Benazir Bhutto - SZABIST

Was she in love? Announcing her engagement, she had said less than enthusiastically: “Conscious of
my religious obligations and duty to my family, I am pleased to proceed with the marriage proposal
accepted by my mother.” Everyone told me that an arranged marriage was better because you went in
with no preconceptions and learnt to love each other.
The morning before the main celebrations Benazir underwent the painful process of having all her
body hair removed. No screams were heard. She had, after all, endured years of detention in Pakistan,
including 10 months in solitary confinement.
The main event took place in a multicoloured marquee in the garden, where bowers of jasmine and
roses led to a tinsel-bedecked stage. Here, Benazir sat next to her husband-to-be, Asif Ali Zardari, on a
mother-of-pearl bench and said yes three times to become a married woman. Sugar was ground over
their heads so their lives would be sweet.
Taking a break along Clifton beach, I paid a man with a scrawny parakeet a few rupees for it to pick
me tarot cards. “You will be back within a year,” he predicted. I was.
After all the late-night discussions of how to overturn dictatorship in Pakistan, there was no way I
could go back to the death knocks in Birmingham. I went to see the FT and got a vague agreement that
they would pay for whatever they published by me. I bought a bucket-shop flight to Lahore and
packed everything I imagined I would need to be a foreign correspondent, including a tape of
Mahler’s Fifth, a jumbo bag of wine gums, a lucky pink rabbit, a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and
a bottle of Chanel No 5 that my boyfriend’s mum had got at trade price. I could hardly carry the
suitcase.
The foreign editors in London were all more interested in Russian-occupied Afghanistan than in
Pakistan, so I headed for the frontier town of Peshawar and – like most journalists there – spent much
of my time going back and forth across the border.
“Going inside”, we called it. When you were out you spent all your time attempting to get in; and once
in, living in caves on stale bread and trying to avoid landmines and bombs, you desperately wanted to
be out.
I celebrated my 22nd birthday in a kebab shop in Peshawar’s Old Story-tellers’ Bazaar with flat chapli
kebabs followed by yellow cake with a candle on top. The night ended with a moonlit swim in the
pool of the Pearl Continental, where proper correspondents stayed. There were other things to
celebrate that night: May 15 1988 marked the start of the withdrawal of the Soviet army, which had
occupied Afghanistan since Boxing Day 1979.
The supply of American Stinger missiles, which could down Soviet planes, had turned the war around.
For the mujaheddin, who had humiliated the largest army on earth, these were glory days, before jihad
became a dirty word. For Pakistan, it was the start of a tumultuous series of events that would raise
Benazir to power but ultimately take her life.
Zia announced party-based elections in which Benazir would be able to take part. Later he announced
at a press conference that parties would not be allowed. I stuck up my hand. As a tall, blonde English
girl in a sea of Pakistani men – none of whom seemed concerned by his turnaround – I was handed the
microphone.