Pakistani political insider reads at Powell’s

On Monday, Oct. 4, Powell’s Books will host Fatima Bhutto, the stunningly beautiful poet and political columnist who to many is the heiress-presumptive to the Bhutto family’s dynastic control of Pakistani high government.

Bhutto, however, sees her role in Pakistani legislation a little differently.

“I do not believe in the politics of birthright,” she said in a 2008 interview with Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now!” “I’m a writer, and I’m political through my writings…I have no desire to sit in parliament, especially not this kind of parliament.”

Bhutto’s contemptuous view of Pakistan’s parliament stems from the country’s ongoing corruption scandals in which her family has been mired for decades. These stories form the basis of Songs of Blood and Sword, Bhutto’s recently released memoir.

Bhutto’s paternal grandfather, Zufilkar Ali Bhutto, was the founder of the Pakistan People’s Party, the president of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973 and the prime minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977. He was executed by the state in 1979. Ms. Bhutto’s paternal uncle, Shahnawaz Bhutto, was involved in orchestrating the opposition movement to Pakistan’s military regime; he was poisoned, presumably by his wife or a military official at the behest of Pakistani intelligence. Ms. Bhutto’s paternal aunt, Benazir Bhutto, was an immensely popular political figure and twice-elected prime minister of Pakistan; she was assassinated in 2007, only two weeks before Pakistan’s 2008 general elections.

Finally, there was Fatima’s father, Murtaza Bhutto, on whom Songs is focused.

Murtaza Bhutto was a young radical who spent over a decade of his adult life in self-imposed political exile, finally returning to challenge what he viewed as the corrupt, self-serving politics of his older sister Benazir, who was then serving as prime minister. The PPP was founded, after all, on the principles of socialism and justice; Benazir, presumably heavily influenced by her money-minded husband Asif Ali Zadari, was straying far from the party platform her father designed in the 1960s. Murtaza ran for a parliament seat from his home in Damascus, Syria, won by an overwhelming majority, and returned to Pakistan only to be arrested on Benazir’s orders and imprisoned for eight months.

Two-and-a-half years later, while Benazir was still serving as prime minister, Murtaza was murdered by Pakistani police. His convoy was returning home after a long night of campaigning when the streetlights suddenly shut off and the first sniper shot was fired. After two more shots, Murtaza got out of his car and urged the police to hold their fire; instead, more than 80 government-sanctioned snipers opened fire on the Bhutto convoy for nearly 10 minutes. When they were finished shooting from afar, select police delivered fatal shots to those who lay injured and bleeding to death in the street.

All the while, 12-year-old Fatima was lying on the floor in the Bhutto compound, using her body as a shield to protect her six-year-old brother.

One of Pakistan’s greatest political mysteries is whether Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zadari (Pakistan’s current president) are responsible for the murder of Murtaza Bhutto. Certainly, they obstructed the investigation into his death as much as possible. Songs provides one of the most in-depth treatments of Murtaza’s death available, and while it is not research-based, it is founded on family history.

Songs is Bhutto’s third book. Her previous publications are Whispers in the Desert, a collection of poems, and 8:50 a.m. October 8, 2005, a book recording accounts of the Kashmir earthquake that occurred at that precise time.

Currently, Bhutto writes columns for The Daily Beast (an American online news source) and New Statesman (a British print weekly), as well as a weekly column for Daily Jang, Pakistan’s largest Urdu-language daily newspaper.

Fatima Bhutto is 28 years old and lives in Karachi with her stepmother and brother.

The reading will be held in Powell’s Pearl Room.