Fatima Bhutto's debut to Viking

Viking is set to publish the debut novel from Fatima Bhutto, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon.

Mary Mount at Viking bought world rights excluding India from Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown. It has already been pre-empted in the USA by Andrea Walker at Penguin Press, and in Norway by Cathrine Bakke Bolin at Gyldendal.

The novel, which has also been sold in the US and Norway, takes place over the course of one morning, and follows three brothers living close to the Pakistani border with Afghanistan, and two women, Samarra and Mina who come into their lives.

Fatima Bhutto is part of a Pakistani political dynasty. Her grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was both prime minister and president of Pakistan, and her aunt Benazir Bhutto was prime minister twice before her assassination in 2007. Benazir’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, is the current president of Pakistan.

In 2010, 30-year-old Bhutto published a memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword (Jonathan Cape).

Source: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/fatima-bhuttos-debut-viking.html

News about Fatima Bhutto's Next Book

Via Twitter account of Publishers Week @PW_Deals

Andrea Walker at Penguin has preempted NA rights to Fatima Bhutto’s Pakistan-set novel "In the Shadow of the Crescent Moon."

Intelligence is sexy, period By Daily Post

SUKANT DEEPAK

No talking about her skin-hugging jeans or the lovely black boots. Not a whisper about the way her long fingers caress her hair and make you so glad to be alive the moment you’re in front of her.

“Why is your guy taking so many pictures?” she asks. You die. Why can’t there be a holy war against those who take her pictures?

Author Fatima Bhutto can easily overshadow anyone on the third day of the Jaipur Literature Festival. Oprah Winfey included. And she wants to talk serious. Only serious.

A young, intelligent woman like her in the Pakistani society which seems to be falling apart — rising inflation, starvation, an army which may take over anytime... Is something wrong in the state of Denmark? The celebrated author offers a fascinating smile, “It must be understood that in the Pakistani society, the gulf between those in power and the ones who are being ruled has been widening at an alarming rate, with the former choosing to be absolutely insensitive towards the issues concerning the masses. Do you know, millions are starving, there is a tremendous energy crisis. In my country, people stand on one side. Power stands on the other. Sad, but true.” But there must be a silver lining. “Of course there is, interesting things are happening. People are trying to make themselves heard. Judiciary is waking up. However, the real issue still remains — people. Read the newspaper headlines in Pakistan; they all scream of who will get the power. Why do we fail to understand that power doesn’t ‘belong’ to anyone. It is very complex phenomenon.”

Mention the never-before role being played by the civil society in Asia in recent times, like Anna Hazare’s crusade against corruption in India, and the lawyers’ protest in Pakistan, and Fatima is quick to respond, “Who is the civil society? Do you know that most people in Pakistan may not even know about the protests being held, thanks to the fact that there isn’t enough electricity to feed their television. And also, why do we take only Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi into consideration while talking about Pakistan? Again, the issue of ever-growing gulf emerges. The most important issues including food, health, land reforms, energy aren’t taken up by the civil society. The problems being faced by far-fetched parts of the country are being ignored. Why aren’t we being sensitive to the needs of the majority? It’s so surprising!”

Now they say that for young Pakistani, India is no longer the enemy… “Yes, America tops the list. That’s because their occupation of Afganisthan is illegal and unjust. The drone attacks inside Pakistani territory are testing our patience like never before. I really wonder how many more Pakistani soldiers will need to be sacrificed at the American hands for us to realise that we don’t need them.”

As an educated young woman, does she feel that feudalism, still a dormant part in the Pakistani society also has a lot to do with the present-day chaos in Pakistani, though she also belongs to a huge landed family. “Sure, it is one of the factors, but then in every sphere- be it the industry, political power or any other institution, only a handful have all the power in that country.”

She has already made it clear that she would not join politics but remain a “critic”. So, how does she perceive the rise in former cricketer Imran Khan’s popularity? “Yes, he does have a personality. The question is whether he’s any different from the other politicians? The guy has always made it clear that he’s pretty cozy with dictatorship. He supported Zia, he has defended Musharraf. And yes, as a woman, I will worry if he comes to power. If you know, he has voted against the woman’s bill and his views with regard to the fairer sex are very orthodox. Don’t forget, that in 2009, he voiced that he was in favour of the Shria law.”

Bring up Kashmir, and she’s quick to respond, “It would not be fair to comment on this issue as there is no Kashmiri in attendance…”

Signing an autograph for a Canadian fan, she whispers, “Also, don’t you think internal borders restrict us to a great extent…?”

Source:http://www.dailypostindia.com/news/10234-intelligence-is-sexy-period.html

Fatima Bhutto Blasts Imran Khan

There was a short-lived rumor last month that Fatima Bhutto was flirting with the idea of joining Imran Khan’s opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.

Speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival on Sunday, she made it clear this was unlikely to happen. Ever.

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“He has an incredible coziness not with the military but with dictatorship,” Ms. Bhutto said of Mr. Khan, a cricket legend-turned-politician who has been billing himself as the face of change in Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto accused Mr. Khan of defending the legacy of former dictator Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, who came to power in the late 1970s after overthrowing Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Fatima’s grandfather and the founder of the country’s ruling Pakistan People’s Party. She also mentioned Mr. Khan’s support for a 2002 referendum allowing Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who had come to power with a coup a few years earlier, to extend his term.

That’s not where it ended. In what appeared to be a well-rehearsed argument to debunk the political credibility of the former cricket captain, Ms. Bhutto went on to list more reasons why she opposed his political foray.

“As a woman I worry very much about Imran’s politics,” said Ms. Bhutto. She spoke of his opposition to amending a 2006 woman’s bill in favor of victims of rape. She also questioned Mr. Khan’s commitment to secularism and to defending minorities.

“Is he a savior? No, I don’t think so,” said Ms. Bhutto during a Pakistan-focused session at the literary festival.

“Well, that’s the end of Imran Khan,” said news anchor Karan Thapar, who moderated the panel.

Mr. Khan’s political weight, long dismissed as irrelevant, started to gain new relevance in recent months.

Although he started his party more than 15 years ago, only now is it starting to gain traction. On Christmas Day, over 100,000 people turned up to his rally in Karachi, where he vowed to stand up to the U.S. and to fight corruption.

In October, he drew an even larger crowd in Lahore, leaving some wondering whether the next general elections, slated for 2013, may “mark the moment that PTI went from being ridiculous to respectable in the mainstream,” as an article in The Caravan magazine recently noted.

Mike Clarke/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Fatima Bhutto at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong on March 3, 2008.

At the literary festival, where Ms. Bhutto shared a stage with the Pakistani-American historian Ayesha Jalal, the tone was one of disillusionment with Pakistan’s political class. Ms. Bhutto spoke of the “gulf” that exists between the people in power and the rest of the country, saying that food scarcity – not squabbles between institutions – is the bigger worry for most people.

Despite her political lineage (another former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, was her aunt), Ms. Bhutto has long eschewed direct involvement in national politics. Best known as a writer and a journalist, Ms. Bhutto hasn’t spared members of her family in her political critiques. Her “Songs of Blood and Swords,” a 2010 memoir centered on the Bhutto dynasty, exposedfeuding in her family and was damning of her late aunt.

Spokespersons of Mr. Khan’s PTI party did not respond to emailed requests for comment. Attempts to reach Mr. Khan or his spokespersons by phone were unsuccessful.

Source:http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/01/22/fatima-bhutto-blasts-imran-khan/?mod=google_news_blog

Kovalam Literary Festival inaugurated by Fatima Bhutto

The fourth edition of the popular Kovalam Literary Festival was inaugurated on Saturday by Fatima Bhutto, the author of Songs of Blood and Sword.

Bhutto, in her inaugural speech, said that both India [ Images ] and Pakistan have a common heritage and nothing can separate that rich legacy.

The world shook when Pakistan and India were divided, said Bhutto, adding that this happened again when Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan in 1971.

India and Pakistan shared a rich cultural background and the unified strength of the two countries could beat the world, she said.

Noted writer Paul Zachariah and Binoo K John, director of the Kovalam Literary festival, were present among the audience.

Bhutto's address was followed by a detailed discussion on Binoo K John's book Last Song of Savio De Souza with journalist and writer Suresh Menon and the author.

Aswhin Sangi spoke about his work Chanakya's Chant and shared his experiences with the audience.

Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunathilake spoke about his book Chinaman that is based on cricket.

Authors Mohammed Haneef [ Images ], Meena Kandaswamy and Paresh Mehrotra are expected to participate in the festival on Sunday, the last day of the festival.



Source: http://www.rediff.com/news/report/kovalam-literary-festival-kicks-off/20111001.htm

I started writing poetry when there was fear, says Fatima Bhutto

In times of trouble, children find their own ways to cope and come to terms with it. Fatima Bhutto who always loved the written word, sought poetry.

As a 14-year-old, she had hidden in a windowless room, shielding her little brother when there was shooting outside her home in Karachi. Her father Murtaza was murdered that day. It cost her dearly to be Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s granddaughter and niece of Benazir Bhutto, former prime ministers of Pakistan.

“I started writing poetry at a time when there was a lot of fear in the city that I lived in. Karachi was a city on fire in the early 1990s,” says Fatima.

“It was a time and place that was, as it is now in many similar ways, ruled by violence and by overwhelming fear. Poetry was a way of looking at it from a distance, all the while knowing how close it was. I suppose our way of expressing things that we'd rather hide shifts as we are constantly moving and adapting. Then it was poetry, now it’s prose.”

It would seem her poems, written years before she was even aware of the intense political atmosphere and tensions in the family, had sensed the tragedies that awaited her. Her first book of poems — Whispers of the Desert — was published when she was 15.

Fatima wrote again after observing the wreck caused by an earthquake in Pakistan’s northern areas in 2005 in 8.50 a.m. 8 October 2005.

She says, “As a writer you want to examine what moves you, what frightens you, what is most perplexing to you. I’m most attracted to a subject when I feel there's a disconnect between how the subject — whether it was the earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, the war in Lebanon in 2006, or violence in Pakistan — is reported and how it is lived.”

Her third book, Songs of Blood and Sword tells the story of ‘four generations of a family defined by a political idealism that would destroy them’.

The 29-year-old writer who will be visiting Kerala to attend the Deccan Chronicle Kovalam Literary Festival 2011, loves quite a few Indian writers.

“I think some of the best writing at the moment is coming out of the subcontinent — out of India and Pakistan. As for Indian authors, Suketu Mehta, Aravind Adiga, Basharat Peer are all contemporary writers I admire and enjoy reading. Agha Shahid Ali is one of my favourite poets of all time and Naipaul and Rushdie are classics I keep returning to. It’s a hard list to narrow down!”

Source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/tabloid/all-rounders/i-started-writing-poetry-when-there-was-fear-says-fatima-bhutto-630

'Poetry was a way of making sense of madness'

Blood, sword and suffering are the heartbeat of Fatima Bhutto's literary soul. And it was fear that propelled her poetry, says the heir to Pakistan's tragedy-scarred Bhutto family.

An accomplished poet, Fatima, 29, captures love, loss and the solitude of her circumstances in her verses.

"I have not written poetry for a very long time, but poetry like prose is ultimately a means of expressing what seems difficult otherwise," Fatima, who will be in India for the Kovalam Literary Festival from Oct 1-2, told in an email interview from Karachi.

"Kovalam will be my first visit to South India. And I'm looking forward to seeing more of the country and interacting with new audiences and opening bridges between our cities and stories."

She won't be reading out just from her poetry. Fatima has authored ' Whispers of the Desert' , an anthology of poetry, as well as ' 08.50 am ', an account of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, and 'Songs of Blood and Sword' , a searing document of the turbulence that had ripped her family apart on her native turf.

Born in 1982 in Kabul to Murtaza Bhutto, the son of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Fatima carries the illustrious and violent lineage on her young shoulders.

Her grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged to death in 1979. In 1996, Fatima's father Murtaza was gunned down in Karachi by the police during the tenure of 'aunt' Benazir Bhutto. Eleven years later, Benazir Bhutto met with a similar fate in Rawalpindi in 2007 when she was shot dead at a rally.

Fear propelled her to poetry, Fatima said.

"It (fear) was a strong emotion. I started writing during a very violent time in Karachi's history. And it was a way of trying to make sense of the madness around," Fatima said.

Poetry helped. She railed at the rage that tore through Pakistan in the 1990s and defined in words the affection she harboured for 'papa' Murtaza.

"To my darling papa, with all the love in the world...this is our story...," she penned in an ode to Murtaza Bhutto in the 'Whispers of the Desert'.

For Fatima, poetry still touches the subcontinent's young sensitivities despite the proliferation of prose.

"I don't think youngsters are shying away from poetry. Tishani Doshi is a fascinating poet from the subcontinent and is part of a young generation of writers who seem to be able to do both - poetry and prose," Fatima said.

But there is nothing wrong with a focus if there is one on story-telling, Fatima said.

"Remember that for hundreds of years during colonial rule we were not allowed to tell our own stories here in the subcontinent," the writer said.

Fatima is currently writing a book on Karachi. "I am still in very early pages at the moment," she said.

Source: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-09-09/books/30134379_1_fatima-bhutto-poetry-murtaza-bhutto

Father's Day POSTED BY CARL BROMLEY 6:28AM

Part of what captivates about Fatima Bhutto's memoir Songs of Blood and Sword is her portrait of her father, Murtaza Bhutto. Murtaza was the oldest son of the President and formerPrime minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhuttoand a formidable political activist in his own right, who, after the execution of his father by General Zia, led the resistance to the Zia's rule from abroad, first in Afghanistan, then in Syria. When he ultimately returned to Pakistan and became a member of parliament, he was a tough critic of the cronyism and corruption of his sister, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.Songs of Blood and Sword vividly captures the high politics of both the Bhutto family and the era but it is Fatima's quest to uncover the mystery of her father's life and death that is the heart of her book.

Reading Songs of Blood and Sword one realizes there was more to Murtaza than just a father; he was a best friend to her, a mischievous co-conspirator. One of the riches of this book are small but delightful vignettes where she recalls the diplomacies and negotiations between parent and child. There's one awfully poignant moment when a nine-year-old Fatima rages at him when he dumks her in a hotel swimming pool — this was a prank he seemed to delight in doing — and says that he can never do that to her, ever again. Under protest she relents and says he can only do it again when she is fourteen. She recounts:

Papa's laughter petered out and he surprised me by saying, somewhat softly, "But Fatushki, what if I'm not alive then?:

I burst into floods of tears. Here I was trying to reach a compromise, banning pool dunkings till the reasonable age of fourteen and there was Papa talking about his death. I bawled and bawled. He sat me down on his lap, soaking wet and ruining his silk suit, hugging me and rocking me back and forth. He didn't take it back. He didn't say he was just kidding. He just wiped my eyes.

In between my tears, I shouted at my father. "Fourteen isn't far. Of course you'll be alive. You have to live till I'm a hundred." I wiped my nose on his shoulder. Papa kissed me and continued to rock me. "I hope so" He said.

Murtaza was murdered when Fatima was fourteen, outside her home in Clifton, Karachi, on September 20, 1996, in what was euphemistically called a "police encounter" during his sister's premiership, a murder that Songs and Blood and Sword goes to compelling and convincing length to argue that her aunt Benazir and her Uncle Asif Ali Zardari (now president of Pakistan) were involved in.

On father's day, we publish an except from Songs of Blood and Sword where Fatima recounts the pain and ordeal of having to visit her father in prison, when he was jailed by Benazir. Fatima was eleven.

Visiting Papa in Prison
By Fatima Bhutto

We made the trip to Landhi jail to see Papa once a week. I remember it being midweek, Wednesday or Thursday. It took us forty-five minutes to get to Landhi from our school, which was near Karachi's Jinnah Airport. Our visits began at 4 pm sharp, if we were held up in traffic or for some reason delayed, the time started without us. We couldn't have a minute longer than the forty-five given to us once a week.

During the first few trips, I'd ask, beg, for a few more minutes with Papa. He wouldn't ask. He knew that his warden, Durrani, who was kind and accommodating, would lose his job if it was discovered that he was treating Murtaza Bhutto too well. So I would ask. Could we have one more minute please? The warden would bow his head, unable to grant my request, and shake his face from side to side without looking at me. It wasn't his fault, I knew that, but I had to ask. What damage would an additional sixty seconds do? I remembered, in those minutes, those head shaking minutes, Wadi's [Benazir's] descriptions in her book of how she was torn from her father, from Zulfikar, when he was spending his last days in Rawalpindi Jail. Why didn't she remember that? I used to stay up late at night thinking, why was she punishing us the way she had been punished herself?

It bore away at my heart to have only forty-five minutes a week with my father. Mummy assures me we only had forty minutes a week with Papa, I don't remember. Five minutes extra seems generous to me now, three hundred glorious seconds, so I add them on. We couldn't speak on the telephone ­ there were no mobile phones around then, and even if there had been, Papa would not have been allowed to keep one. I had grown up with my father being my sole property until the age of seven, I couldn't handle not sharing my day with him, not having him nearby to listen to jokes or check my homework. It was too much for the eleven-year-old me to handle.

So I wrote Papa a letter on my adolescent stationery, the kind printed on day-glo paper and covered with unicorns and rainbows. "For Papa: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY" I wrote on the envelope. I spent two pages wailing and moaning. It wasn't fair that Mummy got to see him in court when I was at school, I whinged. I offered, quite creatively, to miss school on the days when Papa had court appearances or Sindh Assembly meetings, which always met in the mornings and during the week. He wrote back and marked his own plain white envelope: "To Papy from Papa". The top right hand corner had PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL underlined in all capitals and on the bottom left FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, also underlined.

"Dear Fatima (frustrated) Bhutto," he wrote, instantly making me laugh. My little darling, I read your letter and sympathize with your complaint. You have every right to see me and be with me as much as possible. And you know that nothing gives me greater pleasure than to see you, be next to you and to hold you in my arms. But, because I love you so much I want to make sure that you get your full education. You are a brilliant child and will one day become famous in your own right. But that won't be possible without a complete education. Grandpapa used to say that you can take everything away from a person ­ homes, money, jewelry ­ but you cannot take away what is in the mind. That is the safest treasure. If my court meets on Saturday then I would be more than happy if you came. When I am free from this jail where Wadi has put me then we will again be virtually inseparable. Until then, and forever, I love you and adore you more than you can imagine. Love Papa. P.S Papy, you know when you were much younger you already had a natural talent for poetry. I still have in Damascus one lovely (and funny) poem you wrote about Mummy about 2 or 3 years ago. And the poem you read me recently (during your last exclusive visit) was beautiful. Here is a small one on Wadi and Slippery Joe [Asif Zadari]:

Inky, Pinky, Ponky

Her husband is a donkey

Both loot the country

Her husband is a monkey

Inky, Pinky, Ponky"

From then on, buoyed by my father's letter and his efforts to make me laugh and look at the bright side of our strange life, I reconciled myself to counting the minutes until Papa was released from jail, but resolved to make the most of our miserly time together.

Soon, the jail visits became a normal part of our bizarre lives. We would always arrive full of jitters and sit in the empty cement room, which was unpainted and grim but at least cool in Karachi's repressive heat ­ and open the tiffin boxes we'd packed with food to share with Papa. Mummy and Zulfi both ate earlier in the day, small meals so they'd have room for another later, but I'd starve in school so I could have lunch with Papa at 4 pm.

We sat on wooden chairs that would have seemed uncomfortable if we weren't so thrilled to be there and put the food and plates out on the rectangular table covered with a gingham plastic tablecloth, waiting anxiously to see Papa. Zulfi and I would stand at the window until we could make out Papa being escorted across the dusty prison yard at which point we'd bolt out of the room to run to him. The warden would always smile when he saw us and would pat Zulfi's head affectionately.

Zulfi would often sit on Papa's lap during our visits and would get his father's undivided attention whenever he spoke; he was going to be four years old and was already a chatty and clever young boy. Sometimes Papa would ask us to bring Kashmiri tea. He never drank tea or coffee, but he liked Kashmiri chai, a strange drink of coagulated pink tea, flavoured with spices and pistachios. I never cared for it much then, but I always had a cup. Now I can't drink it. It reminds me too much of those forty-five minutes.

Source: http://www.nationinstitute.org/blog/nationbooks/2239/father's_day/

A Pakistan in mourning will not be silenced

Fatima Bhutto's article in FT:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/602cb62e-1cef-11e0-8c86-00144feab49a.html#axzz1Aehd4T9a

Zardari's Katrina

Why is Pakistan’s president junketing while his people drown?


This week, Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, boarded a private Gulfstream Jet along with his family and his hundreds-large entourage to visit the European countries included on the president's grand tour. Yesterday, Zardari -- who was married to my aunt, the late Benazir Bhutto, before her 2007 murder -- landed in London. As soon as the plane touched down, the president and his Very Important coterie were chauffeured in a dozen luxury vehicles to a five-star hotel where the president will be staying in a £7,000 ($11,160) per night Royal Suite.

His welcome, however, was less than royal. On the drive to the hotel, protesters held placards reading "Zardari King of Thieves," "Zardari 100% Pure Corruption," and "GO Zardari GO." While Zardari was schmoozing with his cronies in luxe London hotels, Pakistan was reeling from the deadliest floods to hit the country in 80 years. In short, it looks like Zardari's Katrina.

More than 3 million people in the northwestern region of Pakistan have now been affected by the floods. Parts of the north are facing terminal food shortages even as they are inaccessible to relief workers. The U.N. World Food Program says that 1.8 million will urgently need something to eat in coming weeks. The death toll has risen steadily in recent days to more than 1,400 people. About another million have lost their homes.

The news is also unlikely to get any better: Officials now say that the waters are expected to hit Punjab and Sindh provinces, Pakistan's food-producing regions. New flood warnings are still being issued, and the country is bracing for further monsoon downpours.

Zardari takes a lot of overseas trips -- so many that one local TV pundit estimated somewhat anecdotally last year that Richard Holbrooke, U.S. President Barack Obama's special envoy to the "AfPak" region, had spent more time in Pakistan than Zardari had recently. But the timing of this particular visit has angered not only his subjects but also his hosts. Two prominent Asian Britons refused to meet the visiting head of state. Khalid Mahmood, a member of parliament, vigorously condemned Zardari's decision to visit London. "A lot of people are dying," he told the press. "He should be [in Pakistan] to try to support the people, not swanning around in the UK and France." Lord Ahmed, a labor MP, continued that Zardari had a responsibility to be "looking after people, not [be] over here."

Yet the protests seem to have fallen on deaf ears -- which really shouldn't surprise anyone who has watched the Zardari government in action. The floods are just the latest, most tragic example of how inept the Pakistani state truly is. The inundation was predictable; Pakistan suffers monsoon rains every year at exactly the same time. But in a country -- and with a president -- so endemically corrupt, dealing with the entirely preventable, whether terrorism or natural disasters, has become impossible. There is simply no will, and more importantly no money, to spend on the Pakistani people. The country's coffers are constantly being diverted to more pressing programs -- or pockets, for that matter. Before he came to office, Zardari was facing corruption charges in Switzerland, Spain, and Britain. (As president, he withdrew Pakistan's cooperation with the latter two countries' courts; his presidential immunity prevented a Swiss case from re-opening.)

And thus the tragedy unfolds: There are no emergency evacuation plans for natural disasters, nor is there money for institutions that could help victims of such crises. What there is money for -- almost $600,000 -- are such programs as the Martyr Benazir Bhutto Income Support Scheme, a cult of personality initiative named after the president's late wife. Those who sign up receives meager cash handouts and find themselves on the president's ruling party's election rolls -- which themselves received more government funds than two whole federal departments of Pakistan put together.

Meanwhile, if rumors in the Pakistani press are right, Zardari's European tour is even more cynical than it already seems. The trip is meant to kickstart the president's young son's political career. That launch has to take place overseas to avoid the inevitably hostile reactions such a dynastic coronation would draw back in Pakistan. Speculation has it that Zardari's son Bilawal, a recent college graduate who is already co-chairman along with Zardari of their political party, will proclaim himself the future leader of Pakistan to a select audience in Birmingham on August 7.

Pakistan's The News newspaper summed up popular sentiment in a laundry list of questions posed to the country's High Commission in London. "Who is paying for the buses and coaches being booked to bring people to the Birmingham rally?" the paper asks. "Why will the president not cancel his visit?" And the most crucial question: Shouldn't the money for the trip be better spent on the flood victims? In response, the Pakistani High Commission issued a one-line blanket response: "This is an official visit and procedures for official visits are being followed."

Pakistan can ill afford a president who prioritizes his personal political future over the lives of millions of his citizens. We have always known in Pakistan that the rest of the world's attention comes at a tremendously high cost. Yet we seem to keep paying.

Source: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/04/zardaris_katrina?page=0,0&sms_ss=facebook

A daughter’s tale

Fatima Bhutto was caught unawares. The petite author had just wrapped up an interview and gave a tiny jump when she found me standing right behind her. “Sorry, I didn’t notice you,” she said, apologetically. She was cheerful-maybe because her book Songs of Blood and Sword has been receiving an overwhelming response across India.

On her last stop in the country, Fatima was gearing up for the launch of her book in Mumbai in the evening when I met her on Tuesday. Since she wanted a decaf, we moved to The Taj President’s Trattoria. Undisturbed by the racket of a children’s party at the cafe, Fatima started talking about the book, which she calls “a daughter’s memoir”.

The book had kept her occupied for the last six years. “It’s just the beginning. The book was first released in Karachi. After touring India, I will be travelling to England, Canada and other countries to promote the book,” says the 28-year-old journalist-turned-author. At the age of 14, she lost her father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed along with six of his aides. The book starts with this bloody incident. And the casual statement by Asif Zardari—husband of her aunt Benezir Bhutto and the present President of Pakistan—informing Fatima about his death seems to have set the book’s tone. In fact, Fatima repeats his words—“Oh, don’t you know? Your father’s been shot”— many times in the memoir.

Songs of Blood and Sword has been called “partisan”. And Fatima doesn’t mind the term. “The book doesn’t pretend to be otherwise,” she says. In fact, right below her name on the book’s cover, there is a list of her relatives who have been killed in the last three decades. “Asians tend not to talk about the violent incidents that have affected the region. These stories need to be told before they are lost in the world of reality TV,” Fatima says.

About the interest her book has created in India, she says, “People of India and Pakistan have always been curious to know about each other.” However, it’s not just her book that’s being appreciated in India.

Fatima’s sari-clad appearances at the book releases too have become a talking point. “Both my grandmother (Nusrat) and mother (Ghinwa) love saris. And for the events in India, I decided to wear only saris,” she says.

Source :

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/adaughterstale/602083/1