Remembering Bhutto

The Skype ring wouldn’t stop. I checked my watch; it was six-thirty in the morning. Who could it be? It was my brother; I quickly answered and asked if everything was all right. “No, it isn’t. They have killed her”, he replied from the other side. My immediate response was some choicest Punjabi expletives reserved only for moments of extreme anger and frustration. Somehow, he didn’t need to explain who “they” were and who “her” was in his sentence. Who else could it be?

I remember--as a nine year old--the latter half of 1988 as eventful. A couple of close family friends passed away that year and everybody was sad. And then Zia’s plane crashed. I can’t recall if it added much to anybody’s grief. The announcement of elections had infused the elders in the family with strange energy. My younger brother and I were mostly amused and wondered how so many people could be enamored by a woman waving her hands from a stage. The family was suddenly divided in two camps; Bhutto and anti-Bhutto camps. It generated passionate debates at family dinners; everybody seemed affected by it. Even my grandfather and his brother, who for us were perfection incarnated, weren’t untouched by what was going on. Haaris (my younger brother) and I realized we were surely missing out on something. I remember during our trips to Islamabad we would constantly ask Nana Farooq (my grandfather’s brother) if he supported Benazir and PPP. He was amused by our curiosity and would pretend that he supported IJI. He would argue that Nawaz Sharif wanted to make a chair-lift ride in Murree and was therefore better than Benazir. He wouldn’t be able to hide the mischievous smile on his face. We would be livid. How could he not support BB? She was our first woman prime minister and was against Zia. That seemed enough to support her at that time; at least to my aunts and uncles. There was no talk of corruption; that word entered our vocabulary much later.

There was no reason for us kids to support or oppose Zia. My elder brother who was 11--only two years older to me-- in 1988 (but pretended to act like 21) would tell with his dorky bespectacled face how Benazir, and not Zia’s lackeys were good for the country. Part of growing up in Sialkot as a kid in the early ‘80’s was to burn Zia and Indira Gandhi’s pictures in the newspaper using a magnifying glass. There was no particular reason to do it. It was mostly because my elder brother and I thought that they both looked scary. It would be an interesting exercise; the pictures published in Daily Jang would be small and mostly black and white. We would usually start with eyes and then just burn the whole picture. I think our fascination rested chiefly with the technique than the subjects that we chose to apply. Somehow, we never bothered to try it on any other picture. Even when we went to Islamabad to meet our grandfather we would attempt to burn pictures of the two rulers using our grandfather’s thick reading glasses. Only this time the pictures would be those appearing in Dawn.

Benazir wasn’t scary. She appeared elegant and beautiful. I hadn’t liked her getting married to Zardari though; I don’t know whether it was jealousy or just the fact that he also appeared scary in the pictures. Jealousy was what many men felt at that time; at least according to my mother and some of her friends. They wondered if Zardari felt jealous when he had to walk a few steps behind his Prime Minister wife. Maybe my mother and her friends felt that BB’s victory was theirs as well. I think perhaps many felt that way. One of my Khalus was extremely upset when during 1988 elections planes dropped thousands and thousands of leaflets showing Nusrat Bhutto dancing with Gerald Ford – or was it Richard Nixon. I didn’t know who Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon were but I was incensed too – that was cheap of the opposition.

In the following years my brothers and I grew up to be jiyalas of sorts. In high-school my teachers turned out to be rabidly anti-Bhutto. Most of the times, a couple of friends and I would be the only ones who would argue that Bhutto was a better choice over Qazi Hussain Ahmed. My Islamiat teacher who was a die-hard Jamaat follower once got extremely angry and called me a spy, working for Bhutto! I think what really puzzled me was how bitterly people got divided over Bhutto’s name.

Over the years, my support for Bhutto waned – not because I went and sat in the opposing camp but just because I personally became radicalized (towards the left) for various reasons. But I still sort of preferred Benazir Bhutto over Qazi Hussein Ahmed. I also figured it wasn’t just me who has had a change of heart. Nana Abu and Nana Farooq grew disappointed as well. I think the “promise of the brave, new world” that “unfurled beneath the clear blue sky” turned out to be neither brave nor new. It reeked of the old world – more and more so with every passing year. It gave my generation new words though. Fancy words like "embezzlement", "corruption", and "money laundering" and made Surrey famous for reasons other than Pakistani cricketers playing there.

I think on December 27 the jiyala in me who had sort of died some years ago came back to life again. I sat there in disbelief, shock and anger. The jiyala in me wished that none of it was true. Maybe she survived it and they were only hiding it to protect her and she would come on TV again the next morning to announce that she was fine. As the day progressed it became clear what had happened.

Goodbye BB! Everything said and done, we are extremely sad that you are no longer with us because you moved the hearts of even nine year olds in 1988.