The Rebel Inheritor by Jemima Khan (Vogue Interview)

Fatima Bhutto is beautiful, outspoken, fearless & the women many see as the rightful heir to Pakistan’s most powerful dynasty. But, she tells Jemima Khan, she refuses to beholden to the family name. Photographs by Jason Bell.

Like being a Kennedy in America, the legacy of being a Bhutto in Pakistan is inescapable. Fatima is infuriated though by the constant & inevitable comparisons with her aunt Benazir, whom she disliked: “It’s a bit of a lazy thing to do, to go, “You’re both women, you both have dark hair…” I don’t think I look anything like her. I don’t think I sound anything like her. And if I seem anything like her, then tell me how & I’ll change it.” Only 27, she has the soft-spoken authority, moral certainty & poise of someone much older.

I’ve met both Bhuttos & I tend to agree. Benazir was all kohl-lined eyes, crimson lipstick, instant hit glamour & regal haughtiness. Fatima is less photogenic & more intense, with a slow burn beauty & a face devoid of make-up, which you want to look at & which gets prettier the longer you do. They famously disagreed politically. Fatima was an acerbic critic not only of her aunt, but also of her aunt’s widower, the current President, Asif Ali Zardari, whom she regards as complicit, along with his late wife Benazir; in the murder of her father she adored.

If there’s a comparison to be made with her aunt is that Fatima is equally fearless. Politics in Pakistan, even on the periphery, is dangerous, especially if you’re a Bhutto. Now that Fatima has emerged as one of Pakistan’s foremost political commentators & civil rights campaigners, &its most outspoken critic of the current regime, she is, by her own admission, risking her life on a daily basis. Fatima’s father, uncle & aunt have all been murdered, & her grandfather executed. As she say, “It feels that every 10 years we bury a member of this family, & not from natural causes. My day to day life has changed since Zardari came to power. When the entire state machinery is in the hands of a man who you believed is involved in the killing of your father, you don’t go out unless you have to.”

As a result of her activism, she has a burgeoning fan club, especially among the young, as I discovered on a recent trip to Pakistan. One wide eyed daughter of a friend had a poster sized photo of her on her bed-room wall, & Fatima is regularly sent emails by young boys proposing marriage. Articulate, out-spoken & passionate, there are depressingly few female role models like for young women to look up to in Pakistan.

Although she says it is only in the past year that she has become recognized when she goes out, I first heard of Fatima more than a decade ago. It was shortly after her father’s death in 1996, when she was just 14. Murtaza Bhutto was Benazir’s younger brother & increasingly irksome political opponent. A year before he died, he had founded his own splinter party, PPP-Shaheed Bhutto, to challenge his sister’s government. I remember talk in Pakistan about the clever, gutsy, grieving Bhutto girl, who had dared to publish a book of poetry in which she lamented her father’s death & lambasted her aunt. There were whispers, even then, that she was the natural successor to the PPP (Pakistan People’s Party), which had been founded by her grandfather Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1967.

We had both moved to Pakistan at the same time in the mid-Nineties; she to Karachi from Damascus as an 11 year old, me to Lahore from London as a married 21 year old. We lost our fathers within a year of each other. We campaigned in the same election in 1997, both in faltering Urdu, she for her late father’s party me for my then husband Imran Khan. We studied for masters degree at the same university, The School of Oriental 7 African Studies (SOAS) in London, during the same period, 1994, but our paths never crossed.

We finally became friends a year ago, after I emailed her to congratulate her on a brilliantly mordant column in the New Statesman about General Musharaf’s erratic last months in power. After the death of her aunt, she wrote a series of searing condemnatory articles for local Pakistani papers. She now writes regularly for The Daily Beast, the New Statesman & occasionally The Guardian.

Since then, we have met a few times in London. I have introduced her to my friends & family here, & they have been charmed. She is surprising mixture. Earnest, even formal at times, then unexpectedly wicked & irreverent; quietly spoken but also an excellent mimic & confident raconteur. Her librarian manner contrasts with her animated, flirty expression & an occasional big, bawdy laugh. She speaks English in that charmingly prim way common to those who, though fluent, have learnt it formally as a second language; Arabic is her first. She was brought up in the Middle East until the age of 11 & educated at an American school. During her early twenties she studied in New York.

Fatima is in England to meet her publisher about her new book, Songs of Blood & Sword, which, she says, is about “my family, violence & Pakistan, & how the three of those move fluidly into each other over the course of 30 years”. Although she travels regularly, she lives in the historic Bhutto compound in Karachi with her stepmother Ghinwa, whom she refers to as her mother, & her two brothers, Zulfiqar (“Zulfi”), 18, & Mir Ali, five, who was adopted by Ghinwa when he was two months old.

As I arrive, Fatima is wriggling into an array of brightly coloured dresses by Roksanda Ilincic & happily chatting about Miliband’s flawed foreign policy in “AfPak”- a phrase she uses derisively- as well as about her shoe fetish, which she says, is hard to indulge without guilt: “ I come from a country where most people live way below the poverty line.” She is very careful never to sound frivolous. When she’s in London, she says, her favorite hang-out is Daunt Books on the Fulham Road, which “makes me sound like a nerd, which I am”, & her constant companion here, Sophie, whom she met while studying at SOAS, has also introduced her to the Mitfords. “Decca is my favorite. I am lugging her huge book of letters back to Karachi with me.”

Fatima is tiny, both in height & girth, & the slinkier shapes are more flattering. There’s a constant debate- one with which I’m all too familiar- about what she can & can’t get away with in terms of dress & undress. These photographs, once they are published, will be picked up by the media in Pakistan & if deemed inappropriate, used as a stick with which to beat her. Although Fatima often dresses in jeans, T-shirts & ballet pumps in Karachi, her refusal to kowtow to the more conservative elements in Pakistan has got her into trouble in the past. When Fatima was campaigning during the last election in 2007 for Ghinwa, who took over her late husband’s PPP-Shaheed Bhutto party, party workers threatened to quit if she refused to cover her hair. “Very begrudgingly- & I’ll never do it again- I put a duppata(veil) on the back of my head. After my mother lost, people came & said, “You lost because your daughter didn’t cover her hair.” Nothing makes those people happy,” she says, adding resolutely, “I realized I could either be bullied & stop wearing what I wear, which is by no means indecent, so that some random person in Faisalabad feels better or I can do what I like.” It’s not just what she wears that has become a public issue. The Pakistani rumor mill was sent into a spin recently when the National Enquirer published a story claiming that Fatima was having an affair with George Clooney. Then there were the reports that she was to star in a Bollywood movie. Neither were true.

“There were a lot of angry calls after that Bollywood story. I felt so violated,” she says calmly. Though Fatima is currently single, she doesn’t see anything wrong with having a boyfriend. “I will marry for love, & not necessarily a Pakistani or a Muslim,” though not, she says firmly, in the foreseeable future.

“Because what I say about the government is very serious, there’s always this effort to make me look silly & frivolous,” she explains. “But that makes me even more determined.” It helps that there has never been any such pressure from her family. Whereas for many young Pakistanis there is “this private/public persona- you’re one person with parents & another with friends”- this was not the way she was brought up by her liberal, secular parents. “The rule growing up was that you don’t hide anything, so there was never any need to rebel.”

Fatima was born in Kabul in 1982 to an Afghan mother three years after her grandfather, Zulfiqar, was executed by General Zia-ul-Haq. She was raised in Damascus until the age of 11, where the Syrian president, Hafez al-Asad, who was a supporter of her grandfather’s, had offered the family refuge. When she was three, her parents divorced. She was never close to her birth mother & had little contact with her while growing up. When Fatima was 14, there was a traumatic episode when her mother appeared in Pakistan to file for custody. The case was orchestrated, Fatima suspects, by her aunt Benazir: “It was her attempt to get rid of us after Papa was killed.” The case was eventually thrown out of court.

“My father was always the parent. He took me to school & cut my hair & put me to bed & all those things,” she recalls. When Fatima was five, her father met & later married Fatima’s dance teacher, Ghinwa, who assumed the role of mother. They are exceptionally close. Fatima jokes, “We are now more like husband & wife- I play bad-cop mother to her good cop.” She describes “a decent, proper childhood in Syria. It was pretty ordinary life, easier & happier than when we returned to Pakistan.”

Above all, they were safe. Though secure & happy in Syria, Fatima says, “I always knew I wasn’t home. My father spoke about Pakistan every day & longed to be back there.” He duly returned in 1993 to challenge his sister’s government but was arrested at the airport 7 charged with more than 90 crimes. By the time Fatima arrived in Pakistan a month later, he was already in jail, where he remained for eight months. “It was a huge shock. My father was in solidarity confinement. I was in a new country, a new school. We were allowed to see him once a week for 40 minutes, not a minute more.” As her father became more critical of his sister-now the prime minister, whose own popularity was waning- so Benazir became increasingly aggressive towards him.

Then in September 1996, Fatima’s life would change irreparably. Her beloved father was shot at point blank range after an altercation with police less than a block from home. She remembers, “When I heard the shots, I was worried. So was my mother. Zulfi was six at the time. We were in the drawing room, which didn’t have windows, & he said, “Don’t worry, Fati- it’s just fireworks.” The police told us there had been a robbery & wouldn’t let us leave the house.”

Ironically, it was her aunt’s husband, Zardari, who told her about the shooting. “He said, “ Don’t you know? Your father has been shot.” And I dropped the phone.”

Fatima & Ghinwa drove straight to the hospital, driving past the crime scene right outside their home, which, sinisterly, had already been cleaned up- as happened almost a decade later when Benazir was assassinated in Rawalpindi. “No glass, no blood. Nothing was there. So we thought he must be fine.” In fact, he had been shot five times. “The autopsy showed that the last fatal shot was fired by someone standing over him. Whilst we were trapped in our house, he was bleeding outside for 45 minutes. Our way of thinking changed 360 degrees after that. I became aware of the full extent of the danger,” Fatima says almost inaudibly. It’s clear that the injustice & brutality of her father’s death has been a driving force for her, & when she talks about him, she’s close to tears.

Recently, in her still grief-stricken battle with Zardari regime, she has again been publicizing her belief that her aunt & uncle were responsible for her father’s killing. A judicial tribunal of inquiry ruled that it could not have happened “without approval from the highest level of government”, & that Benazir’s administration was “probably complicit” in what was a premeditated assassination. But Benazir always maintained the shooting was organized by her enemies in the military; “Kill a Bhutto to get a Bhutto,” as she said at the time.

The truth will probably never emerge. Zardari was arrested & charged with Murtaza Bhutto’s murder after Benazir fell from power, & spent 11 unconvicted years behind bars before being acquitted under a law that dismissed all charges against political figures, brought in at Benazir’s insistence before she would return from exile to Pakistan.

After her father’s death, it required three hours notice before Fatima could leave her house & she was always accompanied by soldiers. Still today, she is shadowed at all times in Pakistan by a retinue of loyal guards. “They are now like family,” she says.

Fatima insists that despite the dangers, she will always remain in Pakistan, though she is adamant that she will never enter politics. Many in Pakistan refuse to believe this, & others insist she is the real heir to the Bhutto dynasty. In a country like Pakistan, where clans & names bear such significance, Fatima- unlike her cousin, Benazir’s 20-year old son Bilawal Bhutto- is a direct descendant of the male line. And at least she has some work experience. (Although that is not always a prerequisite for power. Her aunt’s first ever job was PM of a 160 million-strong nation.) “ Politics should not beheld hostage by the very few.” Fatima says. Besides, she says, despite being born into Pakistan’s most famous feudal family, when she was growing up she wanted to be a professional swimmer, a lawyer &, at one point, to her father’s dismay, an actress.

Now she is more interested in her writing & social activism. “ There’s a lot more that can be done from the outside. You’re free to say what you like & maybe you can be more productive, unfettered,” she admits. The writer & historian Tariq Ali agrees, saying of her, “In a country where sycophancy recurs with miserable regularity, her writings are sharp, refreshing & fearless.” The writer AA Gill is also a fan. “Most Pakistani polemic is written in spittle. Hers is written in honey,” he says. She has written a book of poetry & her first book was an account of the 2005 earthquake. Her new one will be published in April next year, then she says she wants to write another about her hometown, Karachi. She spends her days either at her computer writing, or working in Karachi’s sprawling slums & women’s jails, where poor rape victims languish on charges of adultery & cannot afford legal representation. She also travels abroad to speak about Pakistan at conferences.

Given all the problems in her home country, her optimism surprises me. She refuses to envisage the doomsday failed state scenarios predicted by some analysts: “Pakistan is a new country, only 62 years old. This government will go, the war will end- neither are sustainable. We Pakistanis have to remember that & focus on building a more just, more empowered, more democratic future.” She pauses, reflects & then laughs loudly. “Ugh. I hate it when I sound like a politician.”

For the time being, she’s off for a month’s holiday with her family to “a tiny incredibly boring village in Europe where nothing much happens.” She’s reluctant to be more geographically specific for security reasons. This is the one haven that she visits every couple of summers where she can leave behind the security guards & armoured vehicles, the head-pounding heat & the political intrigues. It provides the perfect antidote to her pressure cooker life in Pakistan. There may be “only one newspaper store in the whole village”, but at least it’s safe to visit it.

Source: Vogue Magazine.
Credit: Zehra Ansari
The FanClub Team is thankful to Zehra Ansari for providing us with this write up.

Team Note*
Please go and buy the issue of Vogue nonetheless and support Fatima Bhutto. There are excellent pictures of her in the issue (For those in Britain/USA it is the British Oct 09 issue). In some other regions, the issue has still to come out, please support the magazine and buy a copy.