Marri was jailed on Zulfikar’s orders. Many tribesmen were. Their dissent was silenced forcefully and they have never forgiven him for it. Yousef Masti Khan, another Baloch politician my father’s age, also agreed to speak to me about the role Zulfikar played in Balochistan and was less old-fashioned and reticent about his views. He too had been arrested in 1974. Masti Khan was kept in barracks across from the passport offices in Saddar, Karachi, for fifteen days before he was moved by the army to a jail in Quetta. He was a young activist, a small player in provincial politics, and his father, Akbar Masti Khan, was an old friend of Zulfikar’s. They used to argue about his policies. After the younger Khan was released, his father was called by his old friend, the Prime Minister, and offered a contract to build a highway across the province.
‘I told my father, if you do it, I will leave here and take up arms in the mountains,’16 Yousef Masti Khan told me, speaking animatedly. ‘My father said, I can’t just refuse Zulfikar, he’s very vindictive.’ Eventually, according to Yousef, his father went to see Zulfikar. He knew he couldn’t take the deal and had to find a way out. He reached the official residence of the Prime Minister in Rawalpindi and found Zulfikar sitting on the staircase in his pyjamas, smoking a cigar. They talked for a while about old times, shooting the breeze as if things were normal, until finally Zulfikar asked him how things were in the province. ‘Do you want to hear the answer for a Prime Minister or for a friend?’ Akbar Masti Khan asked him. Zulfikar told his friend to speak openly. ‘Why are you killing people in Balochistan?’ he asked him. Zulfikar spoke about the violence, about the attacks on the state by the insurgents, about the sabotage. I don’t want violence, he said, but what can I do? ‘Withdraw the army,’ insisted his friend. With that Zulfikar hung his head. ‘I can’t,’ he replied.
It was a familiar refrain. He had, like all those before him, no power against the army when he was engaged in a war against his own people. The moment that Zulfikar began to fight Pakistanis, treasonous ones or not, he began to distance himself from his power base, from the source of his ultimate strength, and then the army, finally back in business, began to turn against him. Akbar Masti Khan was also arrested. And the army remained in Balochistan till the end of the decade.
‘The Balochistan operation gave the army a lot of strength,’ 17 agreed Miraj Mohammad Khan. ‘They saw that the government needed them. Zulfikar was fighting his natural allies – the NAP were socialist, progressive, he missed these crucial alliances and that’s what broke him.’ Miraj left the PPP in 1974, in protest against the government’s violent attack on Balochistan, and because of the about-turn Zulfikar had taken against the unions.
‘The feudalists betrayed him. They infiltrated the party and then used its apparatuses against the people and because he had become insecure by that point, because these feudalists distanced him from the people, Zulfikar let them,’ Miraj explained to me in Urdu. ‘I walked out of a meeting in 1972 when we were discussing the union protest in Landhi, Karachi. The workers were striking and causing disruptions and Zulfikar said to us, “I assure you the strength of the street will be crushed by the strength of the state.” So I walked out. He called me later and said I’d broken protocol. I told him why I left, why I broke party protocol. “It’s the situation, Miraj!” Zulfikar replied, justifying what he had said. But the police, under the orders of the Chief Minister, had fired on the workers. The workers, the people, before this shooting believed that everything had changed with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, they believed they had come to power and this terrified the industrialists. So, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto placated them.’
For Miraj, a lifelong Marxist so committed to the idea of a new Pakistan he still refuses to speak in English, this U-turn was unacceptable. Though he was one of Zulfikar’s closest associates, Miraj left the party. ‘I told him, you’re being taken over by Intelligence. They’re alienating you from your strength. J. A. Rahim was pushed out, Dr Mubashir Hasan was pushed out, so was I – all the founding members, all of us the most radical elements. Intelligence would send him reports saying we were plotting to kill him and as he got weaker, he became more paranoid.’ The year after he left, Miraj was arrested. J. A. Rahim one of the writers of the party manifesto, was brutally punished for his dissension. Dr Mubashir Hasan, the Finance Minister at whose house the PPP was founded, resigned from his ministry post, but stayed – one of the few – with Zulfikar.
{ 5 }
A ll of the men who gave their youth and their commitment to the party with Zulfikar that afternoon in Lahore were, one by one, sent to jail. ‘He was not a prophet,’ Miraj, now frail and ill, told me. ‘He was a great man and a great leader, but in our culture we have a tendency to make prophets out of men.’ The conclusion of Zulfikar’s power was near, and in his weakness he didn’t even see it coming.
Towards the end of his political reign, Zulfikar floundered. Despite the United States’ hostility towards Pakistan’s burgeoning nuclear programme, the building of the ‘Muslim bomb’ was pushing ahead, though it was winning the Prime Minister no friends in the process. Henry Kissinger, who publicly rated Zulfikar an able and intelligent politician, was said to have warned him that the Americans would ‘make a horrible example’ out of him if he were to proceed with Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions.
Losing his solid footing, Zulfikar became nervous and started to appease the opposition at home, hoping the turnaround would placate his traditional enemies. He amended the 1973 constitution several times, enhancing his own powers by allowing the federal government to ban political parties and curbing the power of the courts so that, under the third amendment, ‘no order could be made prohibiting detention or granting bail to a person so detained’.1 Imagining his position secure, Zulfikar curried favour with the religious parties, small in number but powerful in terms of their fear factor, by amending the constitution to define the parameters of who was a Muslim. The Ahmedis, a small sect of Muslims who believe a prophet after Muhammad, called Ahmed, will one day walk the earth, were officially defined as non-Muslims. Zulfikar went further: he banned alcohol, drove the country’s gambling and entertainment industries underground and declared Friday, the day of prayers, a public holiday.
But he could not stave off the decline that had already begun. The feudalists, who had infiltrated the PPP in a bid to secure their own positions, began fighting among themselves. Abdul Waheed Katpar, one of the founding members of the PPP, remembers this period as one of intense paranoia for Zulfikar. ‘He thought the army would kill him. He called them the Khakis. When the big zamindar in the party began to destabilize the party’s image with their public feuding, Zulfikar told them, “Your fighting won’t destroy me, the army will not spare me now – don’t think they will spare you either.”’2
In 1976, when the butcher of Bengal, General Tikka Khan, retired from the army, Zulfikar replaced him with General Zia ul Haq ‘over the heads of five senior generals’,3 promoting him to Chief of Army Staff purely because Zulfikar believed him to be a meek, subservient man. Zia swore his undying loyalty to the Prime Minister on a Koran and bowed feverishly whenever Zulfikar walked into a room. Zia was a ‘cunning man’, remembered Katpar, ‘always acting over-courteous with Bhutto. He was very ambitious and that made him very cruel.’4 A stout man, with pomaded hair parted severely in the middle, and a moustache dyed black and carefully combed, Zia came from humble origins. He was not known for his political aspirations, but for his obedience to orders and religiously inspired simple-mindedness.
A story often repeated in my family, and used to defend if not explain Zulfikar’s decision to promote the army general who later had him killed, went like this: Zulfikar had called his army chief to the Prime Minister’s office for a word. Zia arrived on time, early even, and was taken into the office, where he sat down nervously, shaking his feet and twitching his legs. He had begun to smoke, a habit he indulged in to calm his nerves, when the Prime Minister walked in. Zia, various family members would exclaim, jumped up deferentially an
d shoved the lit cigarette into his pocket. It began to burn through the fabric of his jacker. Smoke came billowing out of Zia’s uniformed military jacket, but he was so anxious around Zulfikar that he was too embarrassed to admit he had been smoking – hardly a crime – and too polite to put out the fire.
But the quiet and unassuming general would not have to wait long. His designs on the presidency were already in motion, even as his pocket linings burned. ‘I know the bloodhounds are after my blood,’5 Zulfikar raged publicly, in one of his last sessions before parliament. He could feel it coming.
Despite the political turmoil of these years, Zulfikar still found time to stay in close touch with Murtaza. When Murtaza first arrived at Harvard, Zulfikar wrote him a letter, the first to his son at college, on official stationery.
In the beginning you will be homesick and anxiously expect to hear from your parents, your brother and sister . . . but the more you settle down you will not get as excited in the future as you will get now in getting news from home. This does not mean that you will lose interest in what is happening in your country but that intense eagerness will lose its flavour. Most probably, I am writing to you all the things I wrote to Pinky in my first letter. Now this is natural because I am the same person, writing with the same sentiments and values to my son instead of my daughter under exactly the same circumstances. The thoughts and the feelings will be approximately the same. I could have well written: ‘Hullo, Mir, how are you? Please read the first letter I wrote to Pinky when she went to Radcliffe. If she has not cared to preserve it, I will send you a photostat copy. Goodbye son, I am very busy, I have some important work to attend to. Do well and look after yourself.’ But I am not made of that kind of wood. I have great love and affection for you although I rarely gave over demonstration of my affection for you. There are many reasons for this reticence. I tried to explain them to you when you were here, ever since you were young. In the first place, you are my eldest son and it is essential for me to see that you are not spoilt. I must make sure you grow up in this cruel world as a hard and a brave man. By hard I do not mean cruel, because all of us have a great deal of art in us. By hard I mean tough enough to face the bad side of life as a man. As my eldest son, more than the other children of mine, you personify me and the family. That is why it is necessary to deal with you differently. I would like you to grow up to be an immaculate individual, sharp in intelligence and smart in appearance. You have the making of such a man. With hard work and diligence I am certain you will do well, very well I hope. A person can be jealous of others but he can never be jealous of his own children. This is what my father told me again and again. And this is what I tell you. I will be the happiest man in the world if you come back with a first-class education and with all the right ideas to do better than I have done. I have succeeded in some respects but I have also failed in a way. I do not want you to fail in any way. There is no substitute for hard work. A hardworking mediocre is less of a curse than a lazy genius. Hard work does not kill anybody. Time passes and the temptations of life pass faster. They go by with the flash of the moment. God has created the world and given it unparalleled beauty. In the whole of this beauty there is nothing more beautiful than the human body and nothing more creative than the human mind. What we make of this body and mind is for us to determine. It will be for you to finally determine what you want to make of your life. You will have to take the decision. You will have to decide if you want to leave behind a good name or a bad name.
Zulfikar wrote his children letters that he must have known would have a place in history. He spent hours crafting them, taking the time to write them on aeroplanes, in base camps, in various state offices around the country, until they were ready to be typed up by his aide-de-camp. The letters are sometimes funny, sometimes casual with a joke here or there, but mainly they are tutorials: instructional and conscientious. Papa kept all his father’s letters in their original envelopes, stamps untouched, seals unbroken. He would delicately remove each letter as if performing open-heart surgery, careful not to destroy any part of the envelope. After Papa read them, he placed all the letters in a blue plastic folder. He had left them, a great big pile of envelopes, in Karachi but he spoke about them often. After we returned to Karachi and Papa came home, one of the first things we did together at 70 Clifton was look for the folder of letters. It was the one thing that had not been touched or aged by time, the one artefact, more precious than any others, that no one had removed and claimed as their own; the folder was where Papa had left it, on a shelf in his father’s library.
As if Zulfikar was certain that the time he had with his children was not going to be nearly enough to tutor them in the lessons of his world, he wrote:
You do not get excited easily and this is a good thing. You have received all the political education necessary to do well in the subjects you have decided to take. You have travelled a great deal, you have been to the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, you have seen politics and diplomacy from close range and in reality. You have learnt your politics not from thick books but from being close to me. I took you with me to the Soviet Union and to China with a marked purpose. I sent you again to China with the same purpose. [Murtaza spent a summer travelling around China, his father sent him to see more of the country and to learn about the history of socialism on the footpaths of Chinese cities and villages.] In the study of your field you have advantages which others would envy. Make full use of your previous experiences.
This letter, in particular, is the most tender Zulfikar wrote. His lesson-giving is brief. Here he adopts a helpful tone, explaining issues his young son cannot possibly know, but should.
Americans tend to be argumentative. They like to quote from books. They get so involved in details that they fail to fathom the main points. They do so much shadow boxing that they do not grasp the central issue. They have so many prejudices, they postulate so many theories and notions that they lose the essential factors. Ironically, the essential factors are quite straightforward and simple. The Americans like to make problems complicated. Their egos get involved. They place far too much reliance on the machine, the gadgets they have made. They have become the creature of their own creation. Partly for this reason they get bogged down in detail. They do not visualize the broad horizon. They do not go over the rainbow. To show their wisdom they will ask you to read a number of books. They will ask you to write many papers. They will use impressive expressions without fully comprehending the thinking behind them. They find it difficult to go straight to the heart of the problem and it is the heart, my son, that you must touch and hold.
Zulfikar reminds his son, once more, to study hard. He warns him against the futility of memory as an educational tool, arguing that a refined mind is infinitely more valuable than a photographic one. He tells him he has both capabilities and reminds Murtaza that he is his father’s son. That is why this letter is so important for him to write.
Mir, my son, take things in their normal course, in their stride. Do not get depressed by a setback and do not get exalted by success. Have your feet always on the ground. Never lose heart. Always learn a lesson from a setback, always be humble in success. Speak with confidence, maintain your point of view courageously but not obstinately. Keep an open and objective mind, always be anxious to learn from others to acquire knowledge. Maintain a sense of balance. Above all, at no time should you be ashamed of your background or your culture. In upholding your rich heritage you do not have to be offensive. Be natural and normal. Do not lose the strength of your conviction either by prejudice or by complex. Do not get provoked. Good or bad, your roots are here in a history coming from a thousand years. I think they are good roots. A manifestation of national pride does not mean the demonstration of chauvinism or arrogance. You do not have to prove that Pakistan is good by proving that America is bad . . . Never be ashamed of your culture, never be ashamed of your background, never apologize for the conditions in Asia. Never be afraid of upholdi
ng honourable principles. Europe brought about the miserable conditions of Asia and we are trying to remove them. Remember that despite all the advances of science and technology, Islam is the last message of God. Try to keep in touch with your religion as much as possible . . .
Like any father, Zulfikar digresses into a ‘just say no’ discussion. He talks to his son about the myriad of human failings, of vice and of other ‘soul-destroying habits’. He asks him not to smoke cigarettes, but says it is better that he does that than drink. Then anxiously points out that cigarettes cause cancer and he should probably not do that either. Zulfikar warns Murtaza that many students in America take drugs. He does not realize that many students in Pakistan take them too. But he nervously, you can tell, tells his son that those students out there will tell you, ‘Why don’t you take a puff?’ It’s innocent-sounding enough, but BAM. Your life will be over, you will have lost your soul to drugs. Destroying your life destroys mine, he pleads. Don’t do it, son, don’t, he beseeches.
Before concluding, let me again assure you that my thoughts are always with you. I would request you to overlook the day I slapped you in the Clifton House on Sunny’s [Sanam, his younger sister] false complaint in 1962. We look forward to your visit to your home in the coming summer. The winter winds will pass and you will be happy to be back with us for your holidays. Till then look after yourself, be careful of the cold, study hard and remember us. God bless you!
The letter is signed in blue ink, ‘Your loving Papa, Zulfikar’.
Songs of Blood and Sword Page 13
