Daughter of the east by benazir bhutto
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Back in the United States I prepared a report for the Foreign Relations Committee on the prospective resumption of assistance to Pakistan. The report argued that the assistance risked identifying the United States with an unpopular military dictatorship and could lead to a repetition of the American experience in Iran. I urged a forceful human rights policy as a signal that our assistance was intended to benefit the country as well as the rulers. Privately, I briefed Senator Pell and Committee head Senator 186
Charles Percy on the treatment of the Bhutto women. Both were eager to help. I wished Benazir knew she wasn’t forgotten. The sun was barely up in Karachi when I read and re-read Peter’s chatty letter, cherishing the news of his wife Anne and the birth of their son. Old memories of a simpler time were rekindled. I wrote back to him: September 10, 1981 Dear Peter, Last night was Sunny’s wedding. The whole house is sound asleep. It is now 6.00 am, and a few hours of freedom remain to me. I wanted to quickly write to tell you how happy your letter made me, to hear from you, to receive news of our friends and to know how well you are doing in life. My prayers for your success and for your brother Jamie’s success will always be there. So unsettling in a way to hear from Harvard, a voice from the past, harkening back to an age of innocence. Did they teach us that life could be full of such terrible dangers and tragedies? Were they words we read or did not read, meanings I, at least, can now say I failed to grasp. Freedom and liberty, the essays we wrote on them, papers for our tutors, for grades, but did we know the value of those words which we bandied about, of how precious they are, as precious as the air we breathe, the water we drink. But then, the harsh realities seemed so remote in the snows of Vermont and the yards of Harvard. . .’
The police came at 10.00 am. My relatives and the staff crowded into the courtyard to see me off, running after the car as it moved down Clifton past the Iranian Embassy, past Clifton Gardens where children gathered to fly kites, past the Soviet Embassy, the Libyan Embassy, the Italian Embassy. As always, I was whizzed at full speed through half-empty back streets to the jail. The familiar sound of the jailer’s keys opening padlock after padlock greeted me at Karachi Central. I walked briskly through the small iron door cut in the high brick wall, kept my back straight as I moved down the windowless muddy corridor toward my ward. I didn’t want anyone to think my two days of freedom had softened me. I also hoped they wouldn’t search me. Before leaving 70 Clifton, I had stuffed the magazines and newspapers into my bag.
THE YEARS OF DETENTION The electricity was off as usual when I made it safely to my cell. Automatically, I registered a complaint. For the next two days I was sick, throwing up bile and brown gastric juices. Whether it was psychological or something I had eaten, I don’t know, but I was very ill. On the third day, September 13, I luckily felt stronger. A jailer came with a depressing, but not unexpected, order from the District Martial Law Administrator. My detention at Karachi Central Jail was extended for another three months. I started reading my Wednesday prayer every day instead of once a week. The prayer had always worked for me before. Perhaps, by reading it daily, the doors of my cell would open permanently after the second Wednesday and before the third. My target date for the prayer to work now was September 30, the third Wednesday. Failing that, the next target date was Margaret Thatcher’s visit to Pakistan at the beginning of October. Zia had to free me some day and I was always looking for dates on which to pin my hopes for release. I knew Margaret Thatcher, having met her first with my father in Rawalpindi at the Prime Minister’s House when she was opposition leader. I had met her again in London over tea at her offices in the House of Commons when I was the President of the Oxford Union. If the Thatcher visit passed without my being freed, perhaps I’d be let out on Eid which this year fell on October 9. The regime always released some prisoners at the end of Ramazan as a mark of respect to the religious occasion. I was not to be released on any of those dates. On September 25, 1981, Chaudhry Zahur Elahi, one of the ministers in Zia’s military cabinet who had accepted Zia’s pen as a gift after Zia signed my father’s death warrant and who had passed out sweets after my father was hanged, was ambushed in Lahore and shot dead. Riding in the same car and wounded in the attack was Maulvi Mushtaq Hussein, the former Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court who had sentenced my father to death. Also in the car was M. A. Rehman, the special public prosecutor in my father’s murder case, who escaped injury. I felt there was divine retribution when I read the headlines about Elahi s assassination in the paper. ’Now his wife, his daughter, his family will know what it is like to feel grief,’ I noted in my diary. ’I do not rejoice, for a Muslim does not rejoice over death. Life and death are in God’s hands. But there is consolation in knowing that the bad guys don’t get away scot free.’ My gratification was short lived. The regime claimed that AI-Zulfikar once again was responsible for this latest violence, and the arrests began. LOCKED IN AT KARACHI CENTRAL Mir didn’t help when, the day after the assassination, he took credit for it in the name of Al-Zulfikar in a BBC interview. A debate about the attack might have exposed the immoral role Elahi had played in the death of my father; instead, all the attention was focused on routing out the supposed members of AI-Zulfikar. Terrorists! Murderers! Political assassins! the headlines screamed. Once again the regime used AI-Zulfikar to suppress political opposition. One young leader of the PPP after another was arrested, and warrants issued for hundreds of others. Four young men were taken to Haripur Jail where they were badly tortured. The father of one of them, I learned later, Ahmed Ali Soomro, came to see a member of the PPP in a terrible state. He paid an enormous amount of money to the police just to glimpse his son from a distance, so he’d know whether he was alive or dead. Ac-cording to press reports, there were 103 young men in Haripur Jail alone, 200 in another town nearby. Women were being rounded up again, including Nasira Rana Shaukat who was taken back to the Lahore Fort. Once more the wife of the PPP’s General Secretary was given electric shocks and interrogated for twenty-three days without sleep. ’Implicate your husband in the assassination,’ she was ordered. ’Implicate Benazir. Implicate Begum Bhutto.’ What that brave woman endured is beyond comprehension. She was held for the next seven months in a cell with no toilet facilities, just a tray which was changed twice a week. She spent the winter lying on the cement floor with no sweater, no bedding, no blankets, and nearly died of pneumonia. When she was finally transferred to house arrest, she could neither walk nor speak. In the midst of this new wave of brutality, Margaret Thatcher arrived for her visit. Two years before, a BBC report carried in the press pointed out, it would have been unthinkable for a Western head of government to visit Pakistan - after Zia had dismissed pleas from all over the world to spare my father’s life. But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had overrid-den all these reservations of the West. Instead, the BBC reported, Britain was now making every effort to build up Zia’s image. It was heartening to hear that the world press, at least, realised that Zia was still the deplor-able murderer that he had always been, and continued in office only with the patronage of outside powers. Still, it was a shock to read in the newspaper that after a tour of the Afghan refugee camps Margaret That-cher presented Zia with a certificate declaring him ’the last bastion of the free world’. I was increasingly frustrated as well to read about the twisting of the political situation in Pakistan by the Reagan administration in its con-gressional campaign to restore US aid. ’Bhutto’s PPP might be opposed to it [the aid], but not the great mass of the common people who realized 189 THE YEARS OF DETENTION that Pakistan was having to face a great threat to its security with an-tiquated weapons,’ Ambassador-designate to Pakistan Ronald Spiers had reportedly testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September. He was completely wrong. First, the PPP was the only voice of the ’great mass of the common people’. And second, we were not then - nor are we now - opposed to foreign aid per se, but only aid designed to perpetuate the military occupation of Pakistan. Yet the arguments remained reversed. Undersecretary of State James Buckley, who was responsible for organising the aid package, even testified that elections were not ’in the security interest of Pakistan’, as if we, the democratic party were the enemy, rather than the dictator! I didn’t know then that behind the headlines certain American politicians were quietly challenging Mr Buckley’s conclusions. Peter Galbraith had returned to Washington determined to raise the issue of human rights abuses in Pakistan and to win my release. Working with Senator Pell, Peter developed a very straightforward strategy. Each time Pakistan was raised in the US Senate, the issue of human rights and my detention would also be raised. Neither the American administration nor the Zia dictatorship would be allowed to forget about the political prisoners in Pakistan. Eventually, they hoped enough pressure could be brought to bear to make the regime decide it was easier to release me than to con-tinually confront the issue of my and others’ unfair detentions. I would read later how Senator Pell, an opponent of resumed assistance to Pakistan, had implemented the strategy. ’The F-Ib is the most visible symbol of American support for the Zia regime,’ India Today quoted Sena-tor Pell as saying to Undersecretary of State Buckley. ’Amnesty Inter-national believes that human rights violations in Pakistan amount to a consistent pattern . . . do you feel they are correct?’ When Mr Buckley tried to answer in vague terms Senator Pell apparently got very specific. ’It appears as if President Zia is conducting a vendetta against the widow and daughter of executed - murdered - former Prime Minister Bhutto,’ the Senator charged. ’I am wondering if the Administration has made any representation to the Government of Pakistan about the confinement and maltreatment of the Bhutto family.’ In reply, Undersecretary Buckley prom-ised efforts through ’private diplomacy’, a codeword for doing nothing at all. But at least Senator Pell had made his point. The American Congress’s traditional deference to the request of a new administration as well as concerns about Afghanistan outweighed objec-tions from Senator Pell and others about Zia’s human rights record and about Pakistan’s nuclear programme. While Congress approved the pro-posed aid package, Senator Pell was able to persuade his colleagues to go along with an amendment stating ’in authorising assistance to Pakistan, it is the intent of Congress to promote the expeditious restoration of full
warmth and respect for Eid. The wife of one jailer requested one of my khameez so she could have Eid clothes made for me, while another jailer sent me a message that he would remain at the front desk and put pressure on the authorities until the electricity was restored to my cell block. ’I hope we remember such people in the good times,’ I noted in my diary. For every political prisoner freed for Eid, however, ten were being arrested. The student leader Lala Assad, I read in the paper, was now the subject of an intensive manhunt. Lala Assad was a loyal supporter of the party, and I prayed that he would elude the police. Towards the end of my period of freedom in 1981, when I had travelled to Khairpur to give certificates to students who had been jailed for protesting against Martial Law, I had used the birthday celebration of Lala Assad’s son Zulfikar, who was named after my father, as a cover. Lala Assad himself had spent two years in prison for his support of my father. His own father, a former minister of West Pakistan, who had fought with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, for Pakistan’s independence, had asked to see me during my visit. Ill and bedridden, the old man had begged me to urge his son to give up politics. ’I don’t have long to live,’ Lala Assad’s father said to me. ’I never interfered with my son’s political activities while Mr Bhutto was in jail. But now that the Prime Minister is dead, I need my son to look after me, to look after his wife and child. When I am gone, he will be free to work for you and your party. But in my dying days, I need my son.’ I promised him that I would speak to Lala Assad, which I did. I had no idea what happened after I left, for I was arrested a month later and taken to Sukkur. Now a year later Lala Assad was being sought as a leader of AI-Zulfikar. I had no idea whether the charge was true. Terrorism. Violence. Was there to be no end to the cycle? Three presi-dents had been assassinated in the last few months alone, President Zia ur-Rehman in Bangladesh, President Rajai in Iran, and most recently Anwar el-Sadat in Egypt on October 6. I felt sad for President Sadat, for his family, for his violent end. As a child, I had been an avid supporter of his predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser, greatly admiring his fight against British colonialism and American imperialism during the Suez War. Nasser had THE YEARS OF DETENTION seemed a colossus to me, promising a new world of equality to be built from the ashes and rubble of yesterday’s obsolete kings and monarchs. I had spent hours in my father’s library at 70 Clifton, reading every book about Nasser I could, including his own, The Philosophy of the Revolution. I had not been fond of Sadat, who had turned against his mentor and reversed his policies when he assumed the presidency of Egypt in 1970. But, reading of Sadat’s death in my cell, I found myself unexpectedly moved. Though Papa had been sharply critical of the separate peace Sadat had made with Israel, Sadat had appealed for my father’s life. The Egyptian President had also given refuge to the Shah of Iran and his family, despite incurring unpopularity for it. And when the Shah died of cancer, Sadat had ordered a full-scale funeral for him, showing a generosity of spirit rare in the world of realpolitik. He had not let political differences and disputes stand in the way of what he thought was right. Now he too was dead. A depression settled over me. Night after night, as I sat over my embroidery, I got splitting headaches. On the night of November 21 -my brother Shah’s birthday - I suddenly felt my throat constrict and tears rush to my eyes. I went to lie down but could not control the tears which flowed freely. Where were my brothers? How were they? Both Mir and Shah had got married just after Eid. They had married two Afghan sisters in Kabul called Fauzia and Rehana, the daughters of a former government servant. That was all we knew about them. I was very glad that my brothers had found a source of love, warmth and emotional comfort in these difficult times. Why then was I so depressed? I sank into a troubled sleep. Mir was secretly back in Pakistan, I dreamed in a recurrent dream. He had walked over the mountain passes from Afghanistan, forded the Indus and was hiding in a cupboard in 70 Clifton. The Army raided the house. Just as they opened the cupboard and saw him, I woke up. I had the wrong victim. The next morning, I read that Lala Assad had been shot dead by the police. The pain in my head intensified. Lala Assad had been killed in a gun battle with the police in Karachi’s Federal B area, the newspaper reported, after he shot and killed a policeman. I didn’t learn the truth for months. Lala Assad in fact, had been unarmed at the time of the shooting. The policeman had been shot by another policeman in the crossfire. When Lala Assad tried to escape the ambush, he had been gunned down in cold blood. Lala Assad dead. Now his blood, too, was on General Zia’s uniform. What must Lala Assad’s father be feeling? Instead of having his son to care for him in his last days, he was receiving his son’s body. When would it end? ’A country-wide hunt for Al-Zulfikar terrorists has continued and police 192 LOCKED IN AT KARACHI CENTRAL have arrested several hundred people,’ the paper reported on November 26. The police were staking out houses, youth hostels, the airports all over the country. Check-points were set up on all routes leading out of Karachi - land, sea, and air. Special binoculars, the papers reported, were being used by the police to peer through the tinted glass of car windows. Make-up artists had been contacted by the police to prevent the ’absconders’ from adopting disguises. My anxiety deepened. I was racked by remorse over Lala Assad’s death. I prayed for him to forgive me for the times I had spoken sharply to him. I tortured myself for keeping pictures of him and other student leaders at 70 Clifton, pictures the police had taken in the last raid. Had they used the photographs to identify him? I looked at the weblike lines on the back of my hands, the lines around my eyes, across my cheeks, on my forehead. I thought they were a reaction to the hot dry weather and winds at Sukkur. But they appeared to be permanent. I was ageing much too fast. On December II, the day my detention order ended, I prepared myself to receive a new one. I knew I wouldn’t be released after the crackdown. My food arrived an hour early - with the expected detention order. But Senator Pell’s message had apparently found its way into Pakistan. Two weeks later, the Deputy Superintendent came to see me unexpectedly in the late afternoon. ’Pack your belongings,’ he told me abruptly. ’You are being taken to Larkana tomorrow morning at 5.45 under police escort.’ The day matron wept at our parting. The Pathan matron wept too, and asked my forgiveness if her stupidity had aggravated me. I wept and wept myself. Though I had dreamed and fantasised of being transferred to sub-jail at home, I suddenly dreaded leaving the secret network that had been established at Karachi Central Jail. I had cherished the occasional copies of the International Herald Tribune, Time, or Newsweek the sympa-thetic jailers allowed to be sent to me. In Karachi I was also near my mother and my sister. Now I would be cut off from them in the rural isolation of Al-Murtaza. The police came for me soon after dawn on December 27, 1981. I took one last look at my horrible, dank cell. How could I possibly be sad at leaving? But I was, just as I had been when I’d left the familiarity of Sukkur. The years of detention were having their effect. I had come to dread the unknown.
TO
Familiarity. Comfort. Home. Leaving aside the fact that the paramilitary Frontier Forces were once more posted inside the compound walls and a prison staff came daily to Al-Murtaza to supervise my detention, I revelled in my apparent good fortune. Some members of the household staff would be permitted to enter AI-Murtaza during the day, the Martial Law auth-orities told me. I could use the telephone and, best of all, receive three visitors a fortnight. After almost ten months of solitary confinement, these privileges sounded tantamount to a stay in a five-star hotel. I celebrated my first night home by taking a long, hot bath and manicuring my nails. But I had celebrated too soon. My telephone calls were restricted to conversations with my relatives and I was not allowed to talk about political matters. The telephone rarely worked. Often my calls were discon-nected or the line simply went dead. Later I found out why. All the phone lines were run through a military communications outpost set up outside the walls. In the year that the regime kept me locked up at AI-Murtaza, the promise of three visitors a fortnight soon became a myth as well. Only my mother, Sanam, and my Auntie Manna were on my allowed list. Each lived in Karachi, over an hour away by air, a journey made more difficult by the infrequent and inconveniently timed flights to interior Sindh. Sanam, who now had a house and a husband to look after, came only once or twice. My mother, who was in poor health, was only able to visit infrequently. I had political acquaintances in Larkana who could have visited me easily, but the jail authorities did not allow substitutions. Essentially, I was back in solitary confinement. When I did have a visitor, more often than not a jail official, my jaws ached afterwards from the unaccustomed exercise. I probably should have talked to myself in the endless silence if for no other reason than to hear a human voice, but I didn’t think of it. New detention orders, however, came regularly every three months. I knew the words now, by heart. ’Whereas the Deputy Martial Law Admini-strator is of the opinion that for the purpose of preventing Miss Benazir Bhutto from acting in a manner prejudicial to the purpose for which Martial Law has been proclaimed, or to the security of Pakistan, the public
Time weighed more heavily than ever. There were no afternoon papers to read, no International Herald Tribune. There was little on television apart from Arabic language study programmes, Zia’s news in Sindhi, Urdu and English, brainwashing documentaries about the regime’s political activities, and a few half-hour plays. I succumbed to periods of self-pity followed by attacks of remorse. You shouldn’t be ungrateful to God, I chided myself. You have your home. You have food and clothing. Think of all those less fortunate. My emotions swung back and forth like a pendulum. I taught myself cooking to pass the time, practising recipes from my mother’s old cookbooks left in the kitchen. The ovens didn’t work and the kitchen utensils were limited: there wasn’t even an egg-beater. Every dish I produced then - curries, rice, dahl - became a mini-triumph of sorts. Like the ladyfingers and chillies my mother had managed to grow at Al-Mur-taza during our detention three years before, the food I was making now took on special significance. I could look at a bowl of rice I’d made and see in it proof that I existed. I had caused it to become edible. Coquo ergo sum. I cook, therefore I am. I worried constantly about my mother. It had been four months since her visit to me in Karachi Central Jail when she told me that her doctor suspected she had lung cancer. If indeed she did have cancer, she was in a race against time. Early detection and treatment of lung cancer can arrest it. Left untreated, lung cancer can kill quickly. To build up her strength for further diagnostic tests, she had been put on a special diet by her doctor. The last series of tests had been more conclusive. The shadow on her left lung, the doctors decided, was very likely malignant. They reported to the regime that she was in need of a cATSCAN and treatment which was unavailable in Pakistan. Yet my mother’s request for the restoration of her passport so she could travel abroad for medical attention was being ig-nored. It was rumoured that the Interior Ministry could do nothing be-cause Zia had taken my mother’s file with him on a trip to Beijing. Yüklə 1,3 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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