Malicious Gossip

by Khushwant Singh

  On 6 February 1979 the Supreme Court dismissed Mr Bhutto’s appeal. He was not present in court. The news was conveyed by the gaol superintendent. His only comment was: “This is very sad,” followed by a question, “Was it unanimous?” The superintendent, without checking, replied, “Yes.” Bhutto remarked, “That is very surprising.”

  When the news reached Nusrat Bhutto at Sihala (fifteen miles from Pindi) where she was under house arrest, she got into a car, broke through the police cordon and stormed up to the gaol gates. She was allowed to meet her husband. She collapsed in his arms. When she came to, the first question he asked her was, “Was it unanimous?” Nusrat told him that of the seven judges of the Supreme Court three had given him the benefit of the doubt. “Don’t worry!” he assured her. “We will go in for a review.”

  Once the death sentence had been confirmed, the gaol authorities decided to treat Mr Bhutto as they treated other convicts under sentence of death. They took away his shaving kit, removed the niwar bed (niwar can be used to hang oneself) and stopped home food. Mr Bhutto refused to lie in the hospital bed. Instead, he spread the rubber foam mattress on the floor: it was to be his bed till the last day. By the afternoon, the government relented and let him have home-cooked food.

  On 24 March 1979, the Supreme Court rejected the review petition. The last ray of hope was extinguished. Yahya Bakhtiar’s role as Bhutto’s lawyer was over, but he requested the court to let him see Mr Bhutto. The prosecution represented by M.A. Rehman made no objection. Outside the courtroom Yahya Bakhtiar told waiting pressmen that there were grounds for a second review petition. Meanwhile, the superintendent of the gaol wrote a formal memorandum to Mr Bhutto informing him of the confirmation of the death sentence and telling him that he had seven days to make a petition for mercy. When he took it to Mr Bhutto and asked him to sign on the carbon copy, he refused to do so and dismissed him brusquely, “Yes, yes, I know all about it.”

  The next day (25 March 1979) the Lahore High Court issued a “Black” warrant to the five convicted men specifying that they were liable to be executed after 4 April 1979. The exact date was kept a secret.

  Mr Bhutto was allowed to receive as many relatives and friends as he wished. His first wife, Begum Ameer, uncles, cousins, including Mumtaz Bhutto, an erstwhile Cabinet colleague, Hafeez Pirzada, were amongst the many who came to see him. All visitors were searched and no one was allowed inside the cell; a six-foot-wide table was placed in front of the iron grill to prevent physical contact (or passing of cyanide or other poison).

  One night Mr Bhutto sent for the deputy superintendent of the gaol and asked him to send for Hafeez Pirzada. Mr Bhutto made no specific request to Pirzada to appeal for mercy but the words he used were “Marna bahut mushkil hota hai” (dying is not easy), and the fact that Pirzada did in fact file a petition after his last meeting on 1 April 1979 indicates that Mr Bhutto, without relenting from his determination never to beg for his life, still hoped that somehow, someone would make General Zia hold his hand. While leaving the jail, Pirzada was asked by pressmen whether Mr Bhutto had made an appeal for mercy. He replied, “No, he has not. But I will do so.”

  Pirzada appealed to President Zia to spare Bhutto’s life. His appeal was widely published but there was no comment from the President’s office.

  The decision to execute Mr Bhutto on 4 April was taken two days earlier (2 April). Rules required executions to take place at 5.30 a.m. (or 6 a.m. in winter)—but the hour was fixed at 2 a.m. to avoid demonstrations and give time to have the body flown to Larkana and interred in the family graveyard in village Nao Dero. Meanwhile, the hangman, Tara Masih, was brought from Bahawalpur to Lahore. There was speculation that the condemned man might be taken to the Kot Lakhpat gaol to be executed.

  On 3 April 1979, Nusrat and Benazir Bhutto were brought from Sihala to Rawalpindi jail at 11 a.m. They demanded to be told whether or not this was to be their last meeting. They received an evasive reply: “Aap yeh hee samajh lein” (you may take it as so). When the wife and daughter told Bhutto of it, he sent for the gaol superintendent and received confirmation that as far as mulakats (meetings) were concerned this was to be the aakhree (last). The exact hour when the hanging would take place was not divulged.

  Nusrat and Benazir spent three hours with Bhutto talking across the table. For once Bhutto was indiscreet and gave instructions about some papers which he had secreted away behind the walls in his Larkana house. Within four hours the house was searched and the papers were recovered.

  There are heart-rending accounts of this last meeting between Mr Bhutto and his wife and daughter. Benazir’s request to let her embrace her father or at least touch his feet before going was firmly turned down. A silver salver in which tea was served to Bhutto was handed back to her with the words “Ab Sahib ko iskee zaroorat nahin padegee” (the Sahib will not be needing this any more). It was obvious that the hour of doom was near. Nusrat and Benazir left the jail around 2.30 p.m. and demanded to be taken to see President Zia-ul-Haq. The superintendent rang up the President’s house and was told to tell the ladies to put whatever they wanted to say on paper.

  At 4 p.m. a magistrate arrived with writing material and asked Bhutto to write his last will which he would attest for him. Bhutto spent an hour or more writing out his last message. No one will ever know what he wrote because with his own cigar lighter he burnt the paper to ashes.

  At 6 p.m. he asked for hot water and his shaving set, saying, “I don’t want to die looking like a mullah.” And after he had erased the growth on his chin, he looked into the mirror and remarked in self-mockery, “Now I look like a third world leader.”

  A maulvi arrived with a tasbih (rosary) and a musalla (prayer mat) to assist Mr Bhutto in his last prayers. Mr Bhutto put the rosary round his neck but told the maulvi to remove the prayer mat and himself as he did not need anyone’s assistance to meet his Maker.

  Then the bravado went out of him. He lay down on the mattress and went into a kind of coma. As the time of execution drew near, other inmates of the jail were woken up and ordered to chant verses from the Holy Quran. Only Mr Bhutto remained impervious to the goings-on. At 1.30 a.m. jail officials accompanied by a magistrate and doctor arrived to take him out on his last journey to the scaffold. The superintendent shook him and said: “Bhutto Sahib, janey ka waqt agaya hai” (It is time to go). There are different versions of what followed. According to one, Mr Bhutto was roused and as soon as he saw the men with handcuffs, he panicked. He tried various ploys to play for time: he wanted to take a bath, write his will, have a cup of tea. But all were firmly but politely denied to him. According to the second version, he refused to be woken up. The superintendent feared that he had taken his own life and sent for the doctor. The doctor felt his pulse, heard his heartbeat through his stethoscope and opened his eyelids to make sure that he was alive. In either case, he was unable or unwilling to get up and had to be put on a stretcher. Since he was supine his hands were cuffed in front instead of behind him as prescribed for condemned men on their last journey.

  Extensive precautions had been taken against possible attempts to storm the gaol: names of the PLO and even some foreign governments were whispered as likely to make a desperate bid to save Mr Bhutto. Precautions taken included look-outs for parachutists and hostile helicopters. Consequently, a very large number of defence personnel were present in the gaol at the time. It is estimated that upwards of 250 men saw the execution with their own eyes.

  The scaffold is quite a distance from the condemned cell. The party with Mr Bhutto on the stretcher arrived at the foot of the gallows at about 1.45 a.m. As the stretcher was put down and the superintendent approached Mr Bhutto, he suddenly sat up. He mumbled some words which were interpreted as “Nusrat will be left alone”. When the handcuffs were unlocked and his hands tied behind him, he is reported to have protested that the knot was too tight. Then without assistance he went up the steps to the gallows. Before Tara Masih put the black hood over his face, Bhutto’s lip
s moved. According to one version, he mumbled “Finish it!” According to another his lips moved but no sound came from them. The trap was sprung exactly at 2 a.m. and the dapper, flamboyant Zulfi, once President and Prime Minister of Pakistan and next to Jinnah its most popular leader (Quaid-i-Awam), plunged to his doom.

  At the time of his death, Mr Bhutto was dressed in salwar-kameez which he had elevated to the status of an awami suit. He had a gold Zenith watch on his wrist and a gold ring with three diamonds on his finger. After Hayat Mohammed, a humble servitor in a Pindi mosque, had bathed his corpse and draped it in a shroud, somebody noticed that the diamond-studded ring was missing. The superintendent immediately arrested Tara Masih and Hayat Mohammed and ordered them to be searched. The ring was found in the pocket of the hangman, Tara Masih. Both the watch and the ring were handed over to Benazir Bhutto the next morning.

  The body was flown to Larkana and then taken to Nao Dero. Bhutto’s first wife, Ameer Begum, fifteen years older than him, his uncles, aunts and other relatives were allowed to see the dead man’s face. It was serene and calm as if in deep slumber with no visible marks of injury save a gash in the neck. (There is no truth in the story that men who are hanged have their necks elongated and their eyes and tongues hang out.)

  Mr Bhutto’s execution will wipe out memories of his evil deeds and highlight some of the good he did for his country. He is already being acclaimed as a martyr. There are reports of people going to his grave to offer fateha for the peace of his soul. Many are reported to kiss the grave, pick the dust about the grave and smear it on their foreheads. In every hamlet, village, town and city stretching from the Khyber to Karachi, groups gather to offer ghaibana Namaz-i-Janaza (funeral prayers in the absence of the body). Bhutto’s ghost has already emerged from its tomb; it will not be long before it turns the illusory dreams of power of the ruling generals into a nightmare.

  The beneficiaries of Bhutto’s “martyrdom”, as it will inevitably be described in times to come, will be the top leaders of the PPP including his cousin, Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, Mr Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, General Tikka Khan, who is held in great esteem in Pakistan, and above all his daughter, Benazir Bhutto.

  (April 1979)

  Pakistan: Sweet and Sour

  I return to the country where I was born, brought up, and sustained for the first half of my life as a stranger. If its people had turned hostile towards me I would not bother to go back to it: what is a country if not its people! However, despite the three bloody wars we fought with them and despite the fact that our leaders spit abuse at each other and the air is thick with rumours of a fourth war, I go to Pakistan as a Hindu goes to Varanasi, a Muslim to Mecca. It is my teerthasthan where I perform my haj and my umra. This is where my roots are. I have nourished them with tears of nostalgia and sheltered them from venomous winds of hate with my bare hands.

  I am not alone in my resolve never to let hate overcome my love for my neighbour. What if thirty-seven years ago we divided our patrimony and parted company? There are millions of others who, though they do not share my senile sentimentality for the land of their birth, are tortured alternately by love and hatred towards it. There is my ninety-year-old mother who demands: “Has some hakeem ordered you to go to Pakistan? These Pakistanis are a bari zaalim qaum (very cruel people): they’ll kill you. When you get to Lahore, give my love to Asghari, Akhtari, Jameela, Rabbia, Nusrat, Yasmeen. Sister Allaha Rakhi has been dead for some years but if you meet any of her children tell them their maasi (aunt) sends them her love. How I miss my village Mitha Tiwana! I wish I could see it once before I go. But must you go to Pakistan? They are very zaalim...” and so on.

  The start is auspicious. The police officer at Palam frisks me with his bare hands and then goes over my body with his metal detector. He pays special attention to my turban—I could be concealing a revolver in its folds—and to my side where I could be carrying a kirpan. The detector passes over my head and sides in silence. But as it is run down my frontage it lets out a loud bleep of complaint. The officer tries again. And again the tell-tale bleep. What could I possibly conceal in my trouser front? Prem Bhatia, Editor of the Tribune, who is in the queue behind, offers an explanation: “Fauladi hai! What he’s got there is made of steel.” Everyone around bursts out in laughter. The culprit is my zip-fastener.

  After clearing security at the airport, we line up along the PIA jet on the tarmac. It is a bitterly cold winter evening but we have to await our turn for a second body search. Two fierce-looking, hook-nosed Pakistani commandos in awami suits re-examine our hand bags and give us another frisking before they let us in the aircraft. Pakistanis are more vigorously researched and re-frisked than us Indians. They are not afraid of us but of their own countrymen owing allegiance to Bhutto’s Al Zulfiqar.

  I judge airways companies by the looks of their stewardesses and their clientele by its manners. I am glad to note that Indian Airlines girls look better than their Pakistani hawaii sisters but the manners of Pakistani passengers are as deplorable as those of Indians. Where the Indian girls score is with their smiles. In Pakistan, a girl who smiles is still regarded as wanton. (It is the same with their television announcers: waxen, frozen-faced with no animation in their voices.) Where Indian passengers score black marks for ill-behaviour is in the liberties they try to take with air hostesses. Recently a fellow-MP was reportedly unable to resist the temptation of letting his hands stray on the shapely figure of a lass taking something out of an overhead locker. Such behaviour in Pakistani aircraft could entail risk of the errant hand being lopped off and its owner’s backside being subjected to a few well-deserved lashes. Consequently, ill-mannered Pakistani passengers content themselves by being rude to air hostesses.

  Lahore is just a half-hour hop away from Delhi. Everything has the same feel as Delhi—climate, birds, trees. Only their humans look much healthier, bigger and better dressed. There are signs of poverty but none of starvation. Pakistanis are more forthcoming in their exhibitions of friendship. A handshake is regarded as too cold; it has to be a bear-hug. It takes all your wiles to avoid strangers pumping teas, coffees, and cokes into your system.

  Rawalpindi is another half-hour hop from Lahore. And Islamabad a half-hour drive from the airport. It is a sprawling, half-born city at the foot of the Murree hills and much cooler than Lahore. This time of the year, chill winds blow over a frosty landscape of leafless trees and uncompleted multi-storeyed buildings. Everything except the strapping Pathans is in miniature: tiny shops with little worth buying; dimly lit during the grey mornings and closed by 5.30 p.m. because of shortage of electric power.

  Prohibition is as much of a farce in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan as it was in Morarji Desai’s India. A drinking man can find liquor in the mirages of the Sahara desert. In Pakistan, it does not run like the river Ravi in spate, but it does trickle in tumblerfuls in most well-to-do Pakistani homes. You may have whisky served in metal tumblers or in a teapot and have to sip it from a china cup. It costs more than twice as much as in India but it also goes down twice as well because it tastes of sin.

  Religion lays its heavy hand on the social life of the country. At Lahore, morning azaans blare forth in succession from dozens of mosques lasting a full twenty-five minutes, followed by recitations from the Quran till the roar of traffic overcomes the incantations from the holy book.

  Our seminar on as secular a subject as relations between nations of South-east Asia began with the recitation of a tilawat and every Pakistani speaker, including the ex-Foreign Minister Agha Shahi, started his orations with Bismillah-e-Rehman-e-Rahim. One night I watched a debate on Pak television between the Minister of Information and Broadcasting and three divines on the role of media in spreading the message of Islam. A Maulvi Sahib who looked like a twin brother of the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid of Delhi was upset that not enough was being done to emphasize the “two-nation theory”. The other man, the principal of a Peshawar college, was unhappy that not enough emphasis was laid on the beauty of I
slam. The third, a grim-looking lady in dark glasses and head covered, was disturbed at the exposure of the limbs of girls at play. The Minister Sahib was on the defensive throughout. The next evening I happened to be sitting on his right at an official dinner hosted by him for the visiting Indian delegation. He read out a very formal speech of welcome. I had to respond. I had a little liquor inside and was emboldened to refer to his interview the evening before and offered him an appropriate sher (verse) for his next confrontation with orthodoxy:

  Mulla, gar asar hai dua mein

  To masjid hila ke dikha!

  Gar nahin to do ghoont pee

  Aur masjid ko hilta dekh.

  (Mulla, if your prayer has power

  Let me see you shake the mosque!

  If not, take a couple of pegs of liquor

  And see how the mosque shakes on its own.)

  There was a roar of applause in which the Minister joined. Then he whispered in my ear: “If these fellows had their way, they would make our girls’ hockey teams play in burqas.”

  (February 1984)

  Pakistan: Dream and Reality

  Indian leaders indulge in loose talk about Pakistan preparing for war against India. In Pakistan they construe their words as preludes to an Indian invasion of Pakistan. In the four days I spent there, whoever I talked to expressed misgivings of Indian designs: “Why do you want to destroy Pakistan?” they asked and added, “It seems India has never accepted our existence as a sovereign, independent nation.” When I assured them that this was not true and that Indians respected Pakistan’s sovereignty, wanted to live at peace with it and wished it stability and prosperity, they asked: “Why then are you amassing arms? You do not need them for use against any other of your neighbours. Since your armies are lined up on our frontiers, we can rightly conclude you mean to use them against us.” When I put the same question to them about the sophisticated weaponry they have been frantically acquiring and said, “You know that however much you get, you will not be able to withstand a Soviet assault on your territory, the fact that three-fourths of your army faces India is clear evidence you mean to use these weapons against us. Who else?” They conceded that their weapons were meant to be used against us—not to attack India but to defend themselves against an Indian attack. “Why don’t you agree to a no-war pact with us?” they asked. “Why don’t you agree to a treaty of friendship with us?” I asked in reply.