Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Recollections and remembrances

Q. Mr. Bhutto was the only son from that lady?A. Yes. The other two brothers and four sisters were from the first wife andone son and three sisters from the second wife, Khurshid Begum. She was aconservative lady and a religious person. I accompanied her to Ziaraat, to Najafe-Ashraf,Karbala, Baghdad. She was a good Muslim. She used to wear “Burka”and she asked me to wear it whenever I visited Larkana.Anyway, after completing his studies in Oxford, Mr. Bhutto got a job in theUniversity but his parents did not like the idea that their son should live inEngland so they compelled him to come back. In Karachi, he would some time goto deliver lectures in the Sindh Muslim Law College. But he wanted to joinForeign Office.Q. When you met him for the first time, could you imagine what he would doin life later?A. No. He was simply a student then. I could only see that he was a dignifiedperson.Q. What else did you notice at that time?A. He was charming. You cannot explain what is charm.QWhat was his source of inspiration?A. I can’t say. He was brought up very well. May be his mother was hissource of inspiration. His father used to encourage him. His uncle, Ahmad KhanBhutto, whose daughter was his first wife, was in politics. I tell you an interestingincident. When we got married, his uncle, who was also his father-in-law, gave adinner party for us in Karachi Club. Because marrying again was nothing strangein Sindh.Q. Did you know he was already married?I did not know it in the beginning. What happened was that I conveyed hisproposal to my parents through my elder sister. First they rejected it. They saidhow could an Irani family agree to a proposal from a Sindhi man whom we didnot know. My mother had died by that time and my grandmother and my eldersisters were there. Some days later, I think some people from Haroon familyvisited us and the subject came up. There, the Haroons broke the news that thisman was already married. Oh my God... My parents gave me hell. They scoldedme and said how I could marry a man who was already married, and break hisfamily. After some time, he came to see my family and then I said to him: “YouZulfikar Ali Bhutto, Recollections and Remembrances; Copyright © www.bhutto.org 14