the_taliban_shuffle_-_kim_barker

confusion. Then Bhutto’s longtime friend from the human-rights
commission answered a phone call. She cried out and hung up.
“She’s gone.”
Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of the East, had been killed at a rally a
few miles from where her father had been hanged, as she stood and
waved out the sunroof of her white SUV. Maybe a bomb, maybe a
gunshot, the conspiracy machines were already spinning. Like the
country, I found this impossible to process. But I had no time. Events
soon overtook even her death. Tammy and I looked at each other; she
had been frustrated with Bhutto’s willingness to make a deal with
Musharraf, but she still saw Bhutto as a preferable alternative to the
military. Almost immediately, Tammy started to cry.
“This is very bad,” she said. “It will rip this country apart.”
She needed to visit Bhutto’s relatives and friends, so I rode with her
to the home of one, a cousin. The receiving room was elegant,
chandeliers and wooden furniture. Everyone hugged and sobbed. I was
the stranger, the lone non-Pakistani, the lone journalist, the other. At
one point, I slid out my notebook, guring I should write something
down. Tammy glanced at me and shook her head. Her message was
clear: This was not the place, and I should have known better. She soon
sent me o in a carload of people from the TV show toward the Pearl-
Continental Hotel, where they were staying.
“You can grab a cab home from there,” she said. “I need to stay.”
But the turbulent city of Karachi was Bhutto’s home, and it was
catching re. As darkness fell, young men threw rocks at the Saudi
embassy; others set re to tires in the middle of intersections. Already
Pakistanis marched with ags of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party and
yelled “Bhutto lives!” Some red guns in the air. In my car, crammed
with seven people, one woman threw a scarf around my head.
“Cover yourself,” she said. “You’re an American. You never know
what will make these guys angry. It’s very volatile.”
Eventually we made it to the Pearl-Continental. I called Tammy.
“You’ll never make it back tonight,” she said. “They’re already
rioting. Cars are on fire. The neighborhood has been sealed off.”
I was in poor shape. The hotel was sold out. I had no computer plug
and only about thirty minutes of battery power remaining. I had two
cell phones—but each was close to running out of batteries. I camped