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There’s blood in Fatima Bhutto’s ink

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s granddaughter and Benazir’s niece spoke to DNA on her new book and roots.

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Fatima Bhutto’s first book Songs of Blood and Sword, a saga of Pakistan’s most famous family and an insider’s account of the violent events that rocked it from time to time, is making waves across the world.

In Bangalore to talk about her book, the 28-year-old author reveals that she is loving the fact that she is the Indian media’s current darling.

“I’ve got overwhelming support in India,” she says, her voice a cultured burr with a distinct American twang, easily explained by her long sojourn in the West – she studied at Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. “I think a large part of this support comes from the fact that I represent the antithesis to power. People are fascinated by power, but they are also suspicious of it,” she says.

It is a fascination that is easily understood. Her genealogy – boldly printed on the cover of her book – explains it all. While you wait to delve into the blood-splattered history of her famous family, you get a taste of things to come when Fatima is described as ‘granddaughter to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, executed 1979’, ‘daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, assassinated 1996’ and ‘niece to Benazir Bhutto, assassinated 2007’. It is very clear who is telling this story, and why.

Bhutto is quick to clarify, though, that she did not set out to write a hagiography to her father. The research involved talking to a many people who knew her grandfather and father, not all of them uncritical admirers.

A fan of journalistic non-fiction, Bhutto says she also made sure most of her story could be authenticated. She has had to deal with criticism that her narrative has been filtered through the prism of her allegiances. “Of course it has been,” she says. “You can’t get away from the fact that I am who I am. I’m not objective; I never pretended to be objective,” she says.

Bhutto has a special relationship with her home city, Karachi. In spite of the fact that it has been riddled with violence and was the scene of her father’s assassination, she continues to make her home there in the old Bhutto family house, living quietly with her mother Ghinwa and her brothers, writing, attending social dos and practising yoga. Yoga in Karachi? Bhutto smiles broadly. “You’d be surprised. There are tonnes of great yoga teachers in Karachi and my mother and I attend yoga classes three times a week,” she says.

She’s asked how she coped, as a child, with all the bloodshed. She points out that her own childhood was not so very different from others in her neighbourhood or school. She was a child in an unquiet land, growing up in unquiet times, and she has survived to tell her tale.

“I don’t think violence is unique to me. For anyone growing up in this part of the world, especially today, violence is all around us. Everyone lives through it,” she says, matter-of-fact.

It has been something of a family tradition for the Bhuttos to come back to Pakistan — despite the hostility, and despite the opportunities offered to them by affluence.

“I had to come home because the idea of ‘home’ means something to me. It’s a very South Asian thing — this strong bond with your home,” she says.   

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