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what Gen. Zia’s death would mean for Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. After the military executed her father on April 4, 1979, Benazir and her mother, Nusrat had been put under house arrest. Hundreds of thousandsof Sindhis, shocked by the execution, had thronged to the Bhutto residence for condolence.
    Thereafter, in a cruel twist, Gen. Zia threw the mother and daughter into prison, where they endured years of harsh confinement. As Benazir developed medical problems, the dictator allowed her to briefly leave the country for treatment.
    I had been a reporter in
Dawn
for only two years when Benazir returned from a brief exile in London to an unprecedented welcome in Lahore, Punjab in 1986. She was then the co-chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party, a position she shared with her mother.
    The turnout of people was unlike anything seen in Pakistan’s recent history. Millions of people lined the roads from the Lahore airport; they climbed rooftops and trees to catch a glimpse of Benazir, and afterwards heard her denounce Gen. Zia for the murder of her father. Her meteoric rise would lead journalists to predict that the PPP would come to power and Benazir Bhutto would become the next prime minister of Pakistan.
    In 1986, I met Benazir for the first time at a select gathering of judges, lawyers and politicians invited to her late father ’s ancestral mansion, 70 Clifton in Karachi. After her triumphant return to Pakistan, she had invited us for moral support and consultations on her bid for power. Although her family home was styled on feudal mansions in interior Sindh, it was adorned with the expensive Western furniture and oil paintings that put it a notch above the decor of other elite homes in Karachi.
    Inside, my eyes were drawn to a picture of her fiery father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Mao cap on his head and fist clenched as he roared before a vast blur of faces. He had left a lasting impression on millions of Pakistanis as the savior of the oppressed classes and his execution by Gen. Zia in 1979 wounded millions of Sindhis and created a lasting antipathy toward the military.
    The Sindhi-speaking servants, who flitted around serving drinks to visitors, tip-toed with their eyes down, demonstrating how privileged they felt to serve the Bhuttos.
    The room buzzed with conversation from Western-educated intellectuals. Gen. Zia ul Haq was still in power but he had loosened his grip on the administration, leading to a demand for elections.The pressure from the electorate and Benazir’s supporters would build until the military convened elections two years later.
    Figure 1 Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto addresses public meeting in Pishin, Baluchistan on March 1, 1977 (
Dawn
photo).

    Benazir’s guests included the late Supreme Court judge, Justice Dorab Patel – a Parsi who had cast the dissenting vote against executing her father. Justice Patel later became chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, of which I was a council member for a decade. Keen to establish rule of law, Justice Patel was initially supportive of her bid to lead the nation.
    Benazir, who appeared poised to change the course of Pakistan’s history, intrigued me. She exuded a steely determination as we discussed politics in her elegant living room. Tall and stately, she was elegantly dressed in heavy, embroidered fabrics stitched into a traditional
shalwar kameez
and
dupatta
.
    Even then, I had misgivings about Benazir’s ability to lead. Watching her make small talk, with her manicured nails and matching make-up, I couldn’t help but wonder whether she would be no different from the Westernized elites who live in a cocoon in this deeply class-divided country.
    From my own experience, I knew that upper class Pakistanis in the cities know more about Western trends and fashions than their own archaic customary laws and traditions. Indeed, these Pakistanis often treat their national language Urdu with studied