|
By
Fatima Bhutto, The News,
Pakistan
LARKANA: My aunt and I had a complicated relationship. That is the truth,
the sad truth. The last fifteen years were not one we spent as friends or as
relatives, that is also the truth. But this week, I too want to remember her
differently. I want to remember her differently because I must. I can't lose
faith in this country, my home. I can't believe that it was for nothing,
that violence in its purest form is so cruel and so unforgiving. I can't
accept that this is what we have come to.
So, I must offer a farewell. One that is written in tears and anger but one
that comes from a place far away, from the realm of memory and forgiving –-
a place where at another time, we might have all been safe. As a child, I
used to call my aunt Wadi Bua, Sindhi for father's older sister.
When I got the news, I was told that something had happened to Wadi Bua. It
was an expression I hadn't heard or used in a very long time, when I heard
it said to me over the phone I remembered someone different.
We used to read children's books together. We used to like exactly the same
sweets –- sugared chestnuts and candied apples. We used to get the same ear
infections, ear infections that tortured us and plagued us throughout the
years.
I have never before written an article that seemed so impossible. We were
very different. Though people liked to compare us, almost instinctively,
because well, they could. It is difficult for me to write about two people,
one in the present tense and one in the past, at the same time.
Especially when one person's passing makes the other one wonder whether
there is a cusp to things and whether or not there really is a past and
present to life.
I never agreed with her politics. I never did. I never agreed with those she
kept around her, the political opportunists, hanger-ons, them. They repulse
me.
I never agreed with her version of events. Never. But in death, in death
perhaps there is a moment to call for calm. To say, enough. We have had
enough. We cannot, and we will not, take anymore madness.
I mourn because my family has had enough. I mourn for Bilawal, Bakhtawar,
and Asifa. I mourn for them because I too lost a parent. I know what it
feels like to be lost and left at sea, unanchored and afraid.
I mourn for the workers of the party, those who have been bereaved of their
own loved ones in this tragedy.
When congregants gather in a church, temple, or mosque they offer prayers
for those that reside beyond. The congregants sing to the heavens and they
offer the divine their hymns of sadness and hope. There are no hymns
consisting of frustration or anger –- this too shall pass, they say,
remember that. What hymns do we sing now?
In those hymns, there is hope encapsulated in the sadness. There is a
lingering sense that after darkness a dawn will rise. What then do we have
to be hopeful for? And how do we proceed to wake the dawn?
I have always been honest with you, I promised that to you at the beginning.
Honestly, I am at a loss. I am compounded in a state of shock.
I am in shock because I have yet to bury a loved one who has died from
natural causes. Four. That's the number of family members, immediate family
members, whom we have laid to rest, all victims of senseless, senseless
killing.
I was born five years after my grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's
assassination. I was born into the void of his absence and for my father,
Murtaza, I was a new chance at life. I grew up hearing my grandfather's
speeches, watching him on old black and white video cassettes, enamoured at
his every word. My father was a young man when his father was killed and it
was something he carried with him every second, every minute for the rest of
his life.
I was three when my uncle Shahnawaz was murdered. I remember Wadi Bua
sitting with me and telling me stories while the rest of the family was with
the police.
When I was fourteen, my life was ended. I lost my heart and soul, my father
Murtaza. I am and have been since then a shell of the person I was. I
suppose there are cusps in life, and thank god for that because that way we
can stay in between.
And now at twenty five, Wadi. But this isn't about me, it's about those whom
we have lost. It's about the graveyard at Garhi Khuda Bux that is just too
full.
I pray that this is the last, that from this moment onwards we will no
longer have to bid farewell too quickly. . Wadi, farewell.
About the author:
Fatima Bhutto is a 24 year old Pakistani woman. She graduated with a Bachelor's
degree in Middle Eastern and Asian Cultures and Languages from Columbia
University and received a Masters at the School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS) in South Asian Government and Politics. Fatima comes from a political
background, her father Mir Murtaza Bhutto - an elected member of Pakistan's
parliament - was assassinated by state police in 1996. His sister, Benazir
Bhutto, was Prime Minister at the time of his killing. Fatima is the author of
two books, a volume of poetry published when she was 15 years old in her
father's memory a year after his death called 'Whispers of the Desert' and a
collection of first hand survivor's accounts from the October 8, 2005 earthquake
in Pakistan entitled
8:50 am.
Both were published by Oxford University Press. The proceeds from '8:50 am' will
be given back to child survivors of the quake. Fatima currently writes a weekly
column for Pakistan's largest Urdu daily newspaper, Daily Jang, and its English
sister paper, The News International. Her diary from Tehran is the second
the papers printed; Fatima also wrote a weekly diary from Lebanon this past
summer during the Israeli invasion.
In early 2007, Fatima traveled to Iran. Following
articles are part of her Diary from Tehran:
... Payvand News - 01/04/08 ...
© Copyright 2008 NetNative
(All Rights Reserved)
|
|
|
#
|---|
|