Benazir Bhutto - SZABIST

as someone descending from the skies. She was the quintessential heroine, a mythical character, and
the stuff of a Greek legend.
In her election rallies, the tone and tenor of Benazir's speeches riveted the crowds, and her voice
echoed far and wide. She continued to voice the needs of the dispossessed and the poor. Her language
was simple and crisp, but she spoke a fairy tale script, a classic battle of good against evil. "I have
come to save Pakistan," she repeated often.
These made the entire nation believe that she would conquer and rescue their country from the forces
of evil. Of course she knew very well that the road was rive with dangers, that there were conspiracies
to end her life. But even at her most vulnerable, see seemed the most invincible. Her last images show
her fighting posture, her confidence and her will.
Eventually her idealism and her belief that good will prevail over evil killed her. And of course, her
love for her people killed her. She said in one of her interviews, that on Oct 18th, her procession was
bombed because "They don't want me to meet my people - but I will meet my people."
On that fated evening, she came out of her Toyota sunroof, to meet the people she loved and who
loved her. She raised her hand and said, 'Jiye Bhutto' "Bhutto lives," as her final answer to her snipers,
as they ended her life...
And so, Benazir's family narrative of dramatic and heartrending sacrifices endures in her own death.
In her twenties, Benazir buried her father at Garhi Khuda Bux, Bhutto ancestral graveyard. She then
began to build the mausoleum, where she buried her younger brother Shahnawaz, and later Murtaza
Bhutto both killed by the similar conspirators who took the life of the elder Bhutto.
When she returned to her ancestral home two months back, her first visit was to Garhi Khuda Baksh,
where she sat and recited verses from the Quran in front of her father's tomb for a long time. She
surveyed the work on the mausoleum, and paid homage to her elders. Who could tell then, that what
she was examining in detail, would be the place where she would permanently rest in a few weeks
time. Garhi Khuda Baksh would, from now on be not only the country's most important political
shrine, but one which treasures its history of political struggle and sacrifice.
We, the people, instinctively know the insidious and shadowy killers of Benazir Bhutto. We can sense
them. We know its not Taliban or their mutants. They are far more sinister. We have seen them attack
us before, by attacking those we have raised to pitch battles against them. But we don't know yet how
to name them.
But Benazir Bhutto's shadowy killers must know that physical death does not stop history from taking
its course. And Benazir has already set the terms of history in this region. In this Benazir was always a
step ahead of her killer's plans. Her prophetic words that echoed in all her later speeches were: "How
many Bhuttos will you kill, a Bhutto will come out from every house" – and "Yesterday Bhutto lived;
today also, Bhutto lives, already showed that Benazir had already moved beyond life, and become an
icon.
In her death, she is even more powerful a symbol of strength and resistance than Benazir who lived
among us. And the People's Party is more entrenched than ever. As I overheard a PPP worker, "PPP is
now more than a political party, it is a fiqh."
If people loved Benazir Bhutto on the eve of her death, they worship her now. All over in the country,
her photographs have been put up as garlanded shrines. If people cheered and followed her before her
death, they have now become her devotees. The enemies of the populist politics have created a cult