Daughter of the east by benazir bhutto

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still sleeping?’ he’d say in mock amazement. ’Get up. Let’s have breakfast together.’ Political dinners weren’t a problem to Shah either. ’What time will you be through?’ he’d asked me my first night in Paris, when I was meeting Mr Nasim Ahmad, a former Minister of Information. At the appointed houe, I felt a stir in the dining room and looked up to see a tall, good-looking man moving gracefully towards us. My dinner partner blanched. Shah was not only the son of the former Prime Minister, but reputedly a terrorist. Lighting up a cigar, Shah soon had Mr Nasim Ahmad rocking with laughter at his stories. Later Yasmin, Shah and I walked the cobbled streets in the warm spring air, talking and drinking coffee in cafes until 3.00 am.

’I’ll pick you all up at 7.00 pm,’ Shah now said, dropping my mother and me at the two-bedroom flat in Croisette she had rented for the month. ’You’ll come to see my new flat first, then we’ll go for a barbecue on the beach. I’ve done all the preparations. All you have to do is enjoy your-selves.’

’Will Rehana be there?’ I asked him.

’Yes,’ he said, his expression giving no clue to the current state of his marriage. And he left to pick up last minute items for our picnic.

Sanam, her husband Nasser, their new baby Azadeh and I were all staying with my mother, along with a fifteen-year-old cousin from Los Angeles. Eastern families like to live on top of each other, so the lack of space was no problem. Mir, who was staying with his family at Shah’s, joined us for a while with Fathi. I had brought Fathi a little present of plastic cut-outs and some books, which I read to her during the afternoon. There was no air-conditioning in the flat and it was very hot, so the family gathered on the little balcony. Together, we passed a nice, summer afternoon and looked forward to the evening. I barely knew the Afghan sisters my brothers had married four years ago in Kabul.

Mir seemed very happy with Fauzia. But

the same was not true of Shah and Rehana.

’If I tell you something, will you promise not to argue with me?’ Shah had asked me during our earlier visit in Paris.

’I’ll try,’ I replied.

’I’m going to divorce my wife,’ he said.

My mouth dropped. ’Don’t be crazy, Gogi,’ I told him, calling him by his family nickname. ’You can’t do that. There’s never been a divorce in the family. Your marriage wasn’t even an arranged one, so you don’t have the excuse of saying it didn’t work out. You chose to marry Rehana. You must live with it.’

’You’re more concerned about the appearance of divorce than you are about me,’ he said, quite rightly.

’What’s gone wrong?’ I asked, hoping I would be able to suggest a
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possible solution. But the stories he told me about his increasingly difficult marriage made it seem irreparable.

Rehana had changed radically after their marriage, he told me. Where at first she had been loving and attentive to him, preparing hot meals and a cool drink for him when he came home exhausted from working with his troops, she had suddenly refused even to bring him a cup of tea. Often he found her putting on her make-up when he arrived home. Then she would go out and leave him alone.

’I was so lonely,’ Shah confessed. ’I had no home, no family. All I wanted was someone to talk to, to watch television with. But she was rarely there. I thought if we had a child we would have a better life, but things just got worse.’

Shah and Rehana had separated twice, Shah reconciling with her each time because of their daughter, Sassi, and because he hoped Rehana would revert to her original self. But in Paris he told me he wanted to end the marriage once and for all. And, like a fool, I talked him out of it.

’Perhaps she’s just lonely and bored, Gogi,’ I told my brother. ’Since your marriage you’ve lived in one Arab country after another. She’s lived in countries where she had no friends or relatives, where she didn’t under-stand the language, where she couldn’t understand the television, where there was no shopping, no films, no theatre. She had no life. Add to that the emotional pressure of having a child at a young age.’

Shah seemed interested in my analysis of Rehana’s problems. ’She wants me to do business in America and even claims she can get me off the American blacklist,’ Shah said. ’But the life of an American immigrant is not for me.’

’What about living in Europe until you can return to Pakistan?’ I pressed on. ’Look, if the two of you were in Europe, here in France for example, even if you weren’t around Rehana could at least go out to the cinema or to see friends.

This is not a conservative state where women are expected to remain at home and are stared at in public. With Mir living in Switzer-land now, she’d be near her sister as well. If you put Rehana in the right circumstances, maybe she’d come out of her depression and go back to being the wife she was. If you like, I’ll talk to some friends and see if I can get you French residence.’

Shah had looked definitely interested at that point. ’France is very dangerous,’ he said. ’If I live here I’ll have to get a gun permit.’

’I don’t know about that,’ I told him. ’But I could try.’

His mood had improved considerably after our talk. But mine had dampened somewhat when Shah took me with him to buy a bullet-proof jacket. ’I need it to wear in Europe,’ he told me as he bought one for himself and a loose one for me in a security shop. ’You never know if Zia will be able to trace me.’
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I tried to calm him because I myself was quite paranoid about safety. But he was insistent. ’I’ve got information that he wants to kill me,’ Shah said.

’But, Gogi, Al-Zulfikar has left Kabul and hasn’t done anything for years anyway,’ I argued. He had just smiled at me. ’I have my information,’ he’d said quietly.

When I was in jail in Sukkur, I had had a recurring fear for the lives of my brothers. They were wanted men, and as such, I always lived in fear that something might happen to them. The path of life they were treading was one in which the ominousness of death was very much present and they had taken that path out of free choice. But nonetheless, as a sister, I was very concerned. Having lost my father, I was even more concerned about the safety of the others who were near and dear to me. And the danger to my brothers was very real.

In Kabul, I learned on a later visit to Mir and Shah, one of their wives’ old family retainers had tried to poison them. Fortunately for my brothers, but unfortunately for their dog, the dog had eaten the food first, and died. The servant had confessed to the crime, falling to his knees and begging their forgiveness. ’I was paid by the mujahideen,’ he’d confessed. ’They wanted to please Zia.’ My brothers had spared his life when Mir’s wife Fauzia had intervened on the servant’s behalf.

They had narrowly escaped another assassination attempt while sitting in the front seat of a car. Shah had dropped something and both of them bent down to retrieve it. In that instant, a bullet passed through the car right where their heads would have been.

The target may well have been Shah, not Mir. While my brothers were still in Kabul, a Pathan tribesman had come across from Pakistan to see Mir.

’It is Shah Nawaz’s head that Zia wants first,’ he had said. ’The order is to kill Shah first, then Murtaza.’ That was very likely to be true, Mir explained to me. ’I’m more political, but it’s Shah who spends all the time with guerrillas giving them physical training, Shah who has the military expertise, Shah who is more of an immediate threat.’

’I hope to God you and Mir never fly near Pakistan,’ I said to Shah. ’If the plane were hijacked, Zia would get you.’ Shah had laughed. ’You can’t escape death. If it is waiting for you, then no matter what you do, you can’t escape it. But Zia will never get us or any of the names he wants out of us. We carry vials of poison with us wherever we go. I’ll drink mine if Zia catches me. It works in seconds. I prefer death to dis-honour or betrayal.’

The evening in Cannes was very pleasant, starting with our visit to Shah’s new flat up a long hilly road in fashionable Californie, which he and
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Rehana had moved into about six months before. He had been delighted when I succeeded in getting him a residence permit. Rehana and he had reconciled and then travelled around France; they considered settling in Monte Carlo before choosing Cannes. With great pride now he took me on a tour of his flat, pointing out Sassi’s room with clown puppets on the wall and stuffed animals spilling out of the bookcase, the dining area and living room which led to a terrace and, beyond, the distant glint of the Mediterranean Sea. The flat was lovely, the whole atmosphere like a stunning film shot.

I greeted Rehana warmly, hoping on this trip to break through her reserve and form some sort of relationship with her. As usual, she was dressed in the latest fashion, though her clothes looked more suitable for a restaurant than a beach picnic. But then our family had always preferred the comfort of informal clothes. While Shah passed cold drinks to the family, I tried, unsuccessfully, to talk to Rehana. Whether she was shy or simply uninterested, I don’t know. But she soon withdrew to join her sister at the far end of the room. They were physically beautiful, the sisters, but I had no sense of what they were like underneath.

I gave little Sassi her presents and played with her for a while. Shah went into the kitchen to pack the hamper for the picnic. Auntie Behjat and Uncle Karim joined us. I sat at Shah’s desk, while my family swirled around the living room. On the table were photographs of the family and of Sassi. A red leather folder was neatly placed on the desk. A vase of fresh flowers sat on the glass coffee table. I was pleased at how orderly Shah’s life had become.

’For the first time, I feel on top of the world,’ Shah said to me, sitting down briefly on the edge of the desk. ’Everything is going very well for me.’

’Catch me, Wadi. Catch me!’ my two little nieces called to me on the beach, running in and out of the edge of the sea. I ran after them, making a big pretence of not being able to catch them. Shah finally got the charcoal going and we were all very hungry by the time the chicken was cooked. ’You get the first piece,’ he said, bringing me what appeared to be half a chicken. ’Oh Gogi, I can’t,’ I protested. ’No, no, no,’ he insisted. ’You must eat it all.’

I looked around at the family, gossiping and laughing together. How many years it had been since we’d had picnics on the beach outside Karachi, trying to finish our food before the bold birds of prey swooped down and tried to steal it. Who could have foretold that we’d ever be together at another picnic far away on the beaches of the French Riviera? But the family reunion was going very well. There was far less tension among us than there had been the summer before. I looked for my sisters-in-law. Rehana and Fauzia were sitting apart, by themselves. With Mir

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living in Switzerland and Shah in France, the sisters didn’t see each other that often and had as many memories to sift through as we did.

’Let’s go to the Casino,’ Uncle Karim suggested.

I was feeling tired, but Shah fumed to me with an expectant smile. ’We can gup shup all night. You must come, Pinkie.’

’Okay, I’ll come,’ I told him. I couldn’t refuse this brother of mine.

’Great. And don’t forget about tomorrow,’ he said, reminding me of our plan to go shopping for my birthday present of luggage from my mother. ’I’m the expert on Louis Vuitton. Tomorrow, whenever we wake up, I’ll take you shopping in Nice.’

Plans. So many nice plans. Shah and Rehana left the beach for their flat with the picnic hamper to unload. Sanam and Nasser were given a lift by Auntie Behjat and Uncle Karim. Mir and Fauzia dropped off my mother, my cousin and me at our flat before going back to Shah’s to put Fathi to bed. ’Shah and I will be back to pick you up in half an hour,’ Mir called as he left.

He came back alone.

Instead of the cheerful Shah we had left at the beach, Mir told us, Shah had looked very angry when he arrived at the flat. ’I asked him what was going on,’ Mir said. ’But before Shah could answer, Rehana screamed ”Get out! Get out! This is my flat!” she kept yelling. She was hysterical. ”Don’t go,” Gogi said to me, but I didn’t want to stand be-tween them. I thought maybe she’d calm down if Fauzia and I packed

up and left.’

’Then where’s Fauzia?’ asked my mother.

’She’s downstairs in the car and very upset,’ Mir said. ’She wants to go home to Geneva right now. It’s the middle of the night, I told her, and besides, my sister has just arrived. She’s demanding that we stay in a hotel but I told her no, that I didn’t see my family often and I wanted to stay with you all. But let’s not ruin the whole evening. Let’s go out the way we planned.’

’You all go,’ I told Sanam, Nasser and Mir. ’I’ve had a long day.’

’Read to me, Wadi, read to me,’ Fathi pestered me the next day. Sanam,` Nasser and Mir hadn’t come in until almost 6.00 am and we had all slept late. I was still lounging about in my night clothes just after 1.00 pm when I heard the doorbell.

’Wadi’s got to get dressed now to go shopping,’ I said to Fathi, thinking Shah had arrived to take me to Nice.

Instead Sanam rushed into the bedroom. ’Quickly! We’ve got to go quickly!’ she said, handing me her baby while I stood there, half-dressed.

’What’s the matter?’ I asked her.

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’Rehana says Gogi’s taken something,’ Sanam said, turning to rush back out of the room.

My legs started to shake. I took a deep breath to give myself strength.

’Is he ill? Is it serious?’ I called as she hurried down the hall.
’We don’t know. We’re going to see,’ she called back and was gone.

I stood there alone with Fathi and the baby.

The police. Get the police. Juggling the baby on my hip, I looked at the emergency number on the phone. I dialled it and got a recording in French. I grabbed the phone book to look up hospitals just as my mother and Sanam rushed back in. Mir and Nasser had raced ahead with Rehana to Shah’s flat. Unable to get a cab on the streets, my mother and Sanam had come back to call one.

’Mummy, you know French better than me. If we can’t get the police, get a hospital,’ I said to her rapidly.

’Why don’t we just go there and see if he’s all right,’ she said.

’No, Mummy, it’s better to be safe. Remember Toni,’ I said, reminding her of the case of a girl we knew who had taken an overdose of pills and had been taken too late to the hospital to be saved. I had learned a similar lesson myself when the police surrounded 70 Clifton. That was not the moment to ask why the police had come. First burn all the papers. Then ask.

My mother took the telephone book. She tried one hospital. They told her to call another. She called that hospital. Ring somebody else, they responded. She was ringing a third hospital when Mir came in.

He looked broken, beaten. Silently saying what his voice could not, I saw him mouth the words, ’He’s dead.’

’No!’ I

screamed. ’No!’

The phone dropped from my mother’s hand.

’It’s true, Mummy,’ Mir whispered in agony. ’I’ve seen dead men. Shah’s body is cold.’

Mummy began to wail.

’Call an ambulance!’ I said. ’For God’s sake, ring the hospital. He may still be alive. He can be resuscitated!’ I didn’t know what to do with the baby in my arms. Fathi was clinging to my leg, staring up at me.

My mother picked the telephone up off the floor. The third hospital was still on the line. ’Just tell us where to go,’ the operator said, having heard our screams. We ran out of the door.
Shah Nawaz was lying on the carpet in the living room beside the coffee table. He was still wearing the white trousers he had worn the night before. His hand was outstretched, a beautiful brown hand. He looked like a sleeping Adonis. ’Gogi!’ I shouted, trying to wake him up. But then I
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saw his nose. It was white as chalk, standing out in sharp contrast to his tan.

’Give him oxygen!’ I screamed at the ambulance crew who were taking his pulse. ’Massage his heart!’

’He’s dead,’ one of the crew said quietly.

’No! Try! Try!’ I shouted.

’Pinkie, he’s cold,’ Mir said. ’He’s been dead for hours.’

I looked around the room. The coffee table was askew. A saucer of brownish liquid sat on a side table. The cushion was half off the couch and the vase of flowers had fallen. My eyes lifted to his desk. The leather file folder was gone. I looked out on the terrace. His papers were there. The folder was open.

Something was terribly wrong. His body was cold. God knows how long Shah had lain there, dying. But no one had been alerted. And some-one had taken the time to go through his papers.

I looked up to see Rehana. She hardly looked like someone who had just lost a husband or who had rushed to get help. She was dressed immaculately, her white linen jacket without a wrinkle, her hair all done up, not one strand out of place. How many hours had she spent grooming herself while my brother lay dead on the floor? She looked back at me with eyes that held no tears.

Her lips moved. I couldn’t hear what she was saying.

’Poison,’ her sister Fauzia said for her. ’He took poison.’

I didn’t believe her. None of us believed her. Why would Shah take poison? He had been happier the night before than we’d ever seen him. He was enthusiastic about his plans for the future, including a return to Afghanistan in August. Was that it? Had Zia caught wind of Shah’s plan and pre-empted it? Or had the CIA killed him as a friendly gesture towards their favourite dictator?

’For God’s sake, at least cover Shah’s body,’ Sanam said, Someone fetched

a piece of white plastic.

’wadi, wadi, what’s the matter?’ little Fathi kept saying to me, pulling on my shirt. ’Nothing’s the matter, darling,’ I absently soothed the three-year-old. Sassi, too, looked upset and confused, wandering through the living-room to sit by her fathers body. ’Get the children out of here,’ my mother said. I took them into Sassi’s bedroom and left them with a book.

When the police came to take Shah’s body away, Mir made me go into the kitchen. ’You don’t want to see it,’ he said. I looked at the half-cut tomato and the cooked egg still in the frying pan on the stove. Who had cooked it and for whom? A bottle of milk stood on the counter. It was a very hot day and the milk had curdled. Why had it been left out of the fridge? ’They’ve taken Shah,’ Mir said, returning to the kitchen. ’The police said it looks like a heart attack.’
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He turned away, wiping the tears from his face. When he dropped the tissue into the kitchen waste-bin, he saw something shining. It was the empty vial of poison.
The French authorities didn’t release Shah’s body for weeks. The wait was agonising for all of us crowded into my mother’s flat. As Muslims, we bury our dead within twenty-four hours, but Shah’s body was undergoing test after test. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves. Alternately we cried or just sat and stared. No one was interested in food or drink or anything. We had Sanam’s baby, Mir’s daughter, and often Sassi whom Fauzia would drop off every time Rehana was called to the police station during the inquiry. ’Take us to the jhoolas,’ the little girls begged me and I would take them to the swings in a near-by park. Sometimes Mir joined me. While the girls played, Mir and I sat on a bench, staring silently out to sea.

My heart ached for Sassi. She had been very close to her father. Shah was the one to get her up in the morning, to get her breakfast, to put her on the potty. On some three-year-old level, Sassi knew she’d lost him. ’My Papa,’ she’d insist when Mir came to pick up Fathi. When the car passed La Napoule, the beach where we’d had the barbecue, Sassi would shout ’Papa Shah. Papa Shah.’ The police had cut out the section of carpet on which Shah’s body was found. When Rehana had the carpet replaced, Sassi pointed at the spot where she’d last seen her father. ’Papa Shah, Papa Shah,’ she kept repeating. She took to clinging to us whenever Mir and I returned her to Fauzia. She didn’t want to go into the house and wound her arms tightly around our necks. ’Go, little baby,’ I’d whisper, while Fauzia pulled at her. But Sassi only clung harder. We had to prise her hands apart to break

her grip.

It was awful sitting in Cannes, waiting for Shah’s body to be released. Everything reminded me of him. I saw Shah everywhere, sitting at the Carlton Hotel, walking on the Croisette. The pain of his loss was heighten-ed by the constant slandering of him in the Pakistani press. The regime-controlled papers reported that Shah had been a depressive, a gambler and suicidal. He had been drunk the night he died, they claimed. Lab reports refuted the claim, but our denial based on the reports received little play in the Pakistani press. Now that Shah had lost his life, our enemies were doing everything they could to destroy his honour. And the agonis-ing wait for my brother’s body to be released dragged on.

’I’m going to take Shah home to Pakistan to be buried,’ I said to the family one afternoon.

My mother became hysterical. ’Oh Pinkie, you can’t go back,’ she cried. ’I’ve lost my son. I don’t want to lose my daughter.’

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’Shah did everything for me, but he never asked me to do anything for him,’ I said. ’He longed to return to Larkana. Often he asked exactly where Papa was buried so he could picture it. I have to take him home.’

,Mir, tell her she can’t go back,’ my mother begged my brother. What could he do? ’

’If you go back, I’ll go back, too,’ he said, trying to frighten me into not going because we all knew Zia was certain to kill him.

’You don’t go. I’ll go,’ Auntie Behjat said.

’I’ll go,’ Sanam said.

’I’ll go,’ Nasser said.

’Fine. We’ll go together. But I’m going,’ I said. ’I don’t want Shah to have a small and hidden burial. I want him to have all the respect and honour that he deserves.’
As the autopsy dragged on, I flew back to London for a few days to take care of business at the Barbican. Hundreds of people came to call on me for condolence at the party office. The grief for Shah was real and shared amongst the Pakistani community as was the wide-spread suspicion that Zia was somehow involved in my brothers death. The grief in Pakistan, I was told by friends, was even more wide-spread. Prayer meetings were being held all over the country for Shah’s soul, while thousands were coming to pray at 70 Clifton. Newspapers carrying the false charges that Shah had died of alcohol and drug abuse were being burned. In Sindh, most businesses had closed out of respect. Despite the July heat, people had been flooding into Larkana for two weeks. Every hotel was solidly booked and people were now camping on the railway station platform.

When I returned to Cannes, I had to control my own anguish suf-ficiently to communicate with London and Karachi about the arrangements for our departure

after the autopsy was completed, as many Pakistanis wanted to accompany the family on Shah’s final journey. To counter the confusion the restricted Pakistani press was creating about both the re-lease of Shah’s body and the probable timing of our return, I organised the release of regular bulletins to keep our supporters informed.

There was no surcease to our sorrow. For no apparent reason, % my mother’s car was broken into, the only one among many on the street. Only the mail I had brought back with me and left briefly on the back seat was stolen. Our apprehension heightened and we felt unsafe. There was a strong possibility, if not probability, that Shah had been killed by agents of the regime. There was no guarantee they had left Cannes. We communicated our concern and our need for protection to the French government and they responded positively.