Songs of Blood and Sword Read online

  The Avari is one of Karachi’s grander hotels, founded by an old Parsi family patriarch, Dinshaw Avari, who eventually passed it, as is the custom in Pakistan, to his son, Byram. It’s rather a plain hotel, painted blue and white on the outside, not too ostentatious, unlike the spate of foreign chain hotels that are the Avari’s neighbours. In the days before skyscrapers captured the imagination of the city’s architects, the Avari was advertised as the country’s tallest building. Now banks compete with each other over whose building is the highest as they struggle upwards to escape from the smog and poverty of the city. In the mid-nineties, the Avari Hotel was known for being home to Karachi’s only Japanese restaurant, Fujiyama. We had eaten there that night.

  That Friday evening Papa was wearing a navy blue suit, one of the few he had that still fitted him. Like his father, my grandfather Zulfikar Ali, Papa was a dandy when it came to clothes and grooming. He was an elegant man, nearly six foot three with salt and pepper hair and a neatly trimmed moustache. Papa had put on weight over the past two years, the busy and tense months that marked our return to Pakistan and the start of a newly public life, and we teased him about it. He took it good-naturedly, insisting that he was going on a diet soon, while my younger brother Zulfi and I patted his belly.

  Papa signed the Avari guestbook that night. The staff at the restaurant presented the book to him with a great flourish and opened it, ironically, on the very page where General Zia ul Haq had signed an effusive note. It was the absolute worst page they could have turned to. General Zia presided over the military coup that deposed my grandfather’s government. Two years later, after arresting and torturing him, General Zia put my grandfather to death. They say he was hanged, but my family never saw the body. The army had buried my grandfather’s body quietly, not even notifying our family, before they released the news of his execution to the public. Papa looked at the General’s handwriting. He calmly read the General’s thoughts on Fujiyama’s fine cuisine before making a face at me, sticking his tongue out and frowning comically, one of the few light moments we had that night at dinner, and then turned several pages on and began to write.

  At dinner Papa was quiet. He sat across the table from me with his arms crossed in front of him, his chin resting in the bridge made of his intertwined fingers. It made me nervous to see Papa, usually animated and boisterous, so subdued.

  Two days earlier, Papa had returned to Karachi from a trip to Peshawar feeling calm and rested. He had arrived late and was eating dinner and telling Mummy and me about his trip when, shortly after midnight, the intercom phone in the drawing room rang. It could only be someone in the kitchen or in the office next door at 71 Clifton: no one else was awake. The kitchen was close by and Asghar, our bearer, could have walked over if he needed to tell us anything. It had to be the office. Papa picked up the phone on the first ring. ‘Gi? ’ he said, yes? He listened quietly for a few minutes. ‘Gari tayar karo, jaldi,’ he said, get the car ready, quickly. His relaxed mood was gone. Papa put down the phone, stood up and walked towards the door that connected to my parents’ bedroom. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked. ‘They’ve taken Ali Sonara,’ Papa replied. ‘They just raided his house and took him.’ ‘Where are you going?’ I asked slowly as Mummy’s hands went softly to steady my back, patting me and reminding me that she was still there, that things were going to be OK. ‘I’m going to find him,’ Papa said and walked out of the drawing room.

  Ali Sonara was from Lyari, one of the most densely populated, politically radical and poorest neighbourhoods of Karachi. He belonged to a Katchi Memon family, a small Sunni community whose roots in the region can be traced back to the Ran of Kutch and Sindh desert regions. He had been a loyal supporter of the Bhutto family since his early schooldays. After Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had been overthrown and arrested by General Zia’s military coup in 1977, Sonara abandoned his studies and became one of Lyari’s most prominent activists.

  He joined the Save Bhutto Committee in his community and worked tirelessly to oppose General Zia’s abrogation of the 1973 constitution. After Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was killed by the military government in 1979, Sonara joined the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) and worked closely with my aunt, Benazir Bhutto, for the next ten years. He was a member of the movement’s Karachi Committee and spent his time distributing pamphlets against martial law and the illegality of Bhutto’s execution, holding covert meetings to enlist local support and organizing protests and demonstrations.

  In 1984, during the height of Zia’s dictatorial repression, a bomb was planted in central Karachi’s popular Bori Bazaar. Bori Bazaar is a busy market named after the religious sect of Bohri Muslims who wear distinctive long petticoats and blouses with hijab-like hoods. When the bomb exploded, scores of women and children who frequent the bazaar to shop for fabric, beads and colourful homeware were among the injured. Upon hearing the news Ali Sonara ran to the bazaar from his home nearby in Lyari.

  He was certain that the bomb had been planted by the military but if Bhutto activists raised protests, the neighbourhood would be swept and men would be swiftly carted off to jail or, worse, to stadiums for public lashings. Resistance was dealt with severely by General Zia, and Sonara, who had spent several stints in Karachi jails for his leadership role within the Sindhi community, knew that the harder you fought, the more vicious was the punishment.

  When Sonara arrived at Bori Bazaar he ran back and forth between ambulances helping to shift bodies onto stretchers. He coordinated blood donations and was dealing with the panicked families of the dead and injured as best he could when Zia’s Chief Minister, Ghous Ali Shah, turned up surrounded by film crews to survey the wreckage.

  Ali Shah claimed that the blast had been the work of the antimilitary activists, terrorists they called them then, and that the state would soon find these terror mongers and punish them without mercy. As soon as Sonara saw Ali Shah, he raced over to him and punched him squarely in the face. It was the desperate act of a desperate man. The Chief Minister promptly arrested Sonara for planting the bomb in Bori Bazaar.

  He was later released without charge.

  When, in May 1986, Benazir returned to Karachi from self-imposed exile in London, it was Sonara, with the help of several other prominent activists, notably Ali Hingoro, who arranged for her reception in the city. At the time, General Zia’s supporters in Sindh, the Muhajir Quami Movement (MQM) party, had been set up in Karachi to present an alternative to the People’s Party, whose power base was in the province. The MQM were created to present an alternative, and, failing that, simply to frighten people into switching their allegiance. Lyari had been one of the neighbourhoods first seized upon by the MQM and it was a dangerous time to show your party colours, but Sonara took the risk. He organized a jalsa or rally for Benazir at Kakri Ground, an enormous sports stadium in Lyari. Benazir thanked him and the others at the rally, calling Sonara out from behind her where he was acting as her chief bodyguard. ‘This is my brother,’ she said. ‘Yeh mera bhai hai.’

  Benazir, new to organized party politics and intent on building a career that would see her reach the pinnacle of power, came to depend on Sonara. He was one of the naujawans, or youth leaders, who organized public meetings for her throughout the city and travelled with her as part of her security detail as she visited cities across Sindh. As a member of the Karachi Committee Sonara was a key player in the Pakistan People’s Party grassroots politics and provided the backbone for Benazir’s election victory.

  But Sonara soon fell out of favour. His loyalty to my father Murtaza, Benazir’s younger brother in exile, was proving difficult for Benazir to handle. By 1988 as Benazir began to appoint her first cabinet and bestow ministries upon those brought into the party fold by her new husband, Asif Zardari, Sonara’s fondness for plain speaking had become wholly inconvenient. At a party meeting at 71 Clifton, the dispute between Sonara and Benazir came to a head. He was objecting to the apparent favours that were being distributed to members of Pakistan’s
business and feudal community when Benazir, who famously had very little tolerance for dissent or criticism, reacted. ‘Sit down, Ali!’ she commanded. ‘Behave properly. I’m the chairperson of this party and you have no right to speak in front of me this way. ‘Mohtarma,’ Sonara began, using the title that Benazir now insisted on being addressed by, ‘it is absolutely my right. I am a political worker and it is my right to tell you what I see going wrong.’

  After Benazir’s government fell in 1990, Sonara went underground. He had made too many enemies, powerful men who pushed him out of the party that he had helped build as a bulwark against military dictatorship. He resurfaced in 1993 when national elections were called. When my father filed his nomination papers, Sonara joined his campaign. It was what Benazir had feared.

  That night Ali Sonara had been visiting Seema and Inayat Hussain, two old PPP stalwarts. Seema Hussain is a former labour leader who joined the party under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. She worked briefly with Benazir, but also found herself falling out of favour as the party began to veer blindly towards the pursuit of power and money. Seema, too, joined my father and worked as a leader within the women’s wing of the Pakistan People’s Party (Shaheed Bhutto or ‘Martyr Bhutto’, the party my father founded as a reform movement in 1995).

  Things had become edgy around Lyari, especially for those who dared to openly criticise the government. Fearing the police might be looking for him, Sonara had moved with his wife Sakina and their two young children over to the Hussains’. But the police had tracked him down. Shortly after midnight they raided the house. The police produced no arrest warrant; they entered, picked up their target, and left. Sakina called our office at 71 Clifton minutes later. Sonara had made some phone calls from the Hussains’ house and it seemed the police, waiting for some sign that he was nearby, traced the calls and swooped. ‘Where are they taking him?’ sobbed Sakina on the phone. ‘What has he done?’

  I remember Mummy being calm that night as Papa hurried out the door. It was close to one in the morning and I was scared. I tried to stop him. I followed Papa out of the drawing room and walked with him to the door, begging him not to leave. It was so late, couldn’t he wait till the morning? I reasoned, pulling on my father’s arm as he walked, trying to halt his movement. Why did he have to rush off like this? When I grabbed Papa’s arm again, he removed my hand. ‘Fati,’ he said, ‘I have to go and be with my people.’ I felt my eyes sting. ‘Let me go now,’ he said, softening his voice, ‘please.’ I stepped back and nestled myself into my mother’s arms, both of us silent as Papa got into the car and drove away into the Karachi night.

  Karachi is often described as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Home to somewhere between 16 and 18 million people, our city is overcrowded, underdeveloped and poor. Its police force, perpetually violent and corrupt, lends itself easily to crime and has a sinister reputation among citizens irrespective of their neighborhoods. In the 1990s, under Benazir’s second government, extra-judicial killings were rife. Assassination squads within the police force were known by special theatrically coded nicknames, and so-called ‘encounters’ or police target killings disguised as shoot-outs were commonplace. This was the city that my father was to cross that night in his search for Sonara.

  Papa’s first stop was the Central Investigation Agency Centre1 in the Garden area of Karachi, near the busy Lee Market on the threshold between Lyari and Karachi’s old colonially constructed commercial hub of Saddar. My father entered the thana or station and approached the officer on duty.

  Through what information had been gleaned at the time, it seemed that Sonara’s arrest had been ordered under the CIA Garden’s jurisdiction. If it was a legal arrest there should have been paperwork attesting to the time, place and charges levied against him, but, despite my father’s official request, no evidence of Sonara’s imprisonment was produced that night. Papa and his guards, who always travelled with him in Karachi, left CIA Garden and drove towards SSP South, the police station near the Sindh Governor’s residence – quite a distance from Lee Market and a rung or two up the hierarchy of powerful police thanas. SSP South was commanded by a notorious senior superintendent of the police named Wajid Durrani.

  As the minutes ticked by and the clock neared two in the morning, the chances of finding information about Ali Sonara’s arrest and whereabouts grew slim. The police in Karachi are famous mercenaries, known for not playing by the rules. No warrant meant no official culpability when a dead body surfaced on the side of a highway or in a jute bag on one of the city’s many garbage heaps. My father entered the SSP South station and found it, like CIA Garden, empty except for one Pathan assistant superintendent seated behind a large wooden desk. Papa moved towards the desk. As an elected member of parliament he had the right to enter any government office, whether it was a hospital, school or ministry. ‘Where are the records of Ali Sonara’s arrest?’ he asked again. The assistant superintendent shrugged his shoulders, ‘I don’t know.’ My father repeated his question.

  As Papa told me later, the assistant superintendent slowly put his hand on the handle of a drawer underneath his desk and steadied himself, extending his arm and pulling the drawer closer to him. As he slowly opened the drawer, there was no rustle of papers, no clicking of pens as they rolled against each other. The drawer was empty save for a gun. Papa reacted as his guards feared he might. ‘Utt Jaho! ’ he yelled, ‘Stand up!’, pulling the police officer towards him by his collar. ‘Tell them all – the Deputy Inspector-General, the Inspector-General, the SSP – everyone: if you produce proof of Sonara’s arrest, I’ll go home. If not, if he’s in danger, then none of you are safe.’ They drove to one more station, the CIA Centre on Napier Road, after which they returned home without incident, two hours after they had first left the house.

  A trap had been laid. My father, impetuous and fiery, had reacted just how they thought he would. By the next afternoon we noticed the first tank parked outside our house.

  18 September, a Thursday, was Papa’s forty-second birthday. I woke up in the morning and ran down the stairs to find him. I could hardly sleep the night before, restless with worry over Sonara’s arrest and what Papa’s midnight search might mean. Typically, the front pages of all the papers carried the sensational news of my father storming several police stations. No mention was made of Sonara’s illegal arrest or of the complicity of the police force in his kidnapping.

  We passed the day waiting: Papa for news of Ali Sonara and us for the evening celebrations that would mark Papa’s forty-second year. That afternoon as Papa was in his room getting ready for the evening I went in to speak to him. He was polishing his shoes – he was fastidious about a multitude of seemingly innocuous things that had to be done in a specific way – the order of his books, the arrangement of his pens, the manner in which cups should be placed in a cupboard, the evening polishing of his shoes. ‘Papa, can I ask you a question?’ I said, leaning against the bedroom door. He looked up at me and smiled. ‘Anything, Fatushki,’ Papa said, using my Soviet nickname.

  ‘Is Mummy my legal guardian?’ I asked nervously. Papa was still smiling at me, moving back and forth between his bedside and his shoeshine station by the closet. ‘Yes, of course. Why are you asking?’ I didn’t know why I was asking; it had never occurred to me to check my guardianship before. I just knew that if anything happened to my father I wanted to be safe. ‘Papa, are you sure? Are you a hundred per cent positive that Mummy’s my legal guardian after you?’ I pressed. Papa put his things down and came over to me. He put his hands on my chin and lifted my face towards his. ‘Of course I am, don’t you worry,’ he said and kissed me on my forehead.

  We both knew why I was asking. I had a biological mother somewhere in America, a woman my father divorced when I was three years old. Fowzia. I hadn’t seen her for years. As a child it had been my father who had brought me up: making my food, cutting my hair and taking me to school. I never felt I had a mother till he met Ghinwa sometime after my fourth birthda
y.

  ‘Papa, are you sure you’re right?’ I asked. He nodded to me. ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, can I have the papers that prove it?’ Papa let go of my head and laughed out loud. Wherever did I learn to become so paranoid? he asked. Yes, yes there were papers – did I need them that instant? ‘No,’ I said, ‘I just want to make sure you have them.’

  The evening celebrations came and went. Friends joined us and brought sweets and bouquets of flowers and funny cards and I sat next to my father in our velvety drawing room throughout the evening. We ate dinner in the dining room, the table set by Mummy and laid with silver from my great-grandfather, Sir Shahnawaz’s time. We ate Middle Eastern mezze and taboule and barbecued meats. It felt as if we were home in Damascus, far away from all the danger and violence of Karachi. But we weren’t. We were in the thick of the danger, though we didn’t realize it at the time. Papa kept excusing himself to go to the phone and check whether Ali Sonara had been found, but he did so discreetly not wanting to scare or upset us. We hadn’t heard anything all day. More disturbingly, it looked as if the state was building a case against Papa. There had been some small blasts around the city, small pathakas or firecrackers put in the dustbins outside trade centres and government offices in Saddar. No one was hurt, but the tension was palpable. Late editions of city newspapers quoted the authorities as laying the blame on the workers of PPP (SB) and on my father.

  By the evening, we spotted another tank, this one behind the first. The next morning there was a third, on the right-hand side of the house, hugging the corner of the office at 71 Clifton. By 20 September, two days later, there were four armoured vehicles, one on each side of 70 Clifton. We were surrounded.