Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter'S Memoir Read Online Free PDF

two bodyguards. They were political workers too, but once my father was released from jail they rarely ever left his side. They protected him as if he was their own father, never moving too far from him. He had information from the police, Papa explained. He asked YarMohammad and Sajjad to leave Karachi. ‘Go where you want, it doesn’t matter where, but I don’t want you or your families nearby. We don’t know what they’ve done to Sonara and I want you safe until we find out.’ Yar Mohammad and Sajjad were not to accompany Papa to his public meeting in Surjani Town after the press conference; he made it clear that he would not risk their lives. The men protested, without effect. Things were just too dangerous to take a chance. They didn’t ask where the information about their lives came from or what it meant. But Papa was insistent. They were to leave him today and get out of the city, end of discussion.
    When Papa started the press conference, there was a weighty silence in the room. The papers had been full of stories, some falsely titillating, some accurate, about Papa’s midnight visits to the police centres two nights earlier. On 18 September, General Naserullah Babar, Benazir’s powerful Interior Minister who would proudly herald the Taliban in next-door Afghanistan as ‘my boys’, had taken to the floor of the National Assembly in Islamabad. General Babar announced that there were going to be, according to his top-level information, two bomb blasts in Karachi as a protest against the arrest of the terrorist Ali Sonara. He informed the assembly members and the press that the perpetrators of the violence were going to be from the MQM party or the Shaheed Bhutto party. Sure enough, there were ‘blasts’, and the government was quick to blame my father’s party. The journalists at the press conference on 20 September were eager to hear what Murtaza Bhutto had to say about all this. General Babar’s clairvoyance was making for serious copy in all the papers.
    Papa began his statement. ‘There is a plot against me, formulated by the most criminal elements within the police force, such as Wajid Durrani and Shahbaig Suddle.’ Papa named two notorious police officers. Rumour had it that they had achieved high rank owing to their close personal friendship with Benazir’s husband, Zardari, and also to their well-documented penchant for violence. Suddle was the District Inspector-General of Karachi and Wajid Durrani was the Senior Superintendent of the Police, heading one of the police stations my father visited on the night of the 17th. But Papa mispronounced oneof their names; it wasn’t Shahbaig Suddle, it was Shoaib Suddle. We wouldn’t forget Shoaib Suddle’s name again, not ever.
    ‘These men,’ my father continued, ‘under the supervision of Abdullah Shah, the Chief Minister of Sindh, want to kill me. My life is in danger today. I’m giving this press conference to tell the government that my bags are ready. Bring a warrant for whatever it is you are accusing me and my party workers of and I’ll come myself and sit in your car.’ In fact, Papa’s packed briefcase had been sitting by the side of his bed since the night of the 17th.
    ‘I want to answer the allegations the government has made about my visits to several police stations. Regarding this, let me remind you that I am an elected official, an MPA, and it is my right to enter government offices.’At this Papa held up a picture of Ali Sonara. It is a photograph of one of Benazir’s jalsas , her political rallies; she is standing up with her head and shoulders poking out of the sunroof of a jeep, and waving at a crowd swarming around her. Several men stand behind her, eyes fierce, shielding her from every side; they are her bodyguards. Sonara is circled in the picture. ‘This is the man taken by the government,’ Papa said and pointed to Sonara. ‘Naseerullah Babar, the Minister of the Interior, said on the floor of the National