Fear does not come to mind: Fatima Bhutto

Mumbai: Journalist-turned-author Fatima Bhutto is irked.

Fatima Bhutto

The Kabul-born beauty and daughter of the slain Pakistani politician Mir Murtaza Bhutto (and niece of the late Benazir Bhutto) is ‘angry’ at the constant telecast of the ongoing controversy about Sania Mirza’s marriage to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik.

She says, “On Monday there were several blasts in Peshawar but the Shoaib-Sania marriage was everywhere. While the media reported on random people, they didn’t tell us what happened in the blasts.”

Apart from this, Fatima is also annoyed at the fact that people from both sides of the Line of Control are curious to know about each other, but cannot do so due to complicated visa procedures. She says, “I was in Bangalore two days ago and met two people who told me their visas were rejected for going to Karachi. We all go to London, America and Canada, but it is so difficult to visit our respective countries that are so close.”

Over the last few days the 27-year-old has been constantly flitting between cities promoting her new book Songs of Blood and Sword. She made sure that she draped herself in stunning sarees for the book launches in this country. Fatima laughs, “I grew up with my grandmother who came from Mumbai and always wore a saree. My Mumbai friends got me to wear a bindi too.”

Her book paints a horror picture of her aunt Benazir Bhutto and her husband conspiring to bring her father down. But even then ‘fear’ seems to be an elusive word for Fatima, who might run a risk of irking the positions of power in her home state through the revelations in her book. She says, “Fear does not come to mind; instead survival instincts kick in.”

Born to an Afghan mother, Fatima prefers to call Murtaza’s Lebanese second wife Ghinwa her own. She even excitedly shows off her new blue blouse that Ghinwa bought for her, especially to wear while on her trip to India. Breaking into a wide grin, she says, “My mother is a fantastic cook. We also love reading and watching historical dramas. I beg her to come with me when I go shopping for fabrics.”

Source:
http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_fear-does-not-come-to-mind-fatima-bhutto_1368760

Bhutto blasts Benazir at book launch

BANGALORE: Fatima Bhutto, niece of slain Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has called the President of that country, Asif Ali Zardari, a thief and a murderer.


“My father, Murtaza Bhutto, often called Zardari a chor (thief) and had coined the term ‘Asif Baba and the Chalees Chor (Asif Baba and the 40 thieves)’ for him and his band of supporters,” said Fatima, at the launch of her book Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir at Reliance TimeOut in the city on Monday.

“Asif Ali Zardari, before he was President of Pakistan, was fighting corruption cases in Switzerland, Spain, France, the UK, and Pakistan and four murder cases. Now, you can understand what kind of leadership Pakistan is under,” said Fatima, the granddaughter of the late President and Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Fatima, who holds Zardari and her aunt responsible for the death of her father, said: “The man who orchestrated the killing” of her father is currently leading the nation. “To get a Bhutto, you kill a Bhutto,” she said.

However, the relationship between Fatima and Benazir was not always so sour. Her aunt was a “different person” when Fatima was a little girl, said the 27-year-old, adding that she had always wanted to be with Benazir, with whom she had then shared an “intimate” relationship.

That changed as Fatima grew older, as did her impression of Benazir. When asked if she thought that her aunt was a better ruler than the military dictators Pakistan has had, Fatima said: “Unfortunately, I don’t think we can say that. When you have 3,000 men killed in one city under an operation called ‘Operation Clean Up’, it sounds like genocidal as it really was.” On the constitutional amendment being brought by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to reduce the power of President Asif Ali Zardari, Fatima Bhutto said, “We are yet to see the law passed. But there should not be one law for the powerful and another for ordinary citizens. Those in power should be scrutinised even more closely and more thoroughly than ordinary citizens,” she said.

Fatima also clarified that she does not harbor any thought of joining politics as she believes that politics is not the best way to bring about change. However, she would continue to write and would use it as a medium for change, she said.


Source: http://expressbuzz.com/cities/bangalore/bhutto-blasts-benazir-at-book-launch/163255.html

Talk back with Fatima Bhutto

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qqh8F5lp5jI

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz6CM7SheTw

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IX3kJfCPWQ

A Daughter's Memoir - Fatima Bhutto sings the songs of blood and sword

Fatima Bhutto's Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir" what the book is about and what Fatima had to say at the reading in Bangalore.


The grand daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the niece of Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of Murtuza Bhutto speaks in the Songs of Blood and Sword a Daughter's Memoir, of the slain Bhuttos' and the conspiracy. From the outset this is book is a very personal account of a dynasty that legacy was rife with violence in its political saga. Her book is being touted as one of the most important books of Pakistan a personal. it is a first hand history that is personal and a historically accurate account of the Bhuttos- who are often referred to as the First Family os Pakistan and its volatile politics.


The book tells the story of the Bhuttos, a family of rich feudal landlords who became powerbrokers in the newly created state of Pakistan; the epic of four generations of a family and the political violence that would eventually destroy the family. It is the history of family and a nation driven by murder, corruption, conspiracy and division. Fatima Bhutto reveals what she went through and what the situations played out in real life which made the theme of the book even more compelling. At her book launch there was curiosity and intrigue as people listened to a highly courageous, intelligent and beautiful woman who is not only a Pakistani but a Bhutto nonetheless, an nepotic association that she personally feels she is better off without. Fatima Bhutto read excerpts from the book and then discussed it with Dr. Narendar Pani who is the Professor and Dean of School of Social Sciences. NIAS.


She was born in Afghanistan in 1982, after which she moved with her father to Damascus where he was living in exile, where she lived with him until she could return to Pakistan for a holiday when she was 7 years old. She speaks about how she tried to be her father’s eyes while she was there taking in the sights and sounds with what she remembered from the storeies that he had told her of the magic in Pakistan. At her book reading, she reveals, that as a child her best memory was however connected to having “this nuclear green fizzy soda pop which as I child I thought, “oh my gosh this is delicious.””


Her courageous account of her life after her father’s murder and how she had to deal with her aunt benazir Bhutto whom she holds as someone who was her favorite aunt, and was extremely different form the aunt she knew before she become powerful. “The day she was sworn in as Prime Minister was the day she saw pulled the dupatta over her head. It was in many ways a step back for women in Pakistan. As a child I used to love to ingratiate myself to her and lovingly nuzzle her as I sat on her lap, the dupatta made it difficult.” Fatima says, the dupattta was almost symbolic of the distance that was to come between their families in the future.


She spoke of her launch in Karachi, where they fought to have the release at the garden in front of where her father was murdered. There was a turnout of over 700 people which she thought was wonderful show of solidarity. She speaks of how the irony of Asif Ali Zardari coming into power was then on 20th September, 2008, which was the 12th anniversary of her father’s death. He took the oath as president of Pakistan. The ceremony had apparently been scheduled for the day before, on the19th, but had been moved on the orders of the new president, who rescheduled his big day for Saturday, in the swearing in speech he even asked for a moment of silence to mark the occasion of his brother-in-law's death. Fatima has been quoted to have said in a previous interview, “My blood froze. It was as if he was taunting us.”


Fatima blames her aunt Benzair for the murder of her father, saying she was Prime Minister at the time and there were 3000 people who were killed in extra judicial encounters, and one of them was her father. There was nothing done for justice, and everything was done in fact to cover up the murders. She said her aunt was if not physically responsible was clearly morally responsible by virtue of her position.


She now lives in Karachi at the historical 70, Clifton which has for decades been the Bhutto home that houses Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s immaculate library which her family is now cataloguing. Fatima has had an elite education from Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African studies and now live sin Karachi with her mother and brother in the old Bhutto house where she practices yoga thrice a week and is a contributing writer of the Caravan magazine, and a columnist for The Daily Beast and New Statesman and a few other publications. The other books she ahs published are 8.50am 8 October 2005, about the Pakistan Earthquake and a book on poetry called “Whispers in the Dessert.” She practices yoga and also enjoy's hip hop music!



Source: http://mybangalore.com/article/0410/a-daughters-memoir-fatima-bhutto-sings-the-songs-of-blood-and-sword.html

Fatima Bhutto pitches for vengeance but not dynastic succession

John Elliott

India loves icons and Delhi loves visiting celebrities, and if they come from neighbouring Pakistan and are opposed to the government in power, then they are really feted. It’s happened in the past to the late former prime minister Benazir Bhutto when she was at her least-significant politically, and it happened to former president General Pervez Musharraf, who was hailed as some sort of sub-continental power guru once he was out of office.

This weekend it’s happened to Fatima Bhutto, 27-year old niece of the former Pakistani prime minister. She has been was in Delhi to promote her new book, “Songs of Blood and Sword, a daughter’s memoir”, which traces the country’s blood-letting and appalling governance as it tells the story of the assassination 14 years ago of her father, Murtaza Bhutto – in which her uncle Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s current president, was allegedly involved.

A highly self-confident journalist, the vivacious and attractive Fatima Bhutto has wowed newspaper and magazine editors in the US, UK and elsewhere for several years with the same ease that Benazir Bhutto charmed the same people.

Benazir conned them, along with many politicians, into accepting her as a significant political figure when she was out of power, even though her reputation as a capable politician was near zero.

Fatima’s success – and she is a capable writer – has been to persuade editors ranging from Tina Brown’s Daily Beast website in the US to the New Statesman in London to run her articles highly critical of Pakistan’s rulers as if she was an independent journalist, which she is not. What she is, understandably, is a committed campaigner out to avenge her father’s death and, therefore, to damn Zardari who, as Benazir Bhutto’s husband, is her uncle by marriage.

This hefty 450-page book is part of that campaign. It tells of a traumatic family history. Her grandfather, prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in 1979 by a military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq. Both her father and his brother died violently, and Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.

The physical similarities with Benazir Bhutto, who I first knew in the mid-1980s, are amazing. Watching and listening to Fatima on television the other evening as she fenced in lilting tones with her interviewer, it was if I was listening to her aunt protesting her and Zardari’s innocence of corruption, murder and other allegedly “trumped up” criminal charges.

Fatima, understandably, hates the comparison, which she says has been made since she was a child. “I was told I was much like my aunt, both as a compliment and as an admonishment. Now the comparisons are grating,” she says.

She certainly is much more directly focussed on detail than her aunt, who generally dealt in slogans and platitudes. This was evident at two book discussion sessions in Delhi where, in a more Americanised accent than on television, she dealt with questions openly and directly. “She doesn’t seem so much like a convent girl,” commented the wife of an admiring Indian politician, caustically.

I had planned to write this blog post on dynasty, noting how both Pakistan’s and India’s established ruling families now have relatives ready to challenge them. I would have set Fatima up as a future political challenger to Zardari’s and Benazir’s 21-year old son, Bilawal, in the same way that Varun Gandhi, a nephew of Sonia Gandhi, the current head of India’s Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and the Congress Party, has become a general secretary of the Hindu-fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party and thus a political opponent of Rahul, Sonia’s son and heir.

But Fatima Bhutto, who lives in Karachi where her book (amazingly) was launched a few days ago, will have none of it. She has denied political ambitions many times in the past, and repeated that when I spoke to her on Saturday evening. Might she be tempted, I wondered, if Pakistan were one day to return to some sort of peaceful politics?

“Definitely not!” she replied, adding that there was a need to “break the musical chairs” sequence of Pakistan’s feudal and military governments being passed from the Bhutto’s to the family of Nawaz Sharif and then to the army, and back again, as has happened for the past 40 years.

That certainly needs to be done – but I wonder whether one day, if or when Pakistan emerges from its current turmoil, she will be hoisted into politics as a new face with a new style, even if not a new name.

Source : http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com

Fatima Bhutto photos by Mayank Austen Soofi

Location : Delhi

Fatima Bhutto at the Bangalore launch of SoBaS

Credit: team Bangalore mangalore

Pakistan Govts may fail, but not people - Fatima Bhutto

By Team Mangalorean Bangalore

Bangalore April 5, 2010: Outspoken Pakistani political activist Fatima Bhutto today said the South Asian country had emerged as a ''monster of a nation'' due to political violence and strife and it should see the end of the ''dynastic rule'' to become a true democratic power.

Speaking after the release of her book ''Songs of Blood and Sword'', a memoir of the country ''driven'' by murder, corruption, conspiracy and division, here, she said the people of Pakistan deserved relief from ''lack of accessibility'' and not become immune to corruption.

''If corruption rules, a country will become Boy's Club and a Mafia's heaven. This should never happen to Pakistan or any other country in the region,'' she lamented.

She was, however, highly optimistic of Pakistan's future, like her father Mir Murtaza Bhutto was, and said, ''Government's may have failed in Pakistan, but people will never, I hope.'' After witnessing gory and blood throughout her life when she had to go through murders of her father, grand father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and aunt Benazir Bhutto, she, however, said she would never want to do the same to what people did to her family, nor would like to see such tragedies affecting the families of the people who were behind the political murder of her father.

Her comments comes in the wake of the political murder of her father with current Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari accused of behind the crime, but subsequently absolved of the charge.

She was harsh in her criticism of the US making political interference in Pakistan, while she believed that relations between Pakistan and India should be built on people to people interaction and contacts.

Fatima said family legacy remained a dear word in Pakistan and it had undone the progress and ushered in violence and untold family grief. ''It so happened in my country that a Bhutto had to be killed to get another Bhutto at the helm. Imposition of a family or two to rule a country is a very dangerous trend indeed,'' she said while answering a question on the legacy of family rule, both in Pakistan and India.

Source :

http://mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=broadcast&broadcastid=175674

I love Tupac : Fatima Bhutto

Ipsita Basu Dasgupta

April 06, 2010

Songs of Blood and Sword, Fatima Bhutto’s latest book, has generated buzz the world over. Of course, the sprightly
27-year-old has much more to her than just politics and tragedy

Are you being taken care of, in India?
That’s what my friends in Pakistan ask when I speak to them. They are worried if I am being treated well here, or if people are being horrible. Then when I speak to people in India, they ask me with apprehension, “How will you go back to Pakistan, after all that has come out in your book? Won’t you face a backlash?” People on both sides are concerned about me, which is wonderful!

I get into a lot of trouble for not being guarded…
No I don’t feel vulnerable even though people now have access to my life, through the book. My aim was to speak openly and honestly. The idea of fear today is a familiar one. So through the book, I hope people realise that it is possible to overcome fear and survive it.

It feels good to get it out after all these years…
Stories of violence and deaths in the family have been locked up for too long. But it helps to talk about it, because it opens the space for others to talk about similar experiences.

I am not a power holder. I am not accountable.
A politician has an obligation and accountability to the people. They deserve to be grilled by the public. I am just a free individual and I have nothing to hide.

I love Tupac
I love Hip Hop music and it feels like poetry to me. I was once asked to talk about poetry in a school to seventh graders. I got them to listen to Tupac and they were very happy!

Not that many men hit on me!
It is a strange new phase in my life. I have been so busy that there has been no time for love. Also men sometimes seem a little shy of me. I think a lot of intelligent women have a problem, when men cannot speak to someone with brains.

I dig dosas
I am a vegan and I love South Asian food which includes Sri Lankan, Indian, Pakistani and South Indian. There is a small restaurant in Karachi that makes dosas and it’s an absolute favourite of mine.

Three Idiots it is
I don’t follow Bollywood movies regularly but my bother and best friend are big fans. Every four years, they tell me “You have to watch this movie.” That’s when I see it. This time around, they have been raving about Three Idiots, which is a big hit in Pakistan too.

I absolutely love wearing saris…
I grew up watching my grandmother who was Iranian and my mother, who is Lebanese, wearing saris. I have been wearing saris to the book launches in India. During one such event in Delhi, someone thanked me for wearing an Indian outfit. But I told them that “We see it as our dress too!”

Source :
http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/31/2010040620100406022553989afa104ca/I-love-Tupac-.html

Like aunt, like niece

Posted On Tuesday, April 06, 2010 Anil Nair

Fatima Bhutto has that patented Bhutto looks and wears her make-the-world-safe-for-our-children passion on her designer kurta sleeve.

Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto has that patented Bhutto looks and wears her make-the-world-safe-for-our-children passion on her designer kurta sleeve. She also seems to have one other thing that runs dangerously in that family - a streak of hubris, in the classical sense of that term. When she was only 14, her father Murtaza was gunned down in front of their Karachi residence by police hitmen sent by his sister Benazir Bhutto, then PM of Pakistan. Years later, just before her own assassination, Benazir was to insinuate that Murtaza brought it upon himself.

Fatima doesn’t even remotely entertain this possibility; that the mini replica of the two-pointed sword of Hazrat Ali, the first Imam of Shia Islam, that Murtaza wore on his neck on the day he died was portentous. Her proven democratic credentials, and her categorical denial that she will “absolutely not” become a political figure notwithstanding, Fatima’s public persona bears an uncanny resemblance to Benazir. Dynasty could still be her destiny. Excerpts from the interview:

BM:You speak about the two Benazirs you have known - the idealist, vulnerable one and the total antithesis. Assuming that one day you too could come to play a crucial role in Pakistani politics, can you say with any amount of certainty that you will not follow the same trajectory.
FB: That could happen only if I envisage a role in Pakistani politics. I am absolutely cutting out that ‘if’. There shouldn’t be space for an ‘if’ in a country like Pakistan. I am content to be a writer.

Allegations that your slain father Murtaza Bhutto wasn’t exactly a saint?
Have I said anywhere he was. I didn’t set out to write a book proclaiming him to be one. When Murtaza saw diplomacy fail, he resorted to armed struggle against Zia-ul-Haq’s regime. Later he switched over to more democratic means.

No, but what about other violent incidents? There is this story that William Dalrymple, who has extensively written about Pakistan, reports - of how weeks before his death, Murtaza called Asif Ali Zardari over to your home, 70 Clifton, had his bodyguards shave half of Zardari’s moustache - the ultimate disgrace in a macho society. Would you then expect Zardari not to retaliate as he saw fit?
I have heard of all these stories and how they used to call my father ‘terrorist prince’, ‘trigger-happy’, ‘adventurous’ etc. In any case, who is Dalrymple to tell us our own stories?

Have you really had the time to grieve for your father? Was your book therapeutic in that sense?
Anyone who has lost a loved one, especially in a violent manner, knows that grief is not a linear process. One can’t grieve in a five stages-and-done kind of way. The form of grieving changes with the years. The only thing I can say categorically about grief is that it is not self-indulgent.

You single out corruption, pervasive corruption, as the single largest bane of Pakistani society. You almost seem to have a sneaking sympathy for the Taliban. One gets the sense that you consider them the lesser evil than, say, your country’s present regime...
The Taliban flog women, the Pakistani state does the same thing in an instituitionalised manner. A rag-tag group like the Taliban has no nuance, just a primitive philosophy. It grows because the state leaves behind a vacuum.

Talking about nuance, you recently spoke about how Obama broke your heart?
Like so many others, I was incredibly excited about Obama. He seemed so refreshingly honest, so nuanced and then there he goes lumping Pakistan and Afghanistan together and calling the entire US strategy against terror Af-Pak. I am mortified, it’s so Bush-like.

Source :
http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/31/2010040620100406022821518e4f6eeac/Like-aunt-like-niece.html

People to People contact can build bridges Fatima Bhutto

Bangalore: People-to-people interaction could help build bridges between Pakistan and India
, Fatima Bhutto, the granddaughter of former Pakistan president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, said here on Monday.

"It is when people of both countries travel and learn how both the nations are run and how people live, there could be better understanding between the two neighbours," Bhutto said while interacting with readers at a book reading session of her book 'Songs of Blood and Sword' that traces among other issues events surrounding her father Murtaza Bhutto's killing.

Despite witnessing violence and assassinations of her family members, Bhutto said she was "optimistic" about Pakistan because she truly believed "governments may fail, but people will never fail. I think there is always room for hope."

Narrating her encounters with her assassinated aunt Benazir Bhutto and events that followed her death, she said, "Dynasty had reached fever pitch after Benazir was killed."

As one who clearly voted against dynastic rule, she said she was appalled when people suggested that she or her 17-year-old brother could consider "filling in".

She said though she was politically active, her role had been restricted to getting women to come out and vote. She for now did not see herself joining politics in the near future.

On being asked by a reader what really ailed countries like Pakistan, Bhutto said, "Lack of accountability."

She said in India news of a judge involved in land grabbing raises questions. "But we see such things as normal. We are becoming immune to corruption," she said.

Asked about her memories associated with India, she said, "There was a lot of Bollywood going around. A lot of Rekha and Amitabh Bachchan."

On the divide in the Bhutto family, she said it existed much before Benazir's death. "It was a different trajectory that Benazir took to the road to power. It was different from her father's and others in the family."

She said her father was "opposed to the line of compromise with the military", but Benazir took power on the heels of a lot of compromise. According to Fatima, Benazir "undid" some of the progressive and socialist legacy of her father.

She said Benazir kept the hijab, which was unlike the tradition followed in her family. "She saw it as a way to keep religious vote," she remarked. Many women in Pakistan saw it as a big step backward, she said.

To a question on the role of her aunt's family in the assassination of her father, she said she suspected a hand. She said following her father's killing, the family was not allowed to move out and when she called up the PM's house they "knew more than we did".

However, her idea of justice was not about revenge but rather to ensure that those who perpetuated it might never be able to do it to another family.

Fatima Bhutto: New Daughter of the East

Mayank Austen Soofi

Fatima Bhutto came to Delhi in April, 2010, for the launch of her memoirs, Songs of Blood and Sword. Granddaughter to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, Ms Bhutto was born in Kabul in 1982. Her father was killed by the police in 1996 in Karachi during the premiership of his sister, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007. Ms Bhutto maintains that her aunt Benazir was responsible for her father’s killing. She lives with her mother and two brothers in Karachi.

In her interview with The Delhi Walla, Ms Bhutto was sporting blood-red nail polish, as well as a designer handbag and a copy of The International Herald Tribune.

Hello, Ms Bhutto. While we talk, I’ll take your photographs but please don’t look conscious.

Ok. I’ll do my best.

Your third book, Song of Blood and Sword, was launched yesterday evening at Hotel Taj Mahal. How was it?

The audience was very interesting.

'Interesting' is an interesting word.

No, I thought I was going to be in front of strangers. And then I saw some of my former classmates from the University of London. I didn’t know they were coming. So that was great. It was also nice to come across Indians who were curious about Pakistan and wanted to know more about it.

I was also there in the crowd. And I saw people exclaiming when you appeared wearing a saree. A gentleman standing behind me said that you were looking so Indian. It seems many Indians are unaware that Pakistani women also wear sarees. Does such ignorance irritate you?

But the same thing is on other side too, you know. We are so curious about each other but we don’t have access to each other’s countries. Traveling is so hard. It is a lot harder to get information. And so when people said that what a nice Indian dress I was wearing… I said, well, you know my grandmother wore sarees all her life. My mother, too, wear sarees. You see, in Pakistan, women wear shalwar kameezes during the day and sarees in the evening…

…or on special occasions…

Yes, it’s the same thing on both sides of the border. Like here I’m checking my e-mails and my friends in Pakistan are writing to me, saying, “How is India? Is everybody treating you ok? Is everybody being nice to you?” And Delhiites are asking, “How is Pakistan? Are they treating you ok? Are you safe there? ”

Why are Indians worried about how you are being treated in Pakistan?

You know, I think it’s really interesting. People here have reacted really wonderfully to Blood and Sword… they have been really supportive… and protective. I was really touched when a woman (among the audience in the launch) stood up and said, “I hope you are being well-protected in your country.” It was such a kind gesture. I think because we don’t know a lot about each other… we imagine that there is lot of hostile environment on the other side… but when you go to Pakistan or I come to India, people are the same, the language is the same, the culture is the same, so you don’t feel like a stranger. You feel familiar.

Karachi is said to be a dangerous place. I was there in March, 2010, and friends asked me not to go out unaccompanied. One said that the city was under siege. You are a Bhutto. So many members of your family have died in unnatural circumstances. And you live in 70, Clifton, an address that is so famous in Pakistan. Do you feel unsafe? Do you feel you are being constantly watched?

I think there are times… like when you came to Karachi and the city was being sort of edgy. There is a period I write in the book when I was... it was in the 90s when my father was killed. Things then were very scary. You did feel very afraid and gunfire was a normal sound. But I think, unfortunately, it is the condition of all these south Asian big cities that they are sometimes stuck by very paralyzing fear and violence, and then sometimes things are fine. Karachi for me is just one of those cities… at times it’s no big deal for my friends to come over and pick me up and we go off, roam around and it’s fine. But sometimes I can’t do that.

What do you love about Karachi?

Well, I love Sunday bazaar. It’s near Sea View (beach), in Defence (a posh neighbourhood). Every Sunday Itvaar Bazaar pops up at a place where there is nothing all through the week. There the booksellers would come and sell old books…

It’s like Delhi’s Daryaganj Sunday book bazaar?

Maybe… yeah… and not just books. They have toys for kids, T-shirts… you know, it is one of Karachi’s best-kept secrets. Every local knows about it. But if you are visiting the city, there is a chance you may miss it.

You go with friends or family to the Sunday bazaar? You don’t go with security guards? When you are there, is it like, “Hey I’m a Bhutto and I’m in Itwaar Bazaar”?

No, no, no. I think when things are dangerous, one have to be careful. I can’t go every Sunday. I can’t go for long maybe. But you don’t want yourself to be made a prisoner. My mother and my two brothers… we all love Sunday bazaar but we all love it for different things. So my brother Zulfikar, who is a mere 6-years-old, head straight for the toys where he finds all these broken plastic dinosaurs. My other brother is an artist and so looks for all these old art catalogues and art books. My mother looks for handicrafts and I… I go straight for the books and magazines. You get old New Yorkers and Vanity Fairs and National Geographics. And you also get Rs 100 books. I recently got… those great penguin classics with that old orange-striped covers… I recently grabbed a first edition Graham Greene. You don’t find such novels any more. Now if you go to firsthand bookshops, you only get Kite Runners and the seven editions of airport books, you know.

Any other place you go to in Karachi?

Then I go to Khadda market for its chaat and dosas. It’s a lovely place and it’s a pity not many people go there.

Why?

I mean it’s like in Delhi. People come here and go to big fancy Italian restaurants or swoon over French cuisine but they miss these small places that have the real food, the good food. So I go there. Then everybody in Karachi have their own DVD walla from whom you pick up the latest films and documentaries...

What about the parties?

(Laughs) I’m pretty boring that way. Because Karachi is such a closed city… because it’s a bit of schizophrenic city… you know, it’s a very large city but you are limited to certain neighbourhoods… so if you go to a party, you see the same 200 people, and after about three of such parties, it gets dull. I much prefer having friends over dinner or having get-togethers or going to friends’ places.

Where do your friends live? Only in posh areas such as Clifton? Is that the only Karachi you navigate in?

I suppose I have many different Karachis. You are limited to certain neighbourhood obviously. But because of my mother’s political work, because of my writing… for example, I have been spending a lot of time recently in a neighbourhood called Sohrab Goth…

Is it is near Lyari?

No, it’s far from there.

My Karachi friends had strictly warned me not to step into Lyari. It’s considered very dangerous.

You know that’s the problem. Karachiites are afraid of their city. But Lyari is wonderful. I have spent a lot of time there. Lehari is the real Karachi. People know each other. They have a real sense of community. There they share and exchange each other’s experiences. It’s unlike Defence or Clifton where you live in your own bubble and you don’t know what’s happening around.

Yeah, you were talking of Sohrab Goth.

So I’m writing a magazine piece on Afghan refugees in Karachi and that’s why I have been spending a lot of time in Sohrab Goth, which is where some big refugee camps are. So on the other hand I live in Clifton and I’m so very privileged and very comfortable but I never feel that I don’t have access to other parts. If you want to understand your city better and want to discover its other parts, nobody will stop you.

I have heard that your grandfather’s library used to be the best in Asia. It’s at 70, Clifton. Right?

Yes, the library is phenomenal. It is on the ground floor and is my favorite room in the house. We are currently cataloging the books. We have already done 15,000 of them. My mother is amazing… she sorted out all the shelves and numbered each of them.

Tell me about the books there?

What’s amazing about his library is that he loved books. He himself was a writer. Each section of the library is devoted to a certain study or history… so there are tremendous amount of books on south Asia and Raj. You go further ahead, and then you have books on Soviet Union, America, Latin America, China, and the Islamic world. There are books on religion, art and philosophy. Then there are all his law books. He was very fascinated about modern art so we have lots of books on it from the region.

Ms Bhutto, in your website you say that you hate Facebook. Why?

(Laughs) I hate Facebook for several reasons. The idea that, first of all, this company owns everything you put on it in is ridiculous. I don’t know why it doesn’t scare more people. And then this whole thing about voyeurism… is kind of what’s wrong with lots of things today… Imagine, on Facebook, for people to spend hours looking at other people’s pictures, reading other people’s messages and looking at other people’s friends... so scary. There is so much lack of privacy.

Point taken. Let’s talk about the book. Why you wanted to write it?

I always knew I was going to do this book. It was one of the last things that I promised to my father just days before he was killed. I remember I was 14 then. We were talking at home late in the night. I said to papa that your life is so fascinating and that you must write your life story, and he laughed and said, “No, no, no, it’s too dangerous what I know and I can’t write it but you write it.” I was excited but then papa said, “No, no, no, after I die,” and I said, “Ok, after you die.”

Ms Bhutto, this talk of death… so casually… wasn’t it abnormal? Was it that being Bhuttos, you all knew that something horrible might happen anytime to any of you?

At that time we were in such a dangerous environment… and I think that each of us knew in our own way that something was wrong… you had this feeling, you felt unsafe. But it was never that we were ever morbid. It wasn’t like that we spoke about the death all the time. But those few days were really quite different.

And then your father was killed and you thought about the book again?

I always knew I was going to do that book. But I was never ready to do it. I was too young. I needed to find so much information. I needed to do so much research. In my college, I was busy finding myself. But when I was doing my Masters in London, I started to think about it. I would remember my father talking about his time in the college…

So when you started writing?

By 2005, I started e-mailing my father’s friends and doing my own detective work of looking people up. It was easier for me because I was in the university. I knew the first names of his friends but I didn’t know anything else. So I started cold-calling his classmates. Papa had studied in Harvard. I went online and found the alumni association and I wrote all of them a letter saying, “Hi, I am uncovering my father’s past. Could you help me?” The response was amazing. It was a surprise. Strangers opened so many doors to me.

Political memoirs are usually ghostwritten, especially when they are by people belonging to some great dynasty. What about your book?

(Laughs) Well, I used to write a weekly column for The News. I wrote a book on the earthquake. I published poetry. So obviously there was no question of someone else writing my words. It would have been like someone pretending to be me on Facebook. Yes, to answer your question, I wrote the book all by myself.

What was your writing schedule?

I was writing for two years. It helped that I’m an awful insomniac. I would write till very late in the night… till 2 or 3 am. There were times, towards the end of writing the book, when I would wake up at 8 am, write till noon, take a break, go back to it at five or six in the evening and write till eight in the night. And then there were other times when I just had to be alone in front of the computer the whole day. But you have to write everyday. You can’t be temperamental. You can’t write only when the mood strikes. You have to sit there. You need to have the discipline.

You say that you did extensive research for the book. Did you also travel?

Yes, I went to Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi… I went to Houston, Arizona, Phoenix, Washington, Boston, New York. I went to Greece, Lebanon, London, Paris, Damascus…

When you move around in Pakistan, do you fear that you would be killed. After all, the impression of Pakistan is that the country is unstable and volatile. And you are a Bhutto. So many of them have been killed.

The problem with the media is that they give you a picture of a city or country in 30 seconds. And when you look at south Asia, it’s always about blood, poverty…

…and dynasty…

Yes, that seems to be the three big things in our part of the world.

I imagine if a Bhutto is driving around Karachi or Lahore, he or she must be escorted by gun-toting security guards?

Not us (laughs). You see we were never inside the power. We never grew up with this idea that we somehow deserved the attention or that we were celebrities. In 2006, for instance, I went to Chitral (in northern Pakistan) for a story... While interviewing people, I introduced myself as Fatima, not Fatima Bhutoo. And then I went back and the story was published following which I got emails from people asking me, “Oh, why didn’t you tell us you were a Bhutto. We would have hosted a reception for you.” But that’s not how I travel. That’s so limiting. Our parents were so normal. And they were really open and free with us. We never grew up with this chip on our shoulders that we needed to be escorted with sirens everywhere.

Did you read your aunt Benazir’s book, Daughter of the East? What do you think of it?

I read it a long time ago. I must have been ten. A lot of it was very sad. A lot of it was very difficult to read. Mmm, my aunt spelled my name wrong in it (laughs). This was greatly annoying to me. She spelled Fati as Fathi, which was funny.

(a pause)

But you know when I was writing this book, when I was having to go back in my own life and remember things, I remembered when my father was in jail, and how difficult it was to see him, how strict it was… you know… we could only see him for a certain amount of time… if we got late because the jail was very far away, too bad... it was very awful… and I remember that at that time I picked out Daughter of the East again and reading how my own aunt was... how it was so painful for her to leave her father in jail, how she was pulled from her father in jail… and how then she was doing the same thing to us. My memory of this really stands out.

In some ways, yours and Benazir’s memoirs are similar. You both were of the same family. You both wrote about your fathers, both of whom were killed.

But I wanted to write a book that was more journalistic. Benazir’s book was different. Even the title was big in scope. Also, hers was a very personal book. For my book, I did countless interviews. I pulled in countless sources from newspaper archives and academic books. I spoke to so many people. You know, when I read a book, I want to be able to trust what I’m reading. Part of that trust is knowing that the book is well researched and that there are footnotes. If that is absent, I want it to be honest. Malcom X’s autobiography, for instance, is one of my favorite books. Unlike other memoirs you read, he doesn’t start by saying that hey, I’m wonderful and that my family is so great. He was honest. He said I was a hustler, I was a crook, I was self-hating, I had all these problems… his autobiography was a journey. You could see how his life changed. But you read other politician’s memoirs. Those people were always great; they never had to change.

When the world think of the Bhuttos, they largely think of your grandfather, of Benazir and her struggles. The rest of the family has faded into the background. Does it bother you?

Everyone has a right to tell their own story. If we talk about Bhuttos, we know there is a history of violence in the family. I think it is important to understand why the violence happened as opposed to just that it happened. I think in Daughter of the East, Benazir was telling her story. I don’t think she was telling the story of her family.

You have often accused Benazir for being morally responsible for your father’s killing. Do you really believe your late aunt to be capable of such a crime?

The way she impeded the cover up, the way she denied us the right to file a police case, the way she praised the cops who were involved in her brother’s killing… certainly it doesn’t look like that she was innocent.

Ms Bhutto, I think you are the most beautiful Bhutto of our times.

You are the only one to say so. Thanks.

Source : http://thedelhiwalla.blogspot.com/2010/04/city-interview-fatima-bhutto-pakistani.html

Fatima Bhutto Candid Shots (Bangalore)

Credit and Photo Copyright: Sudha Pillai

Fatima Bhutto to appear at 2010 Hay Festival

By Emer Martin

The former president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, will be heading to Hay-on-Wye this May, along with a sizable chunk of the world's top intellectual talent.

The guests and speakers at the ten-day Guardian Hay Festival of Literature and Arts include prominent writers, economists, scientists and ex-leaders.

Peter Florence, OBE, who founded the festival with his father Norman Florence in 1988, told inthenews.co.uk why it was important to have the former Pakistani president at the event: "We're based between the military communities in Hereford and Brecon. Conflict resolution is a real and vital issue here.

"We've always been interested in both the powerbrokers and the analysts of international affairs and it's good to get beyond the US/UK experience after Carter, Clinton, Perle and Bolton.

"Pakistan is the most volatile state in the East-West axis, so naturally we're thrilled that he's coming to speak.

This year the Hay festival will be held between May 27th and June 6th and is expected to draw more than 100,000 people.

Other heavyweight guests this year include: British playwright Tom Stoppard; Christopher Hitchens; Israeli Ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor; Pakistani poet and writer, Fatima Bhutto; writer Bill Bryson and leading novelists including Martin Amis and Zadie Smith.

Geraldine O'Gara, an inner city GP, who has attended the festival with a group of friends for the last ten years said: "I feel as if I am coming up for air when I go to Hay. It refreshes the spirit in a way that few other gatherings can match."

Source :

http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/entertainment/pervez-musharraf-to-appear-at-2010-hay-festival-$1369139.htm

Enough with the ‘guns, beards and poverty’: Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto, in India for the release of her memoir “Songs of Blood and Sword” about Pakistan’s foremost political family, took a side swipe at journalists as she spoke about Pakistan, her assassinated aunt Benazir Bhutto, and her search to uncover the murky facts surrounding the killing of her adored father. Mir Murtaza Bhutto was slain by police outside her Karachi home in 1996, when she was just 14.

Pakistani author Fatima Bhutto with writer William Dalrymple during the launch of her book “Songs of Blood and Sword” in New Delhi on Saturday. (AFP/Getty Images)

Benazir was empowered greatly by the Western press because she was “‘One of us,’ as it were,” said Bhutto, 27 years old, in conversation with the bard of Mughal India, William Dalrymple in Delhi on Saturday. “Oxford, Harvard, beautiful, speaks English, and follows orders. When the IMF says, ‘Sign this,’ she signs. When America said, ‘Do that,’ she did.”

It is no secret that there is little love lost between the young Bhutto and her aunt and uncle, Asif Ali Zardari, now the president of Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was prime minister at the time her father was killed and the young author holds both Benazir and Zardari ultimately responsible for the death.

“The day Zardari was acquitted of my father’s murder, I was halfway around the world,” writes Bhutto in her book. “Zardari had bypassed the courts’ standard procedures to have himself absolved of my father’s murder. There was no point in appealing, he was going to be President legally or illegally.”

Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Mr. Zardari, said the president had been exonerated of the murder by a judicial inquiry.

“The credibility of the book really is suspect in my view,” Mr. Babar said.

The spokesman noted that in one passage Ms. Bhutto writes that Mr. Zardari took his oath as president on Sept. 20 – the anniversary of her father’s death. Mr. Babar said Mr. Zardari in fact became president on Sept. 9, as reported by newspapers at the time. (However Mr. Zardari did make his first address to parliament on the day of her father’s death anniversary, and mentioned him by name in that speech, as Ms. Bhutto recounts in the book. The occasion was also marked by the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad.)

Ms. Bhutto said she was astonished to see Western papers talk about the possible return of democracy to Pakistan when Benazir came back from exile in 2007 to contest elections after discussions with General Pervez Musharraf, who was in power at the time.

“The Western press, again, has a lot of problems and one of the great problems is how they write about countries like ours,” said Bhutto, to murmurs of appreciation from the audience. “They know it better than us – yeah, right. They lived here for 200 years 700 years ago so therefore they understand everything we do before we do it and it’s all beards, guns and poverty.”

Of course, Fatima is no stranger to the West herself and has a resume not dissimilar to, well, her aunt’s. If Benazir was Harvard, Fatima is Columbia. Benazir: Oxford. Fatima: The School of Oriental and African Studies, or SOAS. Nor does Fatima lack for positive press coverage although, so far, the book reviews have been mixed.

One reviewer described the book “as a monument to the father she idolized,” while another said it was decidedly partisan. That shouldn’t stop it from making waves overseas though, and if that happens Ms. Bhutto says that she might be at greater risk in Pakistan than she feels she is already.

”You can probably say anything you like in Pakistan and no one powerful is going to worry because they know you can’t do anything about it,” said Ms. Bhutto in an interview ahead of the book’s release in Delhi. “But if you embarrass them in front of their benefactors in the U.K. and the U.S. that certainly creates a different situation.”

Source :

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/04/05/enough-with-the-guns-beards-and-poverty-fatima-bhutto/?mod=wsj_india_main

Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir by Fatima Bhutto

The Forsyte Saga, this is not. It might best have been written by a Jacobean dramatist — Webster, perhaps. Fatima Bhutto’s grandfather was hanged. One uncle was poisoned, possibly at his sister Benazir’s behest. Her father Murtaza, a former terrorist previously accused of a plane hijacking, was murdered by Karachi police. Aunt Benazir herself was shot in December 2007. Benazir’s husband Asif Zardari, considered by some to be the most notoriously corrupt figure in the subcontinent, climbed over her corpse to become Pakistan’s president, a post that he occupies to this day. He is one of the few characters in this catalogue of hate and blood who has not so far become dead.

Fatima, now 27, seeks in this book to raise a monument to the father she idolised. Her work is emotional, partial, naive and wholly unreliable about who really did what to whom. But it possesses readability for those with a taste for family horror stories.

The Bhuttos are Pakistani aristocracy, feudal landlords for centuries. The author tells proudly of a British officer conducting a census in Sind during the Raj, who told a subordinate: “Call me when you’ve finished detailing the Bhutto land.” Several days later he asked why he had heard nothing, and was told: “I’m still working on the Bhutto lands.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Fatima’s grandfather, was as equivocal a figure as any of Pakistan’s other modern leaders. He served as foreign minister under an army dictatorship, then at the 1970 election became leader of the largest political group, the Pakistan People’s party, which he had created. When East Pakistan’s electorate voted overwhelmingly for separation, he endorsed the army’s determination to preserve national unity by force. An appallingly bloody campaign of repression followed, halted only by Indian intervention and victory in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war. General Yahya Khan fell from power in Islamabad, and Bhutto became national leader.

An ardent socialist and promoter of Muslim solidarity, Bhutto forged close links with China, whose aid he enlisted to build a Pakistani nuclear bomb. Even his worshipping granddaughter criticises the brutality with which he suppressed dissent in Balochistan, where thousands died.

In 1977, he was deposed and jailed by army chief General Zia al-Haq. Charged with the murder of a political opponent, he was later executed. To some Pakistanis, he was and remains a martyr. There is little doubt that the murder charge was a frame-up, but Bhutto’s acquiescence, if nothing worse, in the 1971 massacres in today’s Bangladesh makes it hard for most outsiders to cast him as an innocent.

His sons fled into exile. Fatima’s Harvard-educated father Murtaza, born in 1954, embarked on a life that fills his daughter with compassion, but may evoke mixed sentiments among others. He began an affair with Della Roufogalis, a glamorous Greek allegedly engaged in a civil-liberties campaign to persuade the Athens dictatorship to free her husband, a right-wing general, from imprisonment. Then in 1979, Murtaza pitched camp in Kabul and set about fomenting armed resistance to the Zia regime. He dumped Della to marry an Afghan, Fowzia, who was already pregnant with Fatima. Domestic bliss was interrupted when a Pakistan Airlines plane was hijacked to Kabul. One passenger was murdered during the protracted stand-off.

Fatima suggests that Zia’s agents staged the hijack to discredit her father, but Murtaza was widely held responsible. His sister Benazir, under house arrest in Karachi, narrowly escaped indictment for gloating about the episode.

In 1982, Afghan hospitality towards Murtaza became exhausted. With Fowzia and little Fatima, he moved on to Damascus, where he spent most of the next 12 years hanging around the Sheraton Hotel. If this sounds an unsympathetic way of putting it, he was a guest of President Assad. Fatima found the Syrian monster wonderfully kind and cuddly, but everybody else assumed he sponsored Murtaza as an aspiring terrorist. She defies belief by asserting: “It was a strange, beautiful childhood.”

In 1985, the family was visiting Murtaza’s brother Shahnawaz in the south of France when its next little drama took place. One morning, Shahnawaz’s wife Raehana reported finding him dead, apparently poisoned. She herself was held for some time on suspicion. Fatima scouts the possibility that Benazir might have promoted the murder, being, she claims, thick with the CIA and the Pakistan intelligence service. At the time, says the author with notable bathos: “I felt nauseous. Why was everything in this family so complicated?” Then her parents started quarrelling, and finally divorced, leaving Fatima with her father. The daughter now hates Fowzia, saying: “I am scared of my biological mother.”

President Zia’s probable assassination in 1988 and Benazir’s subsequent ascent to power made Murtaza no more welcome in Pakistan, where he was branded a terrorist. Fatima, in turn, denounces Benazir and her husband as founts of corruption. Only in 1994 did Murtaza return to his own country, having won a provincial assembly seat in absentia as an independent candidate.

He was promptly jailed. After his release, he barnstormed the country, promoting fiery socialism, in opposition to his sister’s governance. On September 20, 1996 he and his guards were mown down by police on a Karachi street, probably on Islamabad’s orders. In December 2007, Benazir in turn was shot, after returning from exile to contest an election she would have won.

The West mourned Benazir as a prospective saviour of her country. In reality, she was as corrupt, ruthless and incompetent a ruler as any in Pakistan’s modern history. Her only claim to respect derived from a democratic legitimacy that her country’s dictators have lacked.

This book’s virtues derive from the author’s passion and some vivid pen portraits. Its crippling weakness is blind rejection of any pretension to insight or judgment. But she conveys a terrifying sense of the ungovernability of Pakistan and its 180m people, exposed to the competing violence of rulers and rebels. Another army coup must be due some day soon.

Songs of Blood and Sword by Fatima Bhutto
Cape £20 pp470

Source: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article7082779.ece

Fatima Bhutto on Devil's Advocate

Links to Fatima Bhutto's interview on Devil's Advocate:


Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riOYlFnrKQE


Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czV2tvBNoXA


Part 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mwLKvKu3oo


Part 4:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV7Mh3FVCo8

Fatima Bhutto at the ‘Altered Histories: The Legacy of Political Assassinations in South Asia’ panel in New Delhi

Politics Not Best Way for Change: Fatima Bhutto

ew Delhi, April 4 – Fatima Bhutto, the niece of slain former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Sunday said politics was not the best way to bring about transformation in society and she had chosen the media and academia to work for change.

Fatima, who took part in a panel discussion here on ‘Altered Histories: The Legacy of Political Assassinations in South Asia’ along with political critic Ashis Nandy, Hindustan Times editorial director Vir Sanghvi and Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, said politics has an element of violence.

‘Politics is not the best way to bring about change. Academia and the media are phenomenal ways of change. That’s the way I have chosen,’ Fatima said, answering a query on her reluctance to join politics.

Fatima’s just-published memoir ‘Songs of Blood and Sword’ details four generations of the Bhutto family and is story of her father Murtaza Bhutto’s murder.

She said leaders from political dynasties had been assassinated in South Asia and added that in Pakistan, leaders who became ‘too dangerous for the establishment’ had been killed.

She said former Pakistan president Zia-ul-Haq was killed after jihad was over in Afghanistan and Benazir got assassinated as she became inconvenient to certain powers after returned to the country on a sympathy wave.

‘She was isolated. Her protection was removed. It became easy to assassinate her,’ Fatima said of Benazir’s Dec 27, 2007 assassination.

Nandy, who moderated the discussion, said some political assassinations had been marked by calculation of gains or losses by the killers and in some cases, there was a ‘change of bonding’ between the assassin and the assassinated.

He claimed that four to five attempts were made on life of Mahatma Gandhi and Nathu Ram Godse, who killed him Jan 30, 1948, was involved in some of them.

He said Godse had participated in the non-cooperation movement and had a lifestyle similar to that of Gandhi.

‘He (Godse) thought Gandhi was a liability to the new infant state,’ Nandy said.

Sanghvi said that political assassinations of top leaders in South Asia had been marked by a desire for revenge, fear of consequences or family disputes.

He said an assassination was written about from various standpoints in the West, but this does not happen in south Asia.

Citing instances of assassinations of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and if Zia-ul-Haq, he said there are many unanswered questions. ‘Why should it be so?’ he wondered.

Disagreeing with the notion that political assassinations can be game-changers, Aiyar said they had little impact on changing the course of history.

‘Gandhiji pointed out that violence does not lead to productive results,’ he said,adding that violence was ‘useless in way of political change’.

The discussion was organised by the Religare Arts Iniative and Caravan, a narrative journalism magazine. Fatima is associated with Caravan as a contributing editor.

Source :

http://www.vamban.com/politics-not-best-way-for-change-fatima-bhutto/

‘Benazir always kept aloof from her family’

: At what point do the personal and public meet? How is objectivity even possible when your dearest Papa is killed and you are not even allowed to file an FIR? Can you combat the president of the country, whom you suspect of having a role in the act? Her columns are about the denial of human rights and the like. Her poems, written from when she was 12, are about violence, a cry for justice. If the world ever needed documentation of the lawlessness that pervades Pakistan, Fatima Bhutto almost epitomises the daily travesties. Her just released memoir to her father is called Songs of Blood and Sword. So nothing prepares you for the cheerful, almost effervescent, and diminutive, not to forget vegan author with a strong sense of hope in her land’s future that you encounter over soup and dimsums. Suman Tarafdar came away with quite a few notions demolished. Excerpts:

Given that you learned a lot more about your father while researching the book, somethings even hurtful, was it as much a catharsis as a reigniting of wounds?

It was a very important journey for me to go on, not just to bring out the truth behind my father’s murder, but also other murders, which you don’t hear about. Also for my brother Zulfikar, who was six when my father was killed. I was 14 and lucky to have all those years. I wanted to uncover things for him. I met all these people he had known. I made a lot of discoveries and thought of him as alive when I was working on the book.

The idea of the book came in 2004 as the tenth anniversary of my father’s death was going to come up in 2006. Ten years and no justice, no safety, nothing. Despite telling my father just before he died that I would write about him, earlier I had never felt ready. By 2006 I had started interviewing, and started writing in 2008. The writing process took two years.

Lenin’s statues, Che posters in his room. From the book, your father emerges as quite a different person from the popular image of him.

He was very idealistic. I always knew that growing up. This negative impression of him was what others put out. I remember my father telling me about the Intifada and the PLOs. I also grew up knowing him as an incredibly generous, principled person. Very surprising for any politician. To discover the similarities in my father and my brother was interesting. A college friend of my father said he loved environment studies class, while my brother is a huge environmentalist. We always wondered where did Zulfi get this keen sense of geography and environment. It was really nice to find those out–to know my father when he was young.

Is it important to correct this general image of him?

I think it’s a disservice. A lot of myths have been made around all the characters in this family. Myths in general are like looking through a foggy glass, and you can’t really talk about the truth unless you look through the open window. This clears all the myths. It was important for me to be critical, to say why I disagree, to give a fuller picture.

The portrait of young Benazir as an introvert is interesting…

Ya, you would imagine people are born that way, that they wake up and they are ambitious. Well, she wasn’t as a child. Not at all, in fact. I think I try to defend her somewhat. As an eldest child myself I understand how an eldest child can feel different. Even when you grow up, you really overcome things like age. Benazir always kept her aloofness with her family, which I think is indicative of something.

Your search for justice involves a personal, as well as a moral side. Do you think, given the way Pakistan is presently placed, will it be possible?

The moral responsibility is something I keep talking about. It’s not as simple as a yes or no. We’ve had justice denied to us in the 14 years, the last being the exoneration of the police in my father’s murder case. The people we hold responsible are in the highest positions in the country. Justice takes long, and that is true for any country. We’ve appealed against the recent police exoneration, but its very difficult to appeal against the President. He has immunity, it’s a very dangerous thing to do. It will take time.

Given the numerous fissures within Pakistan, where do you think it is headed?

You have to remember that it is a young nation. We’ve been cursed with bad governments. Pakistani people want democracy, they want to live without fear of violence. The sky is the limit for Pakistan. All post-colonial societies are ridden with violence, due to what the colonial powers did to us. It’s something we have so much in common within the sub-continent. In Pakistan, the hope is not with the two parties that keep coming and going, it’s with the people on the ground, and that gives me a lot of hope.

To what extent has power destroyed the Bhuttos?

Power is a destructive and violent force by its nature, anywhere. Certainly, power very much changed Benazir, changed the person I knew as a child. Which is not unique to her. Anyone in a powerful position is in such an overwhelming position. I am sure you change. That said, I think you always have a choice.

You detail your grandfather’s tenure, pointing out controversial areas like nuclearisation or Baluchistan. What is the legacy like now?

It is also the nature of the beast that does make you paranoid about causes you would otherwise support. As a journalist, we can support this cause or the other. But when you are sent to rule a province, say, it escalates a sense of threat. When your next vote depends on it, it becomes an important issue, and Zulfikar certainly was susceptible to it. As I have written in the book, I think he should have been different on the Baluchistan issue.

You see that in south Asian politics?

Nah!! In south Asia, the worse you do, the more time you need. In our part of the world, politicians seem to think they deserve hundreds of opportunities.

If you were to admire a particular Bhutto for politics...

I admire my grandfather’s imagination. And his determination to make things possible. With my father and uncle, I admire their resistance and their incorruptibility and their ability to fight an unjust system. My mother (Ghinwa) has both the imagination and the resistance.

Where is the next generation of Bhuttos headed?

My future’s in writing. My brother Zulfikar is a committed journalist and an incredibly gifted painter. I think that’s where his interests lie. Sassi, Shahnawaz’s daughter, is finishing her masters in human rights from Columbia. We have big goals, but they are not political goals. I hope we are allowed to have our lives, follow our dreams. I have no idea of what is going on on the other side....

Source :

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/benaziralwayskeptalooffromherfamily/599586/4

Fatima Bhutto bares her famous, jinxed family

: In the September of 1996, the day her father turned 42, Fatima Bhutto said to him: “Write a book about your life, Papa. It would be so interesting.” He laughed and then said quietly, “You’ll do it for me.” His eyes were sad. A growing nervousness had been rumbling inside her for days. Two days later, Mir Murtaza Bhutto was dead. On the 12th anniversary of Murtaza’s death, Asif Zardari was sworn in as President of Pakistan. He had been acquitted of Murtaza’s murder in the build-up to the presidency.

As Fatima’s ode to her father grains traction, she has been tweeting about all the difficulties of getting an Indian visa to publicise it here. The visa finally came through. FE got to interview her. It’s a book that will have special interest for Indians. For good or bad, we too have an abiding interest in the Bhutto name and its fortunes. Also, for us as well, the narrative of nation has been intimately intertwined with the story of a dynasty. Our dynasty too has seen a peculiar mix of political longevity and indecorous deaths, which have seemed sort of presaged. Songs of Blood and Swords lays out elaborate intimations of untimely mortality experienced by the Bhuttos—Murtaza and Benazir included. It also etches out the uniquely internecine quality of such intimations with great, intimate poignancy.

The Bhuttos don’t like to share, Fatima says. Hence her aunt’s paranoia about her father. Hence too, the reader easily deduces, Fatima’s resistance to Zardaris claiming the Bhutto tag. She questions how Benazir came to see herself as synonymous with Pakistan. Yet, understandably, for Fatima, unveiling her father’s life becomes the same as narrating Pakistan’s history.

“I am not my father’s keeper,” Fatima persuades a hesitating source. A credible effort to complicate the hagiography still leaves us with the same in our hands. Ultimately, it is predisposed in favour of judgments such as the following: “Mir had the same background as Benazir—he was a Bhutto, had a strong relationship with his father too, and also struggled against a dictator. But that’s all Benazir had. Murtaza had the clean hands and corruption- and compromise-free record, and the ideological understanding of socialist politics. That’s what threatened his sister.” So, this is not the book to turn to for a deep analysis of Pakistan’s history or policymaking. It stands and falls as a : family memoir. No amount of respectable footnoting can disguise this.

Source:

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/fatimabhuttobaresherfamous-jinxedfamily/599588/2