While Della was in Greece and Murtaza in Kabul, they corresponded by letter. Murtaza and Shahnawaz had abandoned the idea of a diplomatic solution to Pakistan’s junta – their two years out in the world convinced them that there was no peaceful way of dealing with the military regime. Zia’s violence was too powerful, the military’s grip on the country too strong. The only way to fight the junta was with force. The brothers formed the People’s Liberation Army, modelled on the guerrilla outfits they had idolized as young men, but quickly found that their romantic ideal of a people’s armed resistance against a gargantuan military apparatus was not an easy one to operate.
Writing to Della about the PLA’s organizational developments since she left Kabul in June, Murtaza jokes:
We, the PLA, are unique in many respects: 1) Our official spokesman is a dog (Wolf) 2) we have more commanders than fighters 3) We are the first organization in Pakistan’s history that believes in fighting 4) We consider secrecy nothing to be secret about 5) the PLA’s chief can make enemies much quicker than friends – and he thinks that’s interesting 7) No one yet knows exactly who the chief is 8) the official spoksman has ticks and likes to chew on bones – also, the official spokesman shits on carpets.22
He continues:
The people of Pakistan, whom the PLA seems to be fighting for, are an even stranger breed of people. Their ‘war’ for ‘independence’ was ‘won’ by them one year before they had wanted it. Independence was forced on them; they were begged to become independent and free . . . The Pakistani Army effectively reflects the valour and determination of the people it lives off. 1) When a soldier fell on his backside he suffered brain damage. 2) It believes in equality: it constitutes 00.06 per cent of the population but consumes between 70 and 80 per cent of its wealth . . . The official spokesman of the PLA, Wolf, feels he can take on the Pakistani Army any time in an intellectual confrontation. We have advised him to refrain from challenging them as it will only provoke the heroic Pakistani Army into committing mass suicide. This is a very predictable reflex in the character of our brave army. They are also world-famous for surrendering heroically. A very shrewd British statesman once remarked, ‘War is too serious a business to be left to the soldiers.’ How true. And then when given the government to run . . . Soon the rule of the Generals will come to an end for ever. The rule of the lash and the barracks will be buried. First they broke half the country. And now it’s turn [sic] for the rest. Thus will end the short and sad history of Pakistan, a nation that killed its protector, that bit the hand that fed it; an artificial nation made to be broken on an ugly murderous scaffold. Pakistan will pass into history, shameful and forgotten.
Murtaza ends the letter with love and signs it ‘Salahudin’. It was his nom de guerre, a salute to the Arab liberator of Jerusalem.
By the end of July Murtaza and Shahnawaz left Kabul to travel to Libya for a meeting with Colonel Gadaffi. From there they went back to Damascus. Della joined the brothers in Syria, and when she accompanied Murtaza on a visit to meet President Assad, Murtaza introduced her as his fiancée. At one of their meetings with Syrian officials, a general asked Della how her husband, General Roufogalis, was faring. She was taken aback. What an impossible position to be in. Della stammered that General Roufogalis was fine, trying to keep nonchalant, but she was shaken. Murtaza took Della to Maa’lula, the southern Syrian city where Aramaic is still spoken, and they visited a monastery on a short break from Murtaza’s official meetings. A woman offered to read their cards. She told Della that she would never have children but that the man she was with would. How had it come to this? Della wondered. She was the wife of a right-wing jailed junta leader and the fiancée of a left-wing would-be revolutionary.
In their search for support for their newly formed People’s Liberation Army, Murtaza and Shahnawaz went to all the countries that had close relations with Zulfikar’s socialist government, and while thanking them for all their efforts in lobbying General Zia to spare their father’s life, the brothers explained to presidents and diplomats alike that they had decided to take another course. They were going to wage an armed struggle against the junta in Pakistan. Yasser Arafat, fond of Zulfikar, congratulated them on their commitment and spoke of his own battles, hoping to inspire them with tales of the Palestinian experience, but that was it. Many legends swarmed around that meeting – people whisper that Arafat sent PLO operatives to Kabul to train the men gathered by Murtaza and Shahnawaz.They claim that he diverted arms from the PLO to the PLA, that he personally advised the Bhutto brothers on guerrilla warfare. It isn’t so. The brothers took to wearing keffiyehs, chequered Palestinian scarves; Murtaza wore the red keffiyeh, as he was the senior commander, and Shahnawaz the black. But that’s it. Knowing my father, I’m sure he would have loved the rumours, flattered by the myths that people dreamt up around the organization.
In September, Murtaza and Della met again in Geneva. He was there to meet Sheikh Zayed, the leader of the United Arab Emirates, another friend of Zulfikar’s. Murtaza went into the meeting on 13 September imagining that Zayed would agree to bankroll the PLA. He left disappointed. Murtaza returned to the hotel visibly angry and told Della that Zayed disagreed with the road the brothers had taken. ‘He told Mir that he should return to London and start a family. Zayed told him that “Time will pay off and things will change. Be patient.” Mir was furious.’23 The sheikh had refused to fund the PLA, giving Murtaza a token sum of $10,000. ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ Murtaza said, flicking his hand at the envelope. Della tried to calm him down; she agreed with the sheikh – she wanted Murtaza to have nothing more to do with an armed liberation army, no matter what the cause. ‘Get up, let’s go for a walk,’ Murtaza told Della, rushing her out of the hotel. He took Della to the Rolex store and bought her a watch. ‘This is from the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi,’ he told her. Murtaza didn’t want the man’s money; his mission didn’t need it.
‘He felt he had no choice about relocating to Kabul,’ Murtaza’s college friend Milbry Polk, who now runs Wings World Quest, an NGO that supports women explorers, tells me. ‘He had to put a lot of his own personal dreams on hold . . . he had to make a cut in his life – in his lifestyle, with his friends, his mobility. It was an extreme choice, but he probably couldn’t have lived with himself had he not done it. He was a good son, a good Pakistani, and the leadership burden was on him.’24 Before returning to Kabul, where the foundations of the PLA were almost ready, Murtaza made one last stop in London. He saw two of his close friends from college. He knew he would not to be able to travel to the United Kingdom for some time. There were rumours that General Zia had directed Pakistan’s International Airline pilots to divert their planes to Pakistan if either of the Bhutto brothers were on board. There was an element of danger everywhere.
In London, Murtaza met his college roommate, Bill White, who was disturbed by the marked change in his friend. ‘The last time, we met, Mir said, “I don’t know if we’ll see each other for a long, long time,”’ Bill tells me, speaking slowly in his deep baritone voice. ‘And I told him, “What are you talking about?” Mir replied that he didn’t know if I’d want to see him. “I may do things you don’t approve of,” he said. “What I’m going to do is fairly dangerous, plus I might not live that long.” I told him that was ridiculous. I told him we’d keep in touch. I’d always had the sense that in twenty or thirty years’ time we’d be in touch, see each other’s families and keep notes on each other’s lives. As I was leaving, Mir said, “Really? You think we’ll be able to keep in touch?”’25 Another friend, Magdalena, had a similarly ominous farewell. ‘I saw him last in London in 1979 and it was before we knew that he was going to be in Kabul and he said to me, “Don’t think I’m not a good friend if I can’t be in touch often.”’26 Magda stops mid-sentence and begins to cry. She never saw Murtaza again; neither did Bill.
‘Mir took Zia’s actions very personally,’ Bill tells me, trying to find a way to explain his friend’s sudden new life plans. Kabul
is a bit of a tricky subject these days. How do you tell your best friend’s daughter, whom you’ve never met, why her father changed everything – changed his life, his sense of peace, his family’s security – to lead an armed guerrilla movement? ‘He believed Zia crossed a line when he took Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s life and he believed he had to pay for that. Mir was a risk taker. For someone who grew up in a privileged environment, he was pretty tough.’27
On 17 September 1979, one day before his twenty-fifth birthday, Murtaza flew back to Kabul. It would be his home for the next three years.
Khurshid and Shahnawaz Bhutto with their children. Zulfikar is wearing a suit and standing next to his father
Nusrat as a young woman in Bombay
Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto with John F. Kennedy in the White House
Zulfikar with his Indian counterpart, Indira Gandhi
The Bhutto children, Murtaza,Benazir, Sanam and Shahnawaz,in China with Chou en-Lai
Shahnawaz, Benazir, Murtaza, Sanam, Nusrat and Zulfikar in Northern Pakistan in one of the last family photographs taken of the Bhuttos all together
Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto with Chief of Army Staff General Zia standing behind him, watching an army parade in Islamabad
General Zia ul Haq
A portrait taken of Murtaza around the time he embarked on his undergraduate studies at Harvard
Murtaza clowning around in Karachi during his college days
Benazir, Shahnawaz, Murtaza and Sanam Bhutto in Shanghai, China
Murtaza and Bill White at their Harvard graduation
Police arresting a student in Lahore during General Zia ul Haq’s martial law
Workers of Pakistan People’s Party chanting slogans ‘Bhutto Ko Raha Karo’ ‘Free Bhutto’ in Thatta, Sindh
Nusrat after being attacked at Gaddafi stadium in Lahore during a protest
Murtaza campaigning for his father in Larkana during the 1977 elections
Shahnawaz in Kabul
Murtaza leading a rally of the Toronto chapter of the Save Bhutto Committee (Photograph courtesy Milbry Polk
{ 8 }
I n Pakistan, Nusrat and Benazir were being shuttled between jail and house arrest in Karachi and Larkana. Whenever a moment of political uncertainty approached, the junta locked them up, setting them free only when the tension had passed. One afternoon while in Al Murtaza house in Larkana, I decided to clear out some space for my books and started rummaging around in the old closets in my room, where I came across a stack of old registers. I dusted them off and opened them gingerly to find that they were Benazir’s diaries and notebooks from this period. The diaries were only sporadically dated and were written between the autumn of 1979 and sometime in 1981.
Like the Benazir I knew in life, the entries in the notebooks are conflicting and divergent. They often read as though they have been written by two entirely different people. A letter from 18 November to the jail superintendent at Larkana who oversaw Benazir’s house arrest is fierce and bold.
For several days I have not been feeling well. When my health worsened yesterday, I asked for a doctor. Twenty-four hours have passed but no doctor has come. Is it part of your policy to ensure that political detenus [sic] should be so maltreated? You better look into your Jail Manual for Allah and the people of Pakistan will judge you according to your duties . . . Your attention is also drawn to the fact that a) reading material has been illegally stopped from reaching me; b) eatables are being stopped by the Frontier Force from reaching me; c) writing material has been stopped from reaching me; d) my sister informed me that my lawyer has not been allowed to visit me.
But another note written in her register displays a different sort of prisoner. ‘There are so many mosquitos around. Waking at noon. Massage for an hour. Lunch. Massage for another hour. Wash up. Dress. Make up. Read a book. Tea at four. Feed the deer. Walk. Wash the windows or walls. Play Scrabble. Read a bit. Dinner at 8:00. Read/Scrabble. What a waste.’1
There is the Benazir who suffered the horrific death of her father and saw herself as a political apprentice, hungrily pulling together shreds of local knowledge and political notes, names and dates. ‘A couple of evenings ago, we decided to draw up a tentative cabinet,’2 Benazir writes in her tight cursive script. Another day she draws up a list of local bodies’ leaders, noting names and by how many votes each man had secured his position. At other times, she writes of her father and Zia: ‘With the end of term of the corps commanders in March, it seems that Zia won’t be able to “settle things” in his narrow personal way until at least then. That bloody murderer, the Yazid of the twentieth century.’3
Then there is the Benazir who is generally easy-going, sounding more like someone on a life enhancement course rather than under house arrest. ‘It took ages to mate the good quality roses,’ she writes on 14 November, days before her letter to the jail superintendent. ‘Made buddings of the blue rose and have called it Machiavelli the Blue Prince, the yellow rose is the Blonde Borgia, the maroon red velvet Enchantress’ and so on and so forth. Three days later she notes, ‘Today they stopped candy floss, food from Bua’s (aunt) and any other cooked food from coming to us.’
And then at other times, she is a bit of both. Complicated, infinitely so, and manipulative. ‘Sugar,’ Benazir starts, writing on a Friday, ‘came meowing at the window demanding to be let in. She had caught a mouse which she wished to show us. Sugar behaves like a human so often. It’s almost as if she can communicate. Sunny’ – Sanam, her younger sister – ‘came on the 23rd. Was rude and upset
me. Her selfishness knows no bounds. She does not think what it is like for us to be cooped up. What would it have cost her to be polite?’4 Or else, she is ominous. On an undated page, Benazir summarizes a book she has recently read. ‘The man who reached the top reaches it by climbing. . . The qualities of a leader: he observes. He reads. He listens. He thinks’ (he does a lot of stuff). ‘Advertising when you advertise, write as you talk. A well-written advertisement, with a striking illustration and a good headline, placed in the right publication, has the best impact.’
The choice of Kabul was made for Murtaza. His father directed him to Afghanistan in his last letter, knowing that to be there was to be as close as possible to Pakistan. ‘There is a historical tradition of exile in Pakistan,’ explains Suhail, who joined Murtaza in Kabul that September. ‘During the Khilafat movement in the subcontinent around the Second World War there was a fighter named Obaid Ullah Sindhi – he too was Sindhi – who based his resistance against the British Empire from Kabul.’5
There is also a family tradition of exile in the northern borders of Afghanistan. Murtaza’s great-grandfather, Ghulam Murtaza Bhutto, after whom he was named, had been carrying on with the wife of a British commissioner during the Raj. When their dalliance was discovered, Ghulam Murtaza fled to Kabul and was received as a guest of the city’s Emir. He was eventually offered a peace by the British (and his lover’s husband) and returned to Larkana, where he was promptly killed.
As well as the Bhutto connection, Afghanistan was full of Baloch and Pushtun nationalists banished by the federal government. It was a country that shared a cultural and religious affinity with Pakistan, even some ethnic heritage, and it was considered a far more manageable option for Pakistani exiles than India or Bangladesh.
Shahnawaz did not move to Afghanistan with his brother immediately. He was still in London, dealing with some personal business. He had been engaged to a young Turkish girl, Nurseli, whom he had met in college in Switzerland. They had dated for several years before Shahnawaz proposed. Nurseli was from a wealthy Turkish family, a plain and plump girl, but Shahnawaz loved her and was faced with an ultimatum. When he informed her that he and his brother had planned to wage an armed struggle against the junta in Pakistan, Nurseli’s family baulked. Give up your ‘activities’ they warned Shah or we break the union. There wasn’t much he could do. So he settled his affairs in London, broke his engagement, and packed his bags fo
r Kabul.
The brothers moved into the Chicken Street bungalow on Wazir Akbar Khan Road in the autumn of 1979. The house was called Palace Number 2 and was opposite the German embassy, to the left of the Libyan embassy and a half a kilometre from the residences of the Pakistani embassy. It was a simple one-storey house with three bedrooms – one for Murtaza, one for Shah, and one for Suhail – a study, a kitchen, and a large drawing room/lounge. The walls were painted off-white and the sitting areas panelled in wood. Outside, there was a large lawn and the three young men put up a net where they would play badminton. They carted a grill outside and would often have barbecues in the evenings.
In Kabul, Murtaza went by the alias of Sulaiman Khan. One couldn’t be too careful, especially with Pakistani officials living down the road. He didn’t know much Dari, only a few words – formalities and pleasantries that could get him by – and no Pushto, unlike Suhail, whose family hailed from Peshawar. Shah spoke the most Dari out of the three, not because of their Iranian mother, but more because he had a large number of Persian-speaking friends in college. Together, they were almost fluent.
Wolf, the dog Della spoke Greek to, had been brought to Kabul from London by Murtaza. He always loved dogs and claimed it would be useful to have a guard dog. But Wolf was more of a pet than a guard dog. There were a bunch of Russians – no one knew why then – who lived in the adjoining portion of Palace Number 2. They had their own entrance and their own lawn, but they often stopped outside the gate to play with Wolf. When they left, Wolf mysteriously disappeared with them and Murtaza was certain the Russians had stolen him. He brought another German Shepherd home after Wolf ’s departure and promptly named him Wolf 2. When Murtaza left Kabul three years later, Wolf 2 went with him.
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