Songs of Blood and Sword

       Songs of Blood and Sword – a Daughter’s memoir is aptly named, if not anything else. The violence and bloodshed that haunts the Bhutto family is the leitmotif of the book, and the only theme that seems stronger is the tribute Fatima Ali Bhutto pays to her dead father, Murtaza Ali Bhutto.

      The book provides an interesting insight into Pakistani politics. An unbiased account this may be not, what with the author being the granddaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and niece of Benazir Bhutto. However, to the uninformed reader, it provides a passing acquaintance with Pakistani politics, right from the times of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The content seems well researched, drawing on letters and interviews with close confidants and party workers of the PPP (Pakistani People’s Party).

        The book starts off by tracing the history of the Bhutto family. It briefly runs through a highlight of the lives of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s forefathers. It then moves on to describe the childhood and early adult years of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, how he went abroad to study at the University of South California and later on, the University of California, Berkeley. It describes his experiences there, and how these experiences molded his perceptions, his thinking and hence, his policies. The book talks about the deep commitment that Zulfikar had towards socialism. It traces his career as he came back to Pakistan, became foreign minister in the Ayub Khan government, resigned over differences of opinion regarding foreign policy, launched his own party, and became president and later on prime minister.

         The focus of the book then shifts to Murtaza Ali Bhutto, and traces his early years. The narrative moves between the arrest of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by Zia-ul-Haq and the efforts of the brothers Murtaza and Shahnawaz to raise awareness about his plight and garner sympathy and support from world leaders, while staying in exile in Afghanistan and later, Syria. Here’s where the bloodshed begins. The tale of the twists and turns in the lives of the Bhutto family and Pakistani politics as Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Shahnawaz Bhutto, Murtaza Bhutto and finally Benazir Bhutto are killed is told passionately, if not with great detail or precision.

           At the end of the day, what remains with you on reading the book is deep sense of empathy for the author for the entire trauma that she has undergone. The writing is extremely passionate, and makes for interesting reading. Any daughter will be moved by the manner in which the author looks up to her father, how close she was to him, and eventually, her sense of loss.