Daughter of the east by benazir bhutto

One month passed without the regime granting permission for my mother to leave Pakistan. Then another. Losing hope, my mother’s doctor in Karachi began chemotherapy. My frustration when Mummy first told me the news over the phone deepened to bitterness after her subsequent calls. Her hair was thinning and she was losing weight, she confessed, regretting that she could not come and visit me. As a daughter, I felt inadequate that I could not be with her or help her.

In spite of press censorship, the news of her ordeal was spreading through the country. ’The people haven’t forgotten Mummy,’ Sanam tried to reassure me over the phone. ’We’re getting constant calls inquiring about her, and so is Fakhri. Apparently her health is a major topic of
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conversation at diplomatic receptions and coffee parties, at bus stops and cinemas.’

’Zia will have to let her

go,’ I said hopefully, trying to convince myself. But, even when the pressure on Zia began to tell, he didn’t let her go. Instead, three months after the doctors’ report of probable cancer, Zia convened a Federal Medical Board to determine whether or not she was sick enough to warrant medical treatment abroad.

A Federal Medical Board. Another petty discrimination. Not since the time of Ayub Khan when foreign travel was restricted had citizens of Pakistan needed the authorisation of a medical board to obtain a passport. Under my father, the right t0 a passport had become a fundamental right for every Pakistani, and with it the right to travel freely. It was quite common for members of Zia’s regime to travel abroad at government cost for minor ailments easily treatable in Pakistan. But for his political opponents Zia had reinstituted the medical board. Now he was using it to delay my mother’s departure for treatment.

When the board finally met, it was stacked with Zia’s men. Just as the Supreme Court’s decision upholding my father’s death sentence had been effected by diminishing the size of the judicial bench, seven doctors, in-stead of the usual three, were now appointed to the medical board to make sure Zia got the decision he wanted. All seven were employees of the regime. The head of the board was a serving Major-General.

’Begum Sahibs seems well enough to me,’ this General said irresponsibly shortly after the board’s first meeting. Others on the stacked board de-manded that my mother undergo another fourteen lung X-rays and a blood test, a process so exhausting that she developed a fever, began coughing blood and fainted immediately after its conclusion. Although the tests showed that the shadow in her lung had grown larger and that her haemo-globin count had dropped, the head of the board suggested that she have another bronchoscopy, which was not only unnecessary but could aggra-vate any malignancy. My mother’s physician in Karachi, Dr Saeed, who was himself a member of the board, was outraged and refused to endorse the board’s decision. The anaesthetist at the hospital backed him up, insist-ing that my mother could not withstand the general anaesthetic necessary to insert the diagnostic tube into her lung.

I prayed for my mother at Al-Murtaza. There was nothing else I could do. But, in the rest of the country, the fear that Zia might actually let my mother die began to move people to action. ’We could not save Mr Bhutto,’ people began to whisper among themselves. ’We must not stand by while Begum Bhutto wastes away.’ Indignation at my mother’s callous treatment at the

hands of the regime cut across traditional lines of PPP support to include military families and those high in Zia’s bureaucracy.

’Guess what! The wife and sisters of the Martial Law Administrator of
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Sindh took part in a ladies’ demonstration to save Auntie’s life,’ Fakhri said excitedly on the telephone.

’Did the police arrest them?’ I almost shrieked, not believing what I was hearing. After General Zia, the four provincial Martial Law Administrators were the most powerful men in the country.

’They didn’t dare. When they came, all the demonstrators ran into the Martial Law Administrator’s house and closed the gates,’ Fakhri said.

My mother’s ordeal, I would find out later, was also sparking protest abroad. In England, a group of my old friends from Oxford joined with Dr Niazi, Amina Piracha and some human rights activists to mount a campaign called ’Save the Bhutto Ladies’. The group concentrated first on freeing my mother, lobbying Parliament with the assistance of Lord Ave-bury, a member of the House of Lords. Two MPs, Joan Lestor and Jonath-an Aitken, quickly responded by sponsoring an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons - ’Medical Treatment for Begum Bhutto: That this House urges the Government of Pakistan to allow Begum Bhutto to travel abroad for medical treatment for the cancer from which she suffers.’ On November 4, Lord Avebury held a press conference in the House of Lords, at which a British doctor outlined the gravity of my mother’s condition.

Members of the United States government were also making pleas on my mother’s behalf. ’Dear Mr Ambassador,’ Senator John Glenn, a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote to Ejaz Azim, the Pakistan Ambassador to Washington on November 8. ’More than two months ago Mrs Nusrat Bhutto, widow of the late Prime Minister, re-quested permission to go abroad to seek treatment for a probable malig-nancy on the lung .... On humanitarian grounds I would urge your govern-ment to act expeditiously in approving Mrs Bhutto’s request. Prompt approval would be seen here as a compassionate act and would help strengthen the relationship between our two countries.’

Zia, however, had grown used to ignoring pleas for compassion from Western governments. Away on a visit to Southeast Asia, he was so confident that the board was going to go his way that he beat them to their decision. ’There is nothing wrong with Begum Bhutto,’ the press quoted him as saying in Kuala Lumpur on November II, the day the board had scheduled its final meeting. ’If she wants to go abroad on a holiday to do some sightseeing, then she can apply

for that and I’ll think about it.’

But General Zia had not counted on my mother’s physician, Doctor Saeed. ’I will not sign your report,’ Dr Saeed told the Major-General heading the medical board when it convened later that day. ’My con-science as a doctor will simply not allow me to put my patient’s life in jeopardy.’

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’Neither will mine,’ another of the doctors on the board suddenly an-nounced, breaking the unspoken rule that all members of a Federal board follow the lead of their commander.

’Nor mine,’ added a second, then a third. The Major-General watched in shock as the’ defiance of the doctors snowballed: one after another, they all signed a statement produced by Dr Saeed calling for my mother’s immediate release from Pakistan. ’You must sign, too,’ Dr Saeed told him with delight. When all the officers agree, how can the General refuse?’ The Major-General’s shock no doubt deepened when, shortly after he did indeed place his signature on the document, Zia summarily removed him from both his civil and military posts.

The regime gave my mother permission to go abroad the day after the board’s surprise announcement. I was overjoyed when I read the news in the morning paper and immediately applied to the authorities for permis-sion to see her before she left. After almost a year’s incarceration at Al-Murtaza, I was suddenly told to pack my things. A convoy of twelve police cars, trucks and jeeps took me to Moenjodaro airport. There, the police confiscated the cameras of the photographers recording the first sight the public had had of me for eleven months. Policemen armed with Sten guns followed me to the plane. When I arrived in Karachi, a helicopter flew over the car as I was driven in another convoy to 70 Clifton. All this for a daughter to say good-bye to her mother.
Mummy, lying pale and weak on her bed. Mummy, who had aged well beyond her years. Once again, I was torn with personal conflict. More than anything I wanted her to get the medical treatment abroad she so urgently needed. Yet I dreaded being left alone in the emptiness of deten-tion. I fought not to think about the feelings of loneliness that lay ahead in sub-jail as Fakhri rushed in and out of the bedroom with last-minute messages from the Secretary General of the MRD and other party people. ’What will happen if Begum Bhutto leaves?’ the messages ran. But Mummy had no choice.

’It is with a heavy heart, and under medical duress, that I take leave of our Land and our People for a temporary period,’ Mummy wrote in her farewell statement. ’My thoughts will constantly be with you, with the struggling masses, with

the hungry and the oppressed, with the exploited and the discriminated [against], with all those who have a vision for a progressive and prosperous Pakistan . . . .’

The regime kept announcing false dates in the newspapers for my mother’s departure, hoping to discourage the people from gathering. Wise to the deviousness of the regime, a steady stream of PPP supporters constantly drove by 70 Clifton, searching for signs of her impending

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departure. We could hear their shouts from inside the walls. Jive, Bhutto,’ they called out. ’Begum Bhutto, zindabad ! Long live Begum Bhutto!’

On the night of November 20, 1982, I kissed Mummy good-bye and gave her lockets filled with soil from my father’s grave to give to my brothers and for my newly born nieces pendants engraved with the Quranic verse for safety. We both wept, not knowing what lay ahead for either one of us. ’Take care of yourself,’ Mummy said to me. Together we walked out of the carved wooden front door of 70 Clifton where, thirteen years before, she had passed the Holy Quran over my head as I left for Harvard. And she was gone into the masses of people waiting outside the gates.

Samiya Waheed:
Dost Mohammed drove Begum Bhutto to the airport with Sanam and Fakhri in the back seat. The crowds were enormous as we pulled away from 70 Clifton. Defying the regime which had tried to keep her departure secret, Begum Bhutto turned the light on in the car so the people could see her. Mrs Niazi, Amina, my sister Salma and I followed in the car behind. At every intersection more cars joined us, until we formed a giant cavalcade of well-wishers. When we reached the top of the airport bridge, I looked back. The cars escorting Begum Bhutto to the airport had taken over seven lanes of the highway. Cars going in the opposite direction were forced into one lane.

The crowds waiting for her at the airport were even bigger. As we pulled up to the terminal, they overran our cars. I saw one man’s bare feet through the windscreen as he climbed onto our roof. ’God go with you,’ he called to Begum Bhutto as party members struggled to get her into a wheelchair and inside the terminal. They finally had to pass her wheelchair over the heads of the crowd. The airline crew for the Air France flight was finding it equally difficult to get through. They had to throw their flight bags to each other. At the end of their 100-yard struggle, their uniforms were rumpled, their hats knocked off, and the flight attendants’ hair unpin-ned. It was the most tumultuous farewell Pakistan had ever witnessed. The people didn’t know if they were

going to see their Prime Minister’s widow and beloved leader of the PPP again.
Mummy underwent a cATSCAN and further treatment in West Germany. She responded well and, luckily, the cancer was arrested. Meanwhile I remained under guard at 70 Clifton. Eleven jail personnel were posted inside the house. Outside, members of the Frontier Force were stationed every two feet around the house. Intelligence agents kept an eye on everything from their positions across from the front and back gates. I
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was to remain behind this hostile barricade at 70 Clifton for fourteen more months.
With great interest I read Jacobo Timerman’s Prisoner without a name, Cell without a number, the newspaper publisher’s chronicle of his two and a half years as a political prisoner in Argentina. ’It was the mirror of our souls, pain-filled eyes reflected in pain-filled eyes,’ I noted in my diary. ’When he spoke of the torture in the electric chair, the words on the page leapt out at me. The body was torn apart, Timemian wrote, and yet, miraculously, there was no mark or scar on the flesh. The political prisoners were dumped after the chair treatment to recuperate, then returned to be tortured again. Was he speaking of Argentina or was he speaking of the military regime’s interrogation cells in Pakistan?’

Presidential Order No. 4, issued March 24, 1982. Trials by special military court could now be held secretly, in camera. No one needed to be informed when a trial was taking place, who the accused were, what the charges were against them, or the resulting sentence. To make sure there were no leaks, it became a crime for the lawyers or anyone in any way connected with the case to disclose any information about it to the public.

Martial Law No. 54, issued September 23, 1982, and retroactive to the day of the coup against my father, July 5, 1977. The death penalty was now authorised for anyone committing an offence ’liable to cause in-security, fear or despondency among the public.’ The death penalty was also prescribed for anyone who had knowledge of such an offence and failed to inform the Martial Law authorities. Further, the accused was now assumed to be guilty until proven innocent. ’The military court . . . may, unless the contrary is proved, presume the accused has committed the offence charged,’ the ordinance stated.

In October, two thousand lawyers met in Karachi to demand the restora-tion of civil liberties. The organisers of the conference were arrested and sentenced to one year’s rigorous imprisonment. Two weeks later, Mr Hafiz Lakho, who had been one of my father’s lawyers, was arrested, along with the Karachi

Bar Association’s Secretary.

In December I read in the papers that Zia was in Washington to have meetings with President Reagan and the members of Congress. In the month of December alone, there were more than twenty executions of prisoners in Pakistan. Did the members of Congress know about the human rights abuses in Pakistan? Did they care?

I would not find out the answer for another three years. Zia had ex-pected his visit to Washington to be a great celebration of his new found respectability in the West, but he had run instead into a barrage of criticism
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during a meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ’Those

,

who were present recall that the General was cool and confident - untl [Senator] Pell handed him a letter expressing the committee’s concern about a number of Pakistan political prisoners,’ Jack Anderson wrote in the Washington Post. ’Heading the list was Benazir Bhutto.’

Zia reportedly blew up when Senator Pell pressed him about my deten-

tions. ’I can tell you this, Senator,’ he snapped, claiming that I had broken

the ’law’. ’She lives in a better house than any senator.’ Zia then went on

to claim that I was allowed visits from relatives and friends and ’even had

use of a telephone’. -

Upon hearing Zia’s claims, Peter Galbraith put them to the test and telephoned 70 Clifton. A male voice answered and he asked to speak to me.

’You cannot speak to her. She is in jail,’ the man replied.

’I am calling from the US Senate,’ Peter ventured. ’Your president was just here and told us that Miss Bhutto could use the telephone.’

’You cannot speak to her. It is forbidden,’ the man said firmly and slammed down the phone.
I spent December 25, the birthday of the founder of Pakistan, in detention at 70 Clifton. I was alone on New Year’s Day and on my father’s birthday. As 1983 began, I realised there had only been one New Year’s Day that I had been free since 1977. I began to grind my teeth at night. In the morning I often woke up to find my knuckles swollen and my fingers so tightly clenched that I couldn’t open them.

’I am truly grateful to God for all that He has blessed me with,’ I wrote in my journal. ’My name, my honour, my reputation, my life, my father, mother, brothers, sister, education, ability to talk, having both my hands and legs, eyesight, hearing, no disfiguring scars . . . .’ On and on my list of blessings went to eradicate my feelings of self-pity. Other political prisoners were far worse off than I was in the cold of their winter cells.

A member of the household staff came to the house one day with a new woollen scarf. There were many being sold cheaply on the black market

by the Afghan refugees, he told me. I smuggled out a message to a party worker to have scarves made with the red, green and black colours of the PPP at the ends. We sent thousands to the prisoners in jail all over Sindh, along with socks and sweaters.

My ear began to hurt again, as did my teeth, my gums, and my joints. ’There’s nothing the matter with your ear,’ the regime’s ear doctor at the
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Naval hospital told me. Their dentist was equally inept, asking me which tooth I wanted him to X-ray. ’I don’t know specifically which tooth,’ I told him. ’You’re the dentist, not me. It’s in this general area.’ ’We can’t waste X-rays,’ he said.

Stories about my health began to appear in the British press to which the Minister of Information at the Pakistani Embassy responded. ’When-ever she complained of any ailment she was taken to the best hospital in Karachi,’ Qutubuddin Aziz wrote to the Guardian. ’Due to heavy smoking, she developed gum troubles for which she was treated by an eminent dentist of her choice.’ How the regime lied. None of the doctors were of my choice. And I didn’t smoke.

I was starved of conversation, of communication, of any exchange of ideas. I was lucky to have my cats with me at 70 Clifton, but they didn’t make up for human company. The regime wanted me to remain completely incommunicado. I was surprised, therefore, when I received a request to appear in court in March, 1983, to give evidence at the trial of one jam Saqi, a Communist who was being tried on various charges, among them working against the ideology of Pakistan and spreading dissatisfaction against the Armed Forces.

I had never met Jam Saqi. He had in fact opposed my father. But Jam Saqi, it turned out, had called upon a number of prominent politicians to define the issues to determine whether the charges against him were valid or not. I was more than willing to discuss the illegality of Martial Law, although I wasn’t sure of the regime’s motives for permitting me to appear in person. Perhaps they wanted to paint me as a ’communist sympathiser’. But the more important issue to me was the right of every defendant to an open and free trial. Besides, the court would provide me with a platform to air my own political views for the first time in almost two years.

When my first summons to appear arrived from the special military court on March 25, I wrote back through the jail authorities that I was a prisoner and couldn’t simply go to the court at the appointed time. If the court wanted me to give evidence, the court would have to make the ar-rangements.

Word came back immediately from the Home Office to be ready

at 7.00 am the following morning. I was. At 11.00, a new message arrived. My appearance had been rescheduled for the same time for the following day. I was ready again at 7.00 am on March 27. Again I waited for four hours. And again, they delayed my appearance for twenty-four hours. I consoled myself by thinking that the regime wanted to confuse the sup-porters who would gather to see me. When they did come for me on the third day, every precaution had been taken to isolate me from the public.

The streets we travelled by were totally deserted, as the entire route

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had been blockaded by the police. Heavy contingents of police were posted at all the entry points to Kashmir Road and pedestrian crossings were criss-crossed with barbed wire. When I arrived at the makeshift military court set up in a sports complex, I discovered the court, too, had been cleared. Jam Saqi’s relatives and the relatives of the others were permitted to sit in the waiting room only, on condition that they did not speak to me. I didn’t care. I was so happy to see the few lawyers who were there, as well as Samiya, Salma and my cousin Fakhri who had somehow managed to get special permission to pass through the block-ades. Most of all, I welcomed the opportunity to talk.

The court-room was small, with a Colonel sitting behind a desk flanked by a Major and a magistrate. We sat in the three rows of chairs in front of them - Jam Saqi remained shackled throughout the proceedings. I thought it sad that even in this small room the army considered it neces-sary to keep the iron bars on. Jam Saqi was also asking the questions, as military courts didn’t permit lawyers to defend the accused.

I was scheduled to testify for one day, but I gave such long answers to the questions jam Saqi asked me that my testimony spread over two days. His questions did not have easy or short answers: ’We have been accused of working against the ideology of Pakistan - is there an ideology of Pakistan? What do you think of the Iranian Revolution? Is there any question of Martial Law in Islam?’

I knew that a culture of underground literature had grown up, with photostatted leaflets and poorly printed booklets circulating amongst the intelligentsia in the major cities, passed surreptitiously from hand to hand. Some printers, at a price, kept their presses open at night, secretly printing by torch-light, then destroying the plates. This was my one chance to give the party line and to discredit Martial Law. I was going to take it.

’In determining with clarity whether Martial Law has a place in Islam or not, we need to understand the concept

of Martial Law and the concept of Islam,’ I responded to the third question. ’Islam is the submission before the will of Allah whereas Martial Law is submission before the army commander. A Muslim submits only before the will of Allah.

’The term Martial Law, if I remember clearly, is a term derived from the days of Bismarck and the Prussian Empire. To integrate the territories he conquered, Bismarck superseded the law prevailing in those territories with his own law based on his whim and enforced at the point of a gun. Martial Law, before the second world war, also referred to the rule of an occupying army. The word of the commander of the occupying army superseded the existing law.

’Under colonialism, the indigenous people were treated as second-class citizens, denied a government of their choice, denied the right to shape their own destiny according to their hopes and desires and according to

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what would be economically beneficial for them. In the wake of World War II and the withdrawal of colonial powers from most of the colonies, the people of the newly independent countries enjoyed freedom and liberty for a little while. This was the period when nationalist leaders such as Nasser, Nkrumah, Nehru and Soekarno insisted on bringing social equality and justice to their people. But the former colonial powers, now restructured in shape, intended to keep their own people happy and, whether they consciously decided this or not, they ended up supporting a military-mullah complex. This mullah-military complex denied the people charge of their own destiny and the fruits that would avail from guiding this destiny. The situation was further complicated the Soviet Union and the United States of America.

’Many of the newly independent states are now ruled by some form of military administration. However, an administration which is based on force and not consensus can not be congruent with the central principles of Islam which lays emphasis on consensus. Second, military regimes always come into power at the point of a gun or the threat of the use of force, whereas in Islam there is no concept of the usurpation of power. Therefore, we can see that there is no question of Martial Law in Islam.’ My photostatted words would later find their way into press rooms, Bar Associations and even the prison cells of political activists.