Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir
The tense first chapter of this moving memoir ends with the announcement, “Your father’s been shot.” Fatima was 14 in 1996 when her beloved father, Mir Murtazi Bhutto, was murdered by police in Karachi. Her grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan, was executed in 1979. One aunt was murdered in 1985, and another aunt, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in 2007. Was Benazir involved in the murder of Fatima’s father? With the account of her dynastic family and their bloody battles, Bhutto weaves in the politics of Pakistan and its foreign relations, including those with the U.S., the Middle East, and China. Exposing the corruption of the present leadership and the military, she is passionate about how fundamentalist religion is used to thwart democracy. Was her grandfather removed for attempting to bring in some semblance of democracy? Can a dynasty introduce democracy? With the current arguments about the role of the U.S. in Afghanistan and in nuclear-armed Pakistan, this fierce insider’s view will have a wide readership, both angry and sympathetic. --Hazel Rochman