The Age of Kali

by William Dalrymple

  When we had reached cruising height I went up and asked Benazir whether we could continue our interview, but was dismissed with a peremptory wave of the hand. ‘It’s only a thirty-minute flight,’ she said. She buried herself in the glossies, and I had to make do with the attentions of her daughter, who sat at my feet making calls with her power-toy, a little red telephone (when you are a part of a political dynasty, you can’t start at this sort of thing too early).

  Half an hour later we arrived at Lahore. Waiting for us on the runway were a crescent of politicians and dignitaries, flanked by huge Pathan security guards. Behind them stood a phalanx of black Mercedes limousines ready, revved and waiting; at a distance, a little behind the black limousines, stood a single plebeian white Toyota. Benazir waved breezily from the top of the gangway, then descended the steps and passed along the line of waiting dignitaries, nodding and muttering ‘Salaam Alekum’ to each of them. There was a brief speech of welcome from the Chief Minister of the Punjab, then it was in to the limos and off. The Toyota, it became apparent, was for me.

  Being Prime Minister of Pakistan has its moments. The whole airport road had been shut off for Benazir’s cavalcade. Armed guards lined the pavements; overhead, flags and bunting had been hung across the road, much of it blazoned with welcoming messages to Benazir from admirers as diverse as the Habib Bank and Diet Pepsi. We swept at high speed through the old colonial centre of Lahore – past the Zam-Zammah gun with which Kipling opens Kim, and the museum where Kipling’s father was curator – the train of Mercedes announced by a posse of open-top police jeeps and flanked by a swarm of motorcycle outriders, all blaring horns and wailing sirens. Another posse of jeeps followed behind. Last of all came me in my dingy white saloon.

  Benazir had dropped in to Lahore to open an exhibition of Pakistani kilims. Our destination was the Al-Hambra, Pakistan’s principal contemporary art gallery. I had been there before on a number of occasions, but had never seen anything like the reception which awaited us now: a Pakistani pipe band, swathed in tartan turbans and merrily wailing The Gay Gordons’. As Benazir lowered herself out of her limo, the Pipe Major did his stuff with his baton, the drums beat and the bagpipers played the Pakistani national anthem. (According to Benazir’s press secretary, whom I later taxed on this subject, Pakistan is now the world’s leading manufacturer of bagpipes, and has begun exporting them to Scotland.)

  Inside the gallery auditorium, the assembled audience were treated to a half-hour prayer, first in Arabic then in Urdu, by a bearded mullah in a lambskin cap, followed by nearly an hour of speeches on the theme of Pakistan’s contribution to the hand-knotted carpet. After this Benazir rose, made another speech, had a four-minute dash round the principal exhibits; then it was back in the limos – a screech of tyres and more wailing sirens – and off to the next city, Karachi, three hours’ flight to the south, where the deserts of Sindh meet the Arabian Ocean. Another cavalcade of limousines was waiting on the runway as we stepped out of the plane in to the muggy heat of Sindh, and with another blare of sirens we were escorted in to the city by yet another swarm of outriders.

  Our destination this time was the Presidential Guest House, where Benazir was chairing a meeting of the regional PPP. Inside, the marble passages of the old colonial building were filled with politicians slapping each other on the back or pulling allies aside to whisper political gossip in alcoves. In the main durbar hall, under a huge portrait of Jinnah looking as drawn and emaciated as Christopher Lee in a horror film, thirty-three men sat in a semi-circle around one woman.

  Without even a minute’s break to recover from the journey, Benazir immediately convened a meeting of the party workers from her Larkhana constituency. Most of the men looked about twice her age, but all of them were on their best behaviour – not speaking until they were spoken to, and sitting bolt upright as Benazir lounged on a divan before them. For twenty minutes the Prime Minister grilled the men – ‘Elaborate, Ali!’ ‘Thank you, Nadir’ – as they stammered to explain themselves: ‘Excuse me respected Prime Minister, I’m so sorry, but …’ Eventually they were all dismissed with a wave and the command ‘Jaldi kare’ (‘Do it quick!’). Then the next group was summoned in and another grilling began.

  It was ten o’clock at night before Benazir had finished. Throughout the evening, as successive groups of men wilted, she showed not the slightest sign of fatigue.

  The following morning I rang up 70 Clifton, for forty years the Bhuttos’ Karachi headquarters.

  Through the family secretary I managed to arrange an interview with Ghinwa, Murtaza Bhutto’s Lebanese wife, but when I asked if I could speak to Begum Nusrat Bhutto I was told that that was impossible: the Begum was out having lunch. Then, after a second’s hesitation, the secretary added who she was lunching with: her daughter, the Prime Minister.

  Pakistani friends had warned me about these mother-daughter meetings, which were regarded as one of the more eccentric and bewildering features of the current feud. On every trip to Karachi, Benazir would make a point of visiting her mother. Politics would be kept out of the conversation, there would be tears and smiles and all would be well – until two days later, when the mutual recriminations would begin again in the press. For those in political circles this state of affairs was not only confusing, it was potentially perilous, as everyone in the Bhutto camp had been forced to take sides, and no one was quite sure where they would stand if peace was eventually re-established. Ordinary mortals were not encouraged to try to cross the battle lines, and Benazir’s press secretary had made it clear to me – in no uncertain terms – that if I attempted to interview the Begum, and focused too closely on the feud, I should not expect to have access to Benazir ever again.

  As arranged, at 2.30 p.m. I went over to 70 Clifton to interview Benazir’s sister-in-law. The house, located in the centre of Karachi’s smartest residential district, had long been chief shrine of the Bhutto cult, but since my last visit a subtle change had come over the shrine’s iconography. There were still images of Shaheed Bhutto plastering every wall in the vicinity, but those of his daughter, once ubiquitous, had now been removed and replaced by pictures of her brother Murtaza. The largest of these was an enormous hoarding, some thirty feet high, which had been erected on the pavement immediately opposite the main entrance to the house. It was painted in the garish Technicolor of Hindi film posters, and showed Murtaza in a Sindhi cap, waving at his supporters. Other posters reproduced press pictures of Murtaza being led away to jail in a Black Maria, handcuffed to a policeman, a new martyr in the making.

  I was ushered through the compound by Kalashnikov-carrying family retainers, and left in a reception room just inside the front door. Every surface here – as elsewhere in the shrine – was dedicated to Bhutto imagery: whole tables were covered with signed photographs showing Bhutto Senior with the Shah of Iran, with the Nixons, with Mao. Other frames contained family portraits: Zulfi’s father, Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto, various cousins, various children; but again Benazir was notably absent.

  After a few minutes Ghinwa appeared. She was younger than I had expected – probably in her mid-twenties – and was very beautiful, in the Lebanese fashion. Tea was brought and we chatted for a few minutes about how much she was missing the Middle East, how much her children were missing their father and how hot Pakistani food was. She seemed shy, sweet-natured and naïve, genuinely baffled by the chain of events that had led to her husband being escorted straight off to prison within an hour of his return home. ‘He only wanted to help Pakistan,’ she kept repeating. ‘He only wanted to do the best for his country. C’est un peu bizarre.’

  ‘Have you talked to Benazir about Murtaza’s arrest?’ I asked.

  ‘I have never talked to my sister-in-law,’ said Ghinwa. ‘She has never addressed a single word to me.’

  We had been chatting for about half an hour when from outside there came the noise of an arriving car. ‘Here’s my mother-in-law,’ said Ghinwa.

  The front door opened and in
to the room walked Begum Bhutto. Although well in to her seventies, the Begum, once a famous Iranian beauty, was still a very striking woman: she had the same remarkable cheekbones as her daughter, and her shapely frame was wrapped in the swathes of a rather dramatic imitation leopard-skin salwar kameez. I explained that I was writing about Benazir and asked whether it might be possible to talk to her about the difficulties she was having with her daughter.

  At that very moment, Benazir herself walked in to the room. She must have overheard my last sentence, and she saw me shaking her mother’s hand, with Ghinwa standing beside me. I had been caught red-handed talking to her enemies. Benazir narrowed her eyes and looked daggers at me. Then she walked out of the room without a word. Her mother rushed after her.

  ‘C’est bizarre,’ said Ghinwa, shaking her head. ‘Ce pays. C’est très bizarre.’

  At ten o’clock the following morning, a convoy of jeeps followed by four pick-ups full of police gunmen brought Murtaza Bhutto to the court where his case was being heard. The noise and style was identical to one of Benazir’s own processions. The only difference was that Murtaza was unable to wave to passers-by, as his hands were handcuffed to the policeman sitting beside him.

  A one-hundred-rupee bribe got me through the police cordon, and I soon found Murtaza with his mother and his lawyer, in an annex beside the courtroom. Murtaza looked strikingly like his father: he was handsome, very tall – well over six feet – and slightly chubby round the middle; he had a deep voice and like his father exuded an air of self-confidence, bonhomie and charisma. He invited me to sit down, and said he was very pleased to talk to the international press. ‘Benazir doesn’t care what the local press says about her,’ he said, ‘but she’s very sensitive to what her friends in Paris, London and New York get to read about her.’

  ‘Has your sister got in touch with you since you returned to Pakistan?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Nothing. Not one note.’

  ‘Not even in her private capacity?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Did you expect her to intervene and get you off the hook?’ I asked. ‘What kind of reception did you hope she would lay on for you?’

  ‘I didn’t want any favours,’ replied Murtaza. ‘I just wanted her to let justice take its course, and for her not to interfere in the legal process. As it is, she has instructed the prosecution to use delaying tactics to keep me in confinement as long as possible: the prosecution has told several people that these are her instructions. This trial has been going on for three months now and they still haven’t finished examining the first witness.’

  ‘But you can understand why she feels threatened by your return,’ I said.

  ‘She should regard my return as an aspect of strength [for the family], not a threat. I don’t want to lead the PPP. I’m not demanding any party or government post. I just want to be an MNA [Member of the National Assembly, or Pakistani parliament] and represent the people of my father’s constituency. But she’s become paranoid and is convinced I’m trying to topple her.’

  ‘Why do you think that is?’

  Murtaza then proceeded to allege that his sister’s political decisions are sometimes based on superstition: ‘Probably been listening to one of her fortune-tellers. She believes in all sorts of voodoo: thinks her first government fell because she sought the advice of one pir [Muslim holy man] and another, stronger pir got jealous and cursed her. When you base your political decisions on that sort of thing you’re in serious trouble.’ Murtaza giggled: ‘When she came to Damascus in 1990 I had to find an astrologer for her – some Bedouin woman she had heard of, an old hag covered with shells, with tattoos all over her hands, cross-eyed – you know the sort of thing. Benazir spent two hours with the woman. I had to smuggle her in to the Presidential Guest House through the servants’ entrance. Apparently her ADCs have to do this for her wherever she goes, even in Paris and New York …’ Murtaza chuckled happily. ‘Anyway, it’s easy to realise why she thinks I’m a threat if she’s that easily influenced.’

  ‘Do you think she has become harder – more ruthless – over the last few years?’ I asked.

  This time it was the Begum Bhutto who answered. ‘My daughter would not have been capable of her actions today five years ago,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘The things she is doing now, even General Zia wouldn’t have done.’

  When I asked what she meant, the Begum went in to an emotional description of an incident that had taken place at the Bhutto country estate of Al-Murtaza in Larkhana a month earlier, on 5 January. The fifth was Zulfiqar Bhutto’s birthday, and to mark the occasion both the rival claimants to his mantle – mother and daughter – had planned pilgrimages to the Shaheed’s grave. Fearing trouble if the two groups of supporters clashed, the security forces surrounded the Bhutto compound in Larkhana – the Begum’s base – and banned her procession. When the Begum ordered the gates of the compound to be opened and made ready to set off, the police opened fire. One person was killed immediately, and two others died of their injuries after the police refused to let the ambulances through. That night, as the family retainers were bleeding to death, ten miles away in her new farmhouse Benazir celebrated her father’s birthday with singing and dancing.

  ‘After three deaths she and her husband danced!’ said the Begum, now near to tears. ‘They must have known the police were firing at Al-Murtaza. Would all this have happened if she didn’t order it? But the worst crime was that they refused to let the ambulances through. If only they had let the ambulances through, those two boys would be alive now. Those two boys who used to love Benazir, who used to run in front of her car.’

  The Begum was weeping now. ‘I kept ringing Benazir, saying, “For God’s sake stop the siege,” but her people just repeated: “Madam is not available.” She wouldn’t even take my call. One call from her walkie-talkie would have got the wounded through. Even General Zia …’ The sentence trailed away. ‘What’s that saying in England? “Power corrupts, more power corrupts even more.” Is that it?’

  ‘Don’t you talk about this when you meet your daughter for lunch?’ I asked.

  Tears were running down her face, little rivulets of eye-shadow and smudged mascara.

  ‘No.’ The Begum shook her head and broke down. ‘I just … just went … off …’

  She buried her face in her handkerchief, and Murtaza put his arm around her.

  The following morning, my last in Pakistan, I caught the old twin-prop Fokker Friendship which every day makes the passage over the desert wastes of Sindh to Mohenjo Daro, the nearest airstrip to Larkhana.

  Nawab Mustafa Lahori, a neighbouring landowner and an old admirer of the Begum Bhutto, was there to meet me. As we drove to Al-Murtaza, the Bhutto estate, along the dry salt flats of the Indus plain, the Nawab described to me the events of 5 January, of which he had been a witness. Like all the old Bhutto supporters I met that day, he was mystified by Benazir’s behaviour, unable to understand how she had been able to let the police attack her own home, murder three of her most faithful family retainers, then forbid free passage for the wounded. No one believed her claim not to have been informed of the shootings until the following morning; and as for the official police explanation for the siege – that the Begum had been sheltering armed Indian secret agents within Al-Murtaza – there was only contempt.

  ‘Everyone knows this charge is fabrication,’ said the Nawab. ‘By supporting the action of the police she is only damaging her own reputation in this area.’

  That certainly seemed to be true. All over Larkhana, once the heartland of Benazir’s most loyal supporters, posters and graffiti on almost every wall proclaimed the town’s new allegiance to her brother. In the whole town I saw only one poster of Benazir, and that looked old and faded.

  Al-Murtaza was a large walled compound in the centre of the town. Inside the walls, the dust of the desert gave way to a lovely irrigated Persian garden, the lawns broken by lines of palms and flowering bougainvillaea. Two old garde
ners took us around, pointing out where police bullets had left holes in the gates and buildings or had knocked the bark off the trees; a clutch of teargas cylinders that had been fired during the siege were produced with a great flourish.

  ‘We are very proud of our Bibi Sahiba [Benazir],’ said one of the gardeners. ‘But this time … it was very bad. It was not reasonable to stop the Begum Sahiba going to the grave of her husband. What happened on the fifth was done on Bibi’s orders.’

  ‘Bibi Sahiba is the Prime Minister,’ agreed the other gardener. ‘She gets to know what happens everywhere in Pakistan. She knew what the police were doing. No person should behave like this to her mother, or to her home.’

  ‘Will people here vote again for her?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s not certain,’ said the first gardener. ‘After the fifth our minds have been changed. We want Murtaza, not Bibi. All Sindh is unhappy with her. Everyone is angry.’

  As they guided us around the flowerbeds the gardeners changed tack to the happier subject of Benazir’s father, whom they clearly adored.

  ‘The Shaheed was a wonderful man,’ said the first gardener. ‘Other politicians forget your name once they have your vote, but Shaheed Bhutto, he always remembered.’

  ‘When the Shaheed was martyred,’ said the second man, ‘we all wept.’

  I asked about the rumours I had heard that the villagers of Larkhana had begun seeing miracles at his grave.

  ‘It is true,’ said Mohammed Ibrahim, the Bhuttos’ chowkidar [guard], who had joined us. ‘Women who want babies go to his grave and soon the Shaheed fulfils their wishes.’

  ‘Others who want work get employment,’ said the first gardener.

  ‘Many people have seen him in dreams,’ said the second. ‘They call him “Shaheed Baba”. For all us people of Larkhana the Shaheed is the same as the great saints of Islam.’