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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Reporting & Essays |
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Book Excerpt |
Songs of Blood and Sword
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| Excerpt that details the murder of Mir Murtaza Bhutto from FATIMA BHUTTO’s much-awaited family memoir |
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AP PHOTO |
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| The Bhutto family in July 1978. To Zulfikar Ali’s left is daughter, Benazir. To his right are son, Shahnawaz, and wife, Nusrat. Seated in front of him are son, Murtaza, and daughter, Sanam.
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A special preview of the sensational, bitter-sweet Bhutto family saga
Fatima Bhutto was 14 years old when her father, Murtaza Bhutto, was shot down outside their family home in Karachi. She had once promised him she would write the story of his life, and now, over a decade later, comes this acute account of his life, the people who killed him and the fate of Pakistan. Bhutto chronicles her family’s legacy from the days of her grandfather, Zulfikar, through the rein of her aunt, Benazir to the present-day reign of her widower, Zardari. In this excerpt from her compelling memoir, Bhutto tells the story of her father’s murder.
Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books India from Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir
by FATIMA BHUTTO
Viking Rs. 699
| 19 |
SEPTEMBER 1996. It was close to three in the morning and we were sitting in the drawing room downstairs, a room typical of the house’s abstract art deco style, boxed in with no windows, with maroon velvet walls and decorated with modern Pakistani art. We had just come back from dinner at the Avari Hotel. Papa’s birthday had |
been the night before and some friends had invited us for a belated celebration. He was forty-two.
The Avari is one of Karachi’s grander hotels, founded by an old Parsi family patriarch, Dinshaw Avari, who eventually passed it, as is the custom in Pakistan, to his son, Byram. It’s rather a plain hotel, painted blue and white on the outside, not too ostentatious, unlike the spate of foreign chain hotels that are the Avari’s neighbours. In the days before skyscrapers captured the imagination of the city’s architects, the Avari was advertised as the country’s tallest building. Now banks compete with each other over whose building is the highest as they struggle upwards to escape from the smog and poverty of the city. In the mid-nineties, the Avari Hotel was known for being home to Karachi’s only Japanese restaurant, Fujiyama. We had eaten there that night.
That Friday evening Papa was wearing a navy blue suit, one of the few he had that still fitted him. Like his father, my grandfather Zulfikar Ali, Papa was a dandy when it came to clothes and grooming. He was an elegant man, nearly six foot three with salt and pepper hair and a neatly trimmed moustache. Papa had put on weight over the past two years, the busy and tense months that marked our return to Pakistan and the start of a newly public life, and we teased him about it. He took it good-naturedly, insisting that he was going on a diet soon, while my younger brother Zulfi and I patted his belly.
Papa signed the Avari guestbook that night. The staff at the restaurant presented the book to him with a great flourish and opened it, ironically, on the very page where General Zia ul Haq had signed an effusive note. It was the absolute worst page they could have turned to. General Zia presided over the military coup that deposed my grandfather’s government. Two years later, after arresting and torturing him, General Zia put my grandfather to death. They say he was hanged, but my family never saw the body. The army had buried my grandfather’s body quietly, not even notifying our family, before they released the news of his execution to the public. Papa looked at the General’s handwriting. He calmly read the General’s thoughts on Fujiyama’s fine cuisine before making a face at me, sticking his tongue out and frowning comically, one of the few light moments we had that night at dinner, and then turned several pages on and began to write.
At dinner Papa was quiet. He sat across the table from me with his arms crossed in front of him, his chin resting in the bridge made of his intertwined fingers. It made me nervous to see Papa, usually animated and boisterous, so subdued.
Two days earlier, Papa had returned to Karachi from a trip to Peshawar feeling calm and rested. He had arrived late and was eating dinner and telling Mummy and me about his trip when, shortly after midnight, the intercom phone in the drawing room rang. It could only be someone in the kitchen or in the office next door at 71 Clifton: no one else was awake. The kitchen was close by and Asghar, our bearer, could have walked over if he needed to tell us anything. It had to be the office. Papa picked up the phone on the first ring. ‘Gi? ’ he said, yes? He listened quietly for a few minutes. ‘Gari tayar karo, jaldi,’ he said, get the car ready, quickly. His relaxed mood was gone. Papa put down the phone, stood up and walked towards the door that connected to my parents’ bedroom. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked. ‘They’ve taken Ali Sonara,’ Papa replied. ‘They just raided his house and took him.’ ‘Where are you going?’ I asked slowly as Mummy’s hands went softly to steady my back, patting me and reminding me that she was still there, that things were going to be OK. ‘I’m going to find him,’ Papa said and walked out of the drawing room.
| B K BANGASH/AP PHOTO |
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Murtaza Bhutto was murdered on 20 September 1996. He was 42. |
Ali Sonara was from Lyari, one of the most densely populated, politically radical and poorest neighbourhoods of Karachi. He belonged to a Katchi Memon family, a small Sunni community whose roots in the region can be traced back to the Ran of Kutch and Sindh desert regions. He had been a loyal supporter of the Bhutto family since his early schooldays. After Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had been overthrown and arrested by General Zia’s military coup in 1977, Sonara abandoned his studies and became one of Lyari’s most prominent activists.
He joined the Save Bhutto Committee in his community and worked tirelessly to oppose General Zia’s abrogation of the 1973 constitution. After Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was killed by the military government in 1979, Sonara joined the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) and worked closely with my aunt, Benazir Bhutto, for the next ten years. He was a member of the movement’s Karachi Committee and spent his time distributing pamphlets against martial law and the illegality of Bhutto’s execution, holding covert meetings to enlist local support and organizing protests and demonstrations.
In 1984, during the height of Zia’s dictatorial repression, a bomb was planted in central Karachi’s popular Bori Bazaar. Bori Bazaar is a busy market named after the religious sect of Bohri Muslims who wear distinctive long petticoats and blouses with hijab-like hoods. When the bomb exploded, scores of women and children who frequent the bazaar to shop for fabric, beads and colourful homeware were among the injured. Upon hearing the news Ali Sonara ran to the bazaar from his home nearby in Lyari.
He was certain that the bomb had been planted by the military but if Bhutto activists raised protests, the neighbourhood would be swept and men would be swiftly carted off to jail or, worse, to stadiums for public lashings. Resistance was dealt with severely by General Zia, and Sonara, who had spent several stints in Karachi jails for his leadership role within the Sindhi community, knew that the harder you fought, the more vicious was the punishment.
When Sonara arrived at Bori Bazaar he ran back and forth between ambulances helping to shift bodies onto stretchers. He coordinated blood donations and was dealing with the panicked families of the dead and injured as best he could when Zia’s Chief Minister, Ghous Ali Shah, turned up surrounded by film crews to survey the wreckage.
Ali Shah claimed that the blast had been the work of the antimilitary activists, terrorists they called them then, and that the state would soon find these terror mongers and punish them without mercy. As soon as Sonara saw Ali Shah, he raced over to him and punched him squarely in the face. It was the desperate act of a desperate man. The Chief Minister promptly arrested Sonara for planting the bomb in Bori Bazaar.
He was later released without charge.
| DAVID AHMED/REUTERS |
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Fatima Bhutto with her mother, 31 January 1997. Fatima’s raised fist is the symbol of her father’s party. |
When, in May 1986, Benazir returned to Karachi from self-imposed exile in London, it was Sonara, with the help of several other prominent activists, notably Ali Hingoro, who arranged for her reception in the city. At the time, General Zia’s supporters in Sindh, the Muhajir Quami Movement (MQM) party, had been set up in Karachi to present an alternative to the People’s Party, whose power base was in the province. The MQM were created to present an alternative, and, failing that, simply to frighten people into switching their allegiance. Lyari had been one of the neighbourhoods first seized upon by the MQM and it was a dangerous time to show your party colours, but Sonara took the risk. He organized a jalsa or rally for Benazir at Kakri Ground, an enormous sports stadium in Lyari. Benazir thanked him and the others at the rally, calling Sonara out from behind her where he was acting as her chief bodyguard. ‘This is my brother,’ she said. ‘Yeh mera bhai hai.’
Benazir, new to organized party politics and intent on building a career that would see her reach the pinnacle of power, came to depend on Sonara. He was one of the naujawans, or youth leaders, who organized public meetings for her throughout the city and travelled with her as part of her security detail as she visited cities across Sindh. As a member of the Karachi Committee Sonara was a key player in the Pakistan People’s Party grassroots politics and provided the backbone for Benazir’s election victory.
But Sonara soon fell out of favour. His loyalty to my father Murtaza, Benazir’s younger brother in exile, was proving difficult for Benazir to handle. By 1988 as Benazir began to appoint her first cabinet and bestow ministries upon those brought into the party fold by her new husband, Asif Zardari, Sonara’s fondness for plain speaking had become wholly inconvenient. At a party meeting at 71 Clifton, the dispute between Sonara and Benazir came to a head. He was objecting to the apparent favours that were being distributed to members of Pakistan’s business and feudal community when Benazir, who famously had very little tolerance for dissent or criticism, reacted. ‘Sit down, Ali!’ she commanded. ‘Behave properly. I’m the chairperson of this party and you have no right to speak in front of me this way. ‘Mohtarma,’ Sonara began, using the title that Benazir now insisted on being addressed by, ‘it is absolutely my right. I am a political worker and it is my right to tell you what I see going wrong.’
After Benazir’s government fell in 1990, Sonara went underground. He had made too many enemies, powerful men who pushed him out of the party that he had helped build as a bulwark against military dictatorship. He resurfaced in 1993 when national elections were called. When my father filed his nomination papers, Sonara joined his campaign. It was what Benazir had feared. | | | |
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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Mukesh Arora
27 April 2010
06:29 PM
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This is fantastic. What a story...
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Ameer Hamza Adhia
4 April 2010
08:17 AM
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Thank you for sharing the excerpts with us readers. I appreciate your magazine. Got the name from Ms. Fatima Bhutto's twitter page.
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