn't come from the people, they bear the brunt of it.

Is there a fresh burst of creativity coming out of South Asia?

I don't think there's been a time when there wasn't creativity coming out of South Asia. You go back decades and you have the poetry of Sarojini Naidu, of Faiz, of Tagore. You go back centuries and you have great learning coming out of universities in Taxila and Varanasi and Nalanda.

Look at the last five years, you're spoilt for choice. I think South Asia has tremendous authors. Basharat Peer, Hari Kunzru, Hanif Kureishi, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Dilip Hiro are a bunch of the best.

As a child and teenager, what were your feelings towards India?

We share a past, a beautiful heritage. I have great affection for India. I always feel very welcome whenever I am there-and I hope Indians who have visited Pakistan will agree that that the same goes for them here.

Do you think that exercises like literary festivals can help build bridges?

We need people to people contact desperately. It's amazing how little interaction we have between the two countries . Literary festivals demonstrate very clearly that we have a wealth of similar, connected stories. Our scars are the same. Our joys are similar. And they create a space for dialogue that is very important.

Source: http://m.timesofindia.com/city/mumbai/Theres-something-strange-about-a-name-being-a-part-of-an-identity/articleshow/10952212.cms