the_taliban_shuffle_-_kim_barker

spontaneous outpouring of grief, not necessarily for the leader she was
but for the leader she aspired to be.
A hole had been cut in the white marble oor next to Bhutto’s
father’s grave. The ambulance backed inside the shrine, and supporters
threw rose petals as her con, simple and wooden, was pulled out.
Bhutto’s husband and son, who had own to Pakistan after she was
killed, helped lower her into the ground. They threw handfuls of sandy
soil on top, helped by supporters. Slowly the con and Benazir Bhutto
disappeared from view. She was gone. The country burned.
We eventually hitched a ride to the hotel where the other foreign
journalists were staying—the chartered plane had made it to the nearest
airport in time for the funeral, but the journalists had not been able to
nd a ride. The sold-out hotel was the only one not set on re the
previous night. It was decrepit. The pool was lled with trash and dead
leaves—a BBC correspondent, talking on her phone while walking with
her computer, accidentally fell in. A friend from the Washington Post
loaned me his computer cord and a phone charger, and said we could
stay in his room. His kindness was rewarded. When he went to the
bathroom, someone ushed the toilet in the room above, which leaked
on him below.
About 4 AM, after nishing my third story of the night, I shoved the
Guardian reporter to one side of a mattress on the oor and laid down
on the other side, wearing the same clothes I had been wearing for
more than two days. I passed out for four hours. That morning, the Post
reporter and I decided to flee.
“This is the worst place on earth,” he said.
“I’m never coming back here again,” I agreed.
We hitched a ride to Karachi, avoiding roadblocks of burning tires
and cars and slogan-shouting men. Broken glass carpeted parts of the
road. Trucks at gas stations were set on re; so were some gas stations.
Black plumes of smoke and the wreckage of grief could be seen
everywhere—a torched building at a district court complex, a dozen
blackened trucks near a gas station, a gas tanker, and a truck once lled
with sand, still flickering with flames.
We waved a ag from Bhutto’s party out the car window, our visa on