Benazir Bhutto - SZABIST

No one besides family and extremely close friends were invited to visit and anyway she had other
more important things on her mind. She would say: "My mind is on politics. My home in New York is
temporary. I am not interested in making it comfortable."
She was very patient with her husband and he brought out the feminine side of her and liked her to
shine. After his time in jail it was as if they found each other all over again.
I remember having a meal with them and some other friends. I had just come back from interviewing
Segolene Royal, the Socialist candidate for the French presidency against Nicolas Sarkozy last May.
Benazir wanted to know what Segolene wore and how was her relationship with her partner.
I told Benazir that Segolene resembled her. Asif responded forcefully and immediately. "Nobody is as
beautiful as my wife," he said. Benazir blushed deeply. She loved him saying that.
She was also a wonderful mother. I called her a cross between an earth mother and a Jewish mother
because she was loving but also pushed her children to do better than their best. She was very handson
with the children and they would tease and hug each other a lot. But she wasn't at all strict.
She didn't want to put any more pressure on them than they already had because of her political
ambitions. I feel she was always trying to compensate. But even though she was easy-going, the
children were very well mannered.
I met them all many times. When one of her daughters, I think it was Bakhtwar, decided she wanted to
become a punk singer, Benazir asked me if I could introduce her to Puff Daddy, who I know, to give
her advice about a career in music.
She wasn't snobbish about it. Nor did she seem in the least concerned about the implications it might
have on her own political future.
Benazir was also particularly proud that her son Bilawal got into Oxford and made sure that both she
and Asif took him up and helped him settle in, just as any parent would.
Benazir was a wonderful friend to me - the best friend you could ever have. I was staying at the
Dorchester Hotel and was injured just as she arrived to spend a few days with me before her historic
return to Pakistan.
Asif told her I couldn't get out of bed but she wouldn't take no for an answer and came up with
creative solutions like going to Harry's Bar wearing a jump suit to cover my injuries.
Despite what she was going through herself she would regularly email me to ask how I was and if I
didn't tell her exactly, she would remember to ask me again, and be very specific. Sometimes her
emails made me laugh.
For ages it was impossible to use a Blackberry in Dubai, but that changed recently and so over the past
six months she emailed me from it all the time. In an email about her plans for her farewell dinner in
October, she wrote: "Wld u like to join me for dinner? I am having dinner at nine and cld collect you
at 8.15. I am having dinner with a friend and I told him I wld like to bring you. Bibi."