Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Recollections and Remembrances Foreword

go to his hostel in the night, and next day, he told his Dean: “Sorry. I stayed with
my wife.”
But he was so young that the Dean did not believe him. So he took me to him and
then the Dean said he felt sorry that we could not live together and did not
punish him for staying out that night.
Q. How was Sir Shah Nawaz like?
A. He was very old by that time. He was a very good person. When we were
in Oxford, he would keep writing that I come back. Finally I came back to live
with my in-laws, and I was not very happy about it because by that time I was in
love with my husband and I wanted to live with him. But my in-laws thought
their son would not study properly if I was with him. So we would talk on
telephone and I would cry for not being with him. After sometime, my father
purchased my tickets and I went back to Oxford to live with him. It was in 1952
that I got pregnant then I told him we were going to have a child. He was so
happy to hear it, that he shouted on the street with joy “Oh... I am going to be a
father.” Then in 1953, I gave birth to Benazir.
Q. Somebody told me that Mr. Bhutto had a sister whose name was Benazir
and she died at a young age and he named his daughter after her, is that true?
A. Yes. It was much earlier, before Independence. She studied in Poona and
lived in the school hostel. We later saw her diary in which she wrote about her
keenness to finish the school and come back to her home. But there she got
meningitis and died at a young age. She was buried in Poona. It was after her that
my mother-in-law, named our daughter Benazir. She was only 15 years old.
Q. How was your mother-in-law like? It is said that she belonged to a poor
family.
A. There has been much talk about my mother-in-law, and I think that has to
be settled once and for all. My mother-in-law was Begum Khurshid whose
mother was a new Muslim. Mr. Hidayatullah, who was not a Sir at that time, had
married that lady after she had converted from being a Hindu to be a Muslim.
Two daughters were born out of that marriage, Begum Khurshid being one of
them. Later Hidayatullah divorced that lady and married another woman. Now
Begum Khurshid’s elder sister is married to a person, whose name, I think, was
Mir Maqbool Ahmad Khan. Now this Maqbool Ahmad Khan was a close friend
of Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto. Sir Shah Nawaz’s first wife was very old and he
wanted to marry again. So this Maqbool Ahmad Khan suggested to him that he
could marry his wife’s sister, Khurshid, and so they got married.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Recollections and Remembrances; Copyright © www.bhutto.org
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