Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter'S Memoir by Fatima Bhutto Read Free Book Online Page B

to a person so detained’. 1 Imagining his position secure, Zulfikar curried favour with the religious parties, small in number but powerful in terms of their fear factor, by amending the constitution to define the parameters of who was a Muslim. The Ahmedis, a small sect of Muslims who believe a prophet afterMuhammad, called Ahmed, will one day walk the earth, were officially defined as non-Muslims. Zulfikar went further: he banned alcohol, drove the country’s gambling and entertainment industries underground and declared Friday, the day of prayers, a public holiday.
    But he could not stave off the decline that had already begun. The feudalists, who had infiltrated the PPP in a bid to secure their own positions, began fighting among themselves. Abdul Waheed Katpar, one of the founding members of the PPP, remembers this period as one of intense paranoia for Zulfikar. ‘He thought the army would kill him. He called them the Khakis . When the big zamindar in the party began to destabilize the party’s image with their public feuding, Zulfikar told them, “Your fighting won’t destroy me, the army will not spare me now – don’t think they will spare you either.”’ 2
    In 1976, when the butcher of Bengal, General Tikka Khan, retired from the army, Zulfikar replaced him with General Zia ul Haq ‘over the heads of five senior generals’, 3 promoting him to Chief of Army Staff purely because Zulfikar believed him to be a meek, subservient man. Zia swore his undying loyalty to the Prime Minister on a Koran and bowed feverishly whenever Zulfikar walked into a room. Zia was a ‘cunning man’, remembered Katpar, ‘always acting over-courteous with Bhutto. He was very ambitious and that made him very cruel.’ 4 A stout man, with pomaded hair parted severely in the middle, and a moustache dyed black and carefully combed, Zia came from humble origins. He was not known for his political aspirations, but for his obedience to orders and religiously inspired simple-mindedness.
    A story often repeated in my family, and used to defend if not explain Zulfikar’s decision to promote the army general who later had him killed, went like this: Zulfikar had called his army chief to the Prime Minister’s office for a word. Zia arrived on time, early even, and was taken into the office, where he sat down nervously, shaking his feet and twitching his legs. He had begun to smoke, a habit he indulged in to calm his nerves, when the Prime Minister walked in. Zia, various family members would exclaim, jumped up deferentially and shoved the lit cigarette into his pocket. It began to burn through the fabric of his jacker. Smoke came billowing out of Zia’s uniformedmilitary jacket, but he was so anxious around Zulfikar that he was too embarrassed to admit he had been smoking – hardly a crime – and too polite to put out the fire.
    But the quiet and unassuming general would not have to wait long. His designs on the presidency were already in motion, even as his pocket linings burned. ‘I know the bloodhounds are after my blood,’ 5 Zulfikar raged publicly, in one of his last sessions before parliament. He could feel it coming.

    Despite the political turmoil of these years, Zulfikar still found time to stay in close touch with Murtaza. When Murtaza first arrived at Harvard, Zulfikar wrote him a letter, the first to his son at college, on official stationery.
    In the beginning you will be homesick and anxiously expect to hear from your parents, your brother and sister . . . but the more you settle down you will not get as excited in the future as you will get now in getting news from home. This does not mean that you will lose interest in what is happening in your country but that intense eagerness will lose its flavour. Most probably, I am writing to you all the things I wrote to Pinky in my first letter. Now this is natural because I am the same person, writing with the same sentiments and values to my son instead of my daughter under