Coming of age in the Benazir Bhutto era
KARACHI, Pakistan
THE SHOCK and confusion I feel after learning about former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination is strangely familiar. One incarnation of Benazir, a woman I thought I knew and wanted to be, died on Sept. 19, 1996, when she was implicated in the death of her estranged brother, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was brutally shot, allegedly by police officials in a planned attack outside his home.
I was barely 16, learning how to flirt and sneaking cigarettes at the first dance party I was allowed to attend, when the power was switched off and an eerily dark Karachi echoed with the sound of gunfire. In the coming days, opposition politicians, armchair pundits, and my parents grumbled about state terrorism, rampant corruption, and Pakistan's devolution into a police state. This incident occurred during Benazir's second stint as the prime minister of Pakistan. I continued to sneak cigarettes and marveled at the ease with which icons can crumble.
Until 1996, Benazir had seemed like a real-life Wonder Woman, having expanded the conditions of possibility for Pakistani women for over a decade since her entry into politics. While the boys at school emulated buff cricketers, my girl-friends and I would drape white scarves across our heads and try to imitate Benazir's awkward accent when speaking in Urdu, a vestige of her privilege and power. And who could blame us?
During her first term as prime minister, Benazir was a role model, the likes of which Pakistan will be hard-pressed to find again. In 1988, at the age of 35, she became the youngest person, and the first woman, to head a Muslim nation.
Too young to understand the dynastic politics that spurred her career, I saw in Benazir a vision of femininity that had yet to materialize in the world around me. She was a sister who outshone her brothers by carrying forth her father's legacy; a daughter of privilege who knew the travails of solitary confinement; a woman who deigned to marry only after she was confident that her career would not stall; a young bride who kept her last name; a mother who did not let pregnancy get in the way of politics; a Harvard and Oxford graduate who could move with ease amongst the throng of truckers, farmers, and day laborers who attended Pakistan
The fact that Benazir happily assumed the responsibility of inspiring millions of women still recovering from General Zia-ul Haq's rigid and repressive regime became apparent to me when she presided over my high school's annual athletics meet in 1990. All the young girls who had won races earned a wink, a warm hug, or had words of wisdom whispered in their ears. To this day, I regret not having run a wee bit faster.
Over the years, though, I have found my enthusiasm for Benazir slowing down. Her charisma suffered, owing to well-circulated jokes about conjugal visits during her husband Asif Zardari's eight-year imprisonment. She disappointed Pakistani women when she failed to repeal the Draconian Hudood and Zina Ordinances that continue to curtail the rights of Pakistani women, especially those who have been raped. Her glamorous visage - well-cut shirts, stark-white scarves, a slick of red lipstick - had been supplanted by images of gore from Mir Murtaza's death, violent political clashes in Karachi, and, of course, her own untimely demise in Rawalpindi.
I still mark the day that my admiration for Benazir mellowed into ambivalence as the beginning of adulthood. I suspect her tragic death will similarly age the Pakistani nation.
Huma Yusuf is a Karachi-based journalist and graduate student at the MIT Comparative Media Studies program.
