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A review by tasmanian_bibliophile
Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir by Fatima Bhutto
4.0
‘We are a nuclear-armed state that cannot run refrigerators.’
In 1996, when Fatima Bhutto was 14 years old, her father Mir Murtaza Bhutto was shot dead by police outside his Karachi home. In this book, Ms Bhutto gives her account of his life as well as providing a view of the brutal and corrupt world of Pakistani politics. This is a world in which four members of the Bhutto clan have met violent deaths in just over 32 years.
‘Milan Kundera once said that the struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting; this is my journey of remembering.’
According to Ms Bhutto, her father’s adult life was given to two causes. The first was to avenge the death of his father, former president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979, ousted by General Zia-ul-Haq. When General Zia-ul-Haq died in 1988, Mir Murtaza Bhutto focussed on protecting his father’s political legacy from his sister Benazir Bhutto. The rivalry between Murtaza and Benazir is central to this book, and while Ms Bhutto’s account of her father is affectionate and not deeply critical; the same cannot be said of her account of her aunt, Benazir Bhutto.
Mir Murtaza Bhutto left Pakistan in 1977 after the Zia regime took power, and he did not return until 1993. During his absence Benazir Bhutto became a political force within Pakistan, including a period as prime minister between December 1988 and August 1990. According to Ms Bhutto, Mir Murtaza Bhutto’s return represented a threat: ‘it seemed as if Murtaza was the only politician speaking against the status quo, instead of lining up to join it.’
Benazir Bhutto was prime minister when Mir Murtaza Bhutto was shot in 1996, and the policemen accused of killing him were acquitted in 2009, when Asif Ali Zardari (Benazir Bhutto’s husband) was president. It was these acquittals that prompted Ms Bhutto to publish this book.
I found Ms Bhutto’s account fascinating. While it is a deeply personal perspective of Pakistani and Bhutto history and politics, much of the detail of the political events described relies on the accounts of Mir Murtaza’s friends and colleagues. Ms Bhutto’s perspective may not allow for an entirely accurate interpretation of events, but it certainly raises a number of issues in relation to both Mir Murtaza Bhutto’s death and the nature of politics in Pakistan.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
In 1996, when Fatima Bhutto was 14 years old, her father Mir Murtaza Bhutto was shot dead by police outside his Karachi home. In this book, Ms Bhutto gives her account of his life as well as providing a view of the brutal and corrupt world of Pakistani politics. This is a world in which four members of the Bhutto clan have met violent deaths in just over 32 years.
‘Milan Kundera once said that the struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting; this is my journey of remembering.’
According to Ms Bhutto, her father’s adult life was given to two causes. The first was to avenge the death of his father, former president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979, ousted by General Zia-ul-Haq. When General Zia-ul-Haq died in 1988, Mir Murtaza Bhutto focussed on protecting his father’s political legacy from his sister Benazir Bhutto. The rivalry between Murtaza and Benazir is central to this book, and while Ms Bhutto’s account of her father is affectionate and not deeply critical; the same cannot be said of her account of her aunt, Benazir Bhutto.
Mir Murtaza Bhutto left Pakistan in 1977 after the Zia regime took power, and he did not return until 1993. During his absence Benazir Bhutto became a political force within Pakistan, including a period as prime minister between December 1988 and August 1990. According to Ms Bhutto, Mir Murtaza Bhutto’s return represented a threat: ‘it seemed as if Murtaza was the only politician speaking against the status quo, instead of lining up to join it.’
Benazir Bhutto was prime minister when Mir Murtaza Bhutto was shot in 1996, and the policemen accused of killing him were acquitted in 2009, when Asif Ali Zardari (Benazir Bhutto’s husband) was president. It was these acquittals that prompted Ms Bhutto to publish this book.
I found Ms Bhutto’s account fascinating. While it is a deeply personal perspective of Pakistani and Bhutto history and politics, much of the detail of the political events described relies on the accounts of Mir Murtaza’s friends and colleagues. Ms Bhutto’s perspective may not allow for an entirely accurate interpretation of events, but it certainly raises a number of issues in relation to both Mir Murtaza Bhutto’s death and the nature of politics in Pakistan.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith