Songs of Blood and Sword

by Fatima Bhutto

  I saw Zardari the night Benazir’s body was brought from Rawalpindi, where she was killed, to Garhi Khuda Bux. Mummy, Zulfi and I made the forty-minute drive from our house in Larkana to Naudero. The house had once belonged to Shahnawaz but Benazir took it over after his murder and used it as a base to build her political platform. I wondered if Asif would be there; if he’d have the courage to show his face at the funeral of another Bhutto. I reminded myself that he was her husband, he was sure to be present. I didn’t think he’d be able to face us, and I didn’t know how I would react to him. I felt as if my heart would explode in grief and anger – that I would break inside.

  In the end, it was only a moment. We stood by the door, waiting for the coffin to arrive, and he walked in, agitated. Zardari was shorter than I remembered. Barely taller than me and I’m not tall. And he was shaking. Someone, it could have been anyone, there were so many people pushing in through the doors, brushed past him and he jerked, his whole body quivering. He’s scared, I thought. He can’t wait to get out of here. It gave me no solace.

  Zulfi decided he would be present at Benazir’s burial. He was a family member, the only male alive. Someone from the family should be there to bury her, he said. The other men around the funeral were all political assistants, enablers, criminals, petty distributors and thieves. She can’t be buried by them, he reasoned. I cried and tried to threaten my brother. I didn’t want him near her, I didn’t want him standing in the six-foot-deep pit with Zardari, with the man many believe was responsible for my father’s murder. People were saying the same sort of thing now, about this death. ‘It’s too dangerous, are you crazy?’ I exploded. It would be insane, I whimpered.

  In the end, Zulfi was more dignified, more gracious than I could ever have been. He placed Benazir’s body in the ground, said the fateha prayers and walked to our father’s grave. He bent down and kissed the cloth and old rose petals that covered Papa’s grave. And then he left. Zulfi was alone that day. He was only seventeen then.

  Two months later I had another encounter with Asif Zardari. It was after the February 2008 elections had been rigged and won, after he had given a press conference on the third day after his wife’s death, the most important day in Muslim mourning, after he had farcically changed his children’s last names from Zardari to Bhutto and announced his hostile takeover of Benazir’s PPP and his intention to be the last ‘Bhutto’ left standing. It was longer than the first encounter and it burnt me; every fibre of my being and feeling was scorched by it.

  A French film crew had come to Karachi to do a story on the family dynasty and in my new role as black sheep and naysayer to hereditary politics, I was to give them the opposing viewpoint. The crew, two women and their Pakistani fixer, asked me to take them to the spot where Papa had been killed. It’s a ten-second walk from our front door and I’d done it in the past for journalists. I stood by the spot, directly in front of the police station, where my father was shot and as I spoke to the cameras I noticed a white Pajero jeep standing a few feet away from me. There were three men inside and Benazir stickers on the windows. I stopped talking. I was shaken. I went to Hameed, one of the men who guard Zulfi and me and asked him to go and find out who the car belonged to and why it was there. I asked the French women to give me a moment. I was upset. I didn’t want to lose my composure, not with two journalists around, not with cameras and story-making potential present. Hameed spoke to the men and they got out of the car; that surprised me. Why hadn’t they just left? They held their hands up, in some sort of placatory gesture, but stood their ground. It was taking more heat, this moment, than I had expected. After a few minutes the men drove away. ‘What happened? Who were they?’ I asked Hameed in Urdu, hoping the journalists would not notice my voice shaking. ‘It’s Zardari,’ came the reply. ‘He’s at the British consulate next door. They’re his security.’ They told Hameed that they weren’t there to make trouble, hence the hands, but that they had to patrol the area for Zardari’s safety. Hameed asked them to patrol elsewhere and they left. It was a Kafkaesque irony.

  Here I was, standing where my father was murdered, and the man who I believe was in part responsible for the execution was across the road from me, being received diplomatically. I felt my knees buckle. I sat down on the kerb. ‘What’s wrong?’ one of the French women asked me. ‘Nothing,’ I mumbled. I carried on from where I had left off, talking about my father’s murder, taking them through it step by step. Then I noticed another car, a different one this time, but also white, across the street. Hameed stepped closer to me and bent down. ‘Shahid Hayat is in the car. He’s providing the police security for Asif’s Karachi visit,’ he whispered. Shahid Hayat was one of the policemen present that night, the one who shot himself in the thigh, another police officer we accused and who protested his innocence. And there they were, reunited. In broad daylight, driving up and down Clifton road in front of me. All of a sudden, those distant threats became very clear and very close. We were in danger. I stood up and continued talking. I spoke slowly, so we would have to stand there longer. I told the French filmmakers what was happening. I wasn’t going to leave. Minutes passed, a quarter of an hour, then half an hour. I had nothing left to say. I walked back the few feet to my house, shaken.

  The fear, the palpable, obvious fear remained with me. I thought of it when I returned to my room to write at night. I thought about it when my phone rang, when people emailed me. The feeling of being watched eventually settled down and I became used to the idea that things had changed. That we were on the defensive, that we had enemies in the highest places, once again.

  In April, two months after that day, I was in Larkana to attend the twenty-ninth anniversary of my grandfather’s death. Asif and Benazir’s PPP had taken to marking the occasion not on the 4th, the correct date, but the night before. They would erect tents and bus people in. Their public meeting started shortly before midnight and they ensured their numbers, made up of strangers, not locals, were visible even in the dark. It was the night of the 2nd and we were at the dinner table: my family, our family friend and lawyer Omar, and Dr Jatoi, an old friend of Papa’s and a loyal party worker. I made an off-the-cuff comment about not wanting to go to the mazaar at Garhi Khuda Bux. I hadn’t been since Benazir’s funeral and the cult of personality worship that had started then could only have spiralled. I wasn’t prepared to see my father’s graveyard turned into a fairground. Mummy nodded as I spoke and said, ‘I think maybe you shouldn’t come.’ I stopped mid-rant. ‘Why?’ I asked, has it got worse, more kitschy? More hawkers selling food and snacks outside? ‘No,’ Mummy shook her head. Were there more posters of her put up? I had always taken them down; it was a graveyard not a shrine and some things, some places, are not campaign grounds. Mummy spoke. ‘Yes, there are posters, but they’re not of Benazir.’ ‘Who?’ I asked, putting down my fork. ‘They’ve put his posters up,’ Mummy said, leaning towards me, taking my hand to soften the blow. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. His posters? Zardari’s? ‘Are they near my father’s grave?’ I asked, my voice trembling and tears running down my face. Mummy didn’t answer. Omar got out of his chair and came over to mine. I didn’t want to be steadied, didn’t want to be hugged. I leapt out of my chair and went outside. ‘Get the car,’ I said, I don’t remember to whom. I was crying, hard. Mummy and Omar were trying to convince me to go back inside the house. I was upset, they said, come back and we’ll talk it about it. I didn’t. I got into the car. Dr Jatoi and his twenty-year-old daughter Jia jumped in with me, unsure of what I was going to do. The mazaar was being prepared for the next day’s PPP jamboree. Prime Minister Gilani was coming. Zardari was going to put in a rare public appearance; he saved most of his energy for foreign trips. A local pundit estimated, a year into Zardari’s presidency, that Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to what is now lugubriously called ‘Af-Pak’, had spent more days in Pakistan than the President himself.Thousands of security forces, policemen and Rangers had been brought into the city to pro
tect the VIPs.

  The driver drove towards Garhi. ‘Bibi,’ he said to me, trying to be heard over my tears, ‘why don’t we go tomorrow, it’s not a good idea to go now.’ I was crying so hard I could barely speak. ‘Take me or I’ll walk,’ I threatened. It works every time. I can’t walk, the mazaar is too far, the roads unlit, and I have a useless sense of direction. But I was angry and my bluff held.

  Mummy called Dr Jatoi. ‘Come back or I’ll get in a taxi and follow you,’ Mummy bluffed back at me. ‘Come then,’ I replied. I wasn’t turning back. They were afraid I was going to take down the posters, cause a scene, get people into trouble. But I wasn’t going to do that. I just wanted to see what Larkana had been looking at, what people had been watching and allowing to happen in their fear and obsequious obedience to power. Jia was passing me tissues; she had given up trying to blow my nose for me, I kept swatting her hand away. I couldn’t talk, I was gasping for air in between my howls. She patted my hands and tried to comfort me. When we got to the graveyard we were stopped by a roadblock. There had never been a roadblock at Garhi before, this was a sign of the new Zardari management. Two men, in plain clothes, came up to our window to ask who we were. ‘I’m the Shaheed’s daughter,’ I replied, through my window. He recognized us and let us through. In front of the mazaar, there were metal detectors, for Asif’s security. A ramp had been built so he could drive the car into the graveyard. It was too dangerous for him to alight from his car and walk. He was going to park at the graves and pray. I went to my father’s grave. By now I had stopped crying. Everywhere around the dead were posters of Asif Zardari, his children and his sister, Benazir’s siasi waris according to her ‘will’, her political heir. She has a pug nose and a headscarf, trying as much as possible to resemble Benazir. I asked for the doors to the mazaar to be closed. I removed the posters of the Zardaris that surrounded my father and uncle’s graves. I apologised to Papa. I left. As I got back into my car, three police vans pulled up around us. A daughter of the Bhuttos, only one of two left, a child of the dead, had frightened them into arriving to assess the threat. Now, several months shy of the second anniversary of Benazir’s death, the government of Asif Zardari, while begging international donors and rich nations for billions of dollars to aid Pakistan, has allocated some 400 million rupees to the Zardarification of Garhi Khuda Bux. Metal detectors, four at least, are operated solely for the President’s security, rules for visitors written in bad English have been nailed to the front entrance, and two hotels are reportedly being built nearby to handle all the devotees – both foreign and local – of the Bhutto cult that power is now based on.

  This is the legacy Benazir has left behind for Pakistan. This is the saprophytic culture she created and thrived in. Bloodlines, genetics, a who’s who of dynastic politics – this is all her. It is this corrupted and dangerously simple system that allows her husband to rule a country of 180 million people by virtue of having a close enough tie to the dead, to the corpses that demand – and receive – sympathy votes.

  One of the four murder cases pending against Zardari in the buildup to his bid for the nation’s presidency was the case of Justice Nizam’s killing. He had been president of the High Court Bar Association at the time of his death and was killed outside his home three months before Papa.

  Justice Nizam had opened a case against a property deal that was being carried out in Zardari’s name. A valuable plot of land was being sold through Zardari’s frontmen, without auction. In the public interest, Justice Nizam got a stay order against the sale and readied himself for a fight in court; he was, his brother Noor Ahmed told me, ready to take the case against Zardari to the Supreme Court.1

  On 10 June 1996, at around two in the afternoon, Justice Nizam was on his way home for lunch. His son, Nadeem, had picked him up from the office as he often did when the family’s driver was unavailable and they drove home together. Nadeem had only recently returned home to Karachi after graduating from college abroad. As they drove towards the gates of their home, two men on a scooter drew up alongside their car. One of the men gestured to Justice Nizam and his son. Nadeem, who was driving, stopped the car and wound down his window. The men fired into the car, killing both Justice Nizam and his young son.

  The gunfire startled their family, who had been inside waiting for them before starting lunch. The justice’s brother-in-law ran out of the house as soon as he heard the shots. By the time he reached the car, the scooter had driven off. Both men were dead. Nadeem was in his mid-twenties; he had got engaged to be married a month earlier.

  When I meet Noor Ahmed, Justice Nizam’s brother, the ball had already started rolling – Zardari had been magically acquitted in two of the four murder cases against him. The third, Justice Nizam’s case, had just been thrown out of the courts and Zardari declared innocent. Our case, Papa’s murder case, was next. Noor Ahmed is an elderly man. We met after Friday prayers and he wore the customary white shalwar kameez and white prayer cap. His wife brought us tea and cakes while we spoke. A photograph of Justice Nizam sat by his brother’s armchair. The two brothers resembled each other, both with serious, heavy-set eyes and white hair. I asked Noor Ahmed if he thought he would ever get justice. Softly, he replied, ‘I doubt it.’ He had been very brave to meet me and speak so openly about his brother’s case. I thanked Noor Ahmed for seeing me and in response he told me that he had met my father once, at the Karachi Boat Club, after Justice Nizam had been killed. ‘Murtaza came to my table and shook my hand. He offered his condolences and said, “The same people are after me.” Was he certain, I asked, that it was Zardari who was behind his brother’s murder? ‘I came to know only after his death,’ Noor Ahmed responded, switching between English and Urdu, ‘that every judge and every advocate knew that this had been done and planned by Asif Zardari.’ When he said his name, Zardari, Noor Ahmed’s body shook. ‘Even housewives know Zardari was behind this,’ he said, raising his voice. I couldn’t help but worry for him. Worry what the consequences of his outspokenness would be in such a dangerous climate. But he wasn’t afraid to speak, not now and certainly not then. ‘The only thing I did, on the second day after the murder,’ Noor Ahmed says, his voice still calm, ‘was this – Hakim Zardari, Asif ’s father, came to condole with me. He asked me, “How did this happen?” In my heart, which was hurting, I said everyone knows it’s your larka, your boy, who did this. I said it to him. Did he answer? No. He just kept quiet. What could he say?’ Noor Ahmed’s wife, who is sitting quietly next to me, breaks the tension in the room. Both of us are getting emotional now, so she interjects. ‘You look like Benazir,’ she says to me. I laugh, not knowing what else to do. Sensing my discomfort, she adds, as if to console me, ‘It’s in God’s hands.’ Noor Ahmed, who had been sitting quietly with his hands folded in his lap, threw out a palm and swatted the air. ‘What’s all this God-shod business?’ he says, almost to himself. ‘Her whole family has been killed!’ Before I leave, as I am thanking him for his time and for seeing me and talking to me at a time when most might find it sensible not to, Noor Ahmed smiles at me and asks, ‘What’s the faida, beti, of writing this book of yours?’ What’s the benefit, he asks, and calls me daughter. Memory, I tell him.

  The day Zardari was acquitted of my father’s murder, I was halfway around the world. I was on assignment in Cuba to cover the past and present of the revolution in the lead-up to the fiftieth anniversary of Castro’s takeover. I knew it was coming. Even when he had been incarcerated for the murders and myriad cases against him, Zardari hardly spent time in jail – a serious, mortally ill heart patient at the time, he had himself transferred to a luxury suite at his friend’s private hospital in Karachi. That doctor friend was rewarded with the cabinet post of Minister of Oil and Petroleum after his chum miraculously rid himself of his heart problems and ascended to the highest post in the land.

  I had been visiting hospitals and schools, meeting officials and travelling the country. I was away from email. I had disconnected myself from Pakistan
intentionally. I got a phone call one afternoon in Havana. It was April and the weather was tropical and humid. I was sitting on my hotel bed in front of a balcony overlooking Calle Obispo trying to cool down from an afternoon spent walking between ministries on the Malecon. It was Hameed, calling from home. ‘I’m sorry, baba,’ he said. He didn’t have to explain why. 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. It was typical of the way he oper-ated; justice was always the first casualty.

  On 20 September 2008, on the twelfth anniversary of Papa’s death, Asif Zardari took his oath as President of Pakistan. The ceremony had been scheduled for the day before, the 19th, but had been moved on the orders of the new President, who rescheduled his big day for Saturday, Papa’s barsi. As he stood in front of parliament, which had voted him into the post almost unanimously (in the same highly democratic way that General Musharraf was ‘elected’ President), he paused in his speech and asked for a moment of silence to mark the occasion of his brother-in-law’s death. My blood froze. It was as if he was taunting us. But that would be nothing compared to what would follow. On Zardari’s first Pakistan Day as President he would honour Shoaib Suddle, one of the most senior police officers present at the scene when my father was killed. Suddle was awarded Hilal-e-Imtiaz, a national medal in recognition of his services to the people of Pakistan. Shoaib Suddle was then made the head of the Federal Investigation Bureau.

  The MQM has forgotten Operation Clean-Up and is now an enthusiastic coalition partner in Zardari’s government. Aftaf Hussain, still living in London, and Zardari have become firm friends and often pose menacingly for photographs holding hands and embracing each other for the cameras.