Dear Riaz I write to thank you for remembering my birthday. The good wishes contained in the message mean a lot to me. Although there is sadness at observing such a significant milestone in the journey of life in exile, I am happy to know that your support is with me through this time. Thank you again for the prayers and good wishes and for remembering me on this day.

Benazir Bhutto

 

The story of Benazir from Marvi of Malir and Shah Latif by Benazir Bhutto for June 21, 2003

When the world was still to be born

When Adam was still to receive his form

Then my relationship began

When I heard the Lord’s voice

A voice sweet and clear

I said “yes” with all my heart

And formed a bond with the land

I love when all of us were one

My bond then began

An exile now by destiny

I am nearer home than the bear of my heart I wonder:

when will I be free To return to Larkana From dust to dust Loved ones return

To what they were

When will I walk home from Arab lands To my own sweet Motherland.

Waiting for news in dreams and day

Waiting for messengers in dreams and day

When will the message come

Taking me from here to there

I want the answer to my heart

I want to pass God’s test Strands of white my hair now shows

My face is gaunt with sadness

I to my people want to go

I came in the winter of repression

I pray to return in better times

Like the joy of a seasonal rain

The peoples support

I will reclaim.

Almighty God, Let Mother’s sickness not worsen in exile

Trapped in a mind wanting to forget

A heart weeping for young sons killed

O let Mother first her homeland see O where is my husband gone?

His life’s prime and his grace?

Prison Walls confine him

Court rooms frustrate him

Judges are frightened

Courage has fled

Salaries are more important

Than honour for which men gave lives

Each day

I smile for the world,

For my children and my self

They ask: when can we return?

I speak of justice fled

From hearts of men

Into the breasts of beasts

I think of the poor people

They deserve a better fate

Than the military conqueror’s boots

The sweet lands lie parched

For water people pray

The crops perish

The cattle die

The stoves grow cold

As labour is sent home

Yet the lust for land grows

Plazas and Plots for the elite lot

Government homes too

Not one but two All on starving backs of people robbed

Fair Pakistan’s face is blotted

Mug shots and finger prints are demanded

Worshippers live in fear and dread

Tenants are ejected

Soldiers in snows abandoned

The poets in the mountains and the deserts Speak of another time

When the country and the individual had respect Before the Benazir Government left

Students study with faces drawn

Wondering when they will be free

Of the fear of unemployment and poverty

Their jobs retired military favorites take

One pension is too little for some

One state, two jobs, two salaries and two pensions

For retired Khaki specials

Democracy is for those in Mufti Dictatorship the dream of Generals in Khaki

The British left last century

Their space the Khaki filled

The Father died too quickly

In an ambulance in Karachi

One day the tyrants will depart

Public opinion will set us free

There will be dancing in the streets, Music and song

As people rejoice in their destiny Larkana, Loved-one,

I remember

The sweet scent of roses

Of fresh rain on desert sand

Of trees washed by nature’s hand

Away I live in a mansion grand

But I long to campaign

On rocky roads

In bumpy jeep rides

With flags and banners

With selfless zeal to change

The sad present

Into a smiling future

I want to breathe the breath Of home, a breath both fair and fine

My spirit is in one place

My body in another

My mind torn asunder

The Elections were so Unfair Made of Broken Promises Billions spent in marketing

A dictatorship as a democracy That too unsuccessfully.

The European Union called Foul

So did the Office of the Commonwealth Boxes were filled

Ballots torn Peoples verdict shorn

By cowards masquerading as patriots

The presidential palace is ugly

In a land with widespread poverty

Parliament has yet to dress itself With Constitutional power

The phoenix rises from the ashes

Peoples Power will be born again

I will build for the children of the poor

Centres of learning Provide the aged and the young Dignity, hope and security

We will raise buildings

Where there are deserts

And stop the weeping of the women of the land Cry not

These days of despots will soon go

Just as other despots did Memory forever recalls Quaid e Awam

The sword of truth

Who gave his life

So we could live

With legal rights and economic security

With knowledge and Opportunity With representation and success

With peace and with progress

His name will forever shine

Who can forget him

That historical memory embraces Forever in its folds.

He who wore threads of fine gold

Tore them for prison cells

He who slept in silken sheets and fed with silver spoons

Threw them aside for the darkness of the death cell

The rulers offer comfort In return they demand conscience

Don’t offer comfort

To history’s children

To the brave and the bold

The Kurds fought for decades

The Kashmiris do too

The Palestinians refused to surrender In every continent In every era

The brave and the bold Carved history with their bare hands

One has might

The other right One has the sword

The other the pen Guns rust and fall apart Ideas live forever

Tyrant: do not offer comfort

Comfort leaves me cold

Much dearer do

I hold Marvi’s ancestral shawl

Symbol of our Treasure

From Marvi

I learnt

From past mystic saints

From my dear brother Shah

I learnt

That handsome youth who fought another tyrant?

That Were I to breathe my last, living Away from the home

I loved

My body won’t imprison me.

Shah returned home while his soul went free

No stranger to the soil

Embracing his body in death

Making it part of the legends of our land

When his last breath came

We carried him to the hidden coolness of the desert sand

Pride and sadness mixed in our hearts

Swaying emotions

Knowing that his life was given

For a clear cause of liberation

From a Dictator’s occupation

We buried him lovingly

In the land that was his

In a sea of people

That loved him

For his life

And for his death

Killed: and yet the struggle lived

The cranes fly to their native hills

My heart longs to fly with them

Invisible chains

Hold me prisoner

The wounds of the past

Fester again

As I see people denied rights

Denied opportunities

Youth looking for hope

Democracy separated from the polity

Dictatorship cuts cruelly to the bone

Undermining the economy

Undermining the society

Introducing suicide

Economic suicide for those too poor to live

Political suicide for asymmetric warfare

Joy left when the stove turned cold

Joy fled when the church and hospital blew

Some sent messages

To forget about politics

To leave the people

To find happiness

They thought it foolish

That the weight of persecution

Could be borne

With a Mother ill

And children small

With the pain of exile Of a husband separated by prison walls.

They thought it generous

To offer freedom for abandonment

The abandonment of a people, of a land Of a struggle, of a dream Of principles and of conscience

I thought it wrong

I know

I will return

On a wave of peoples support Led by the bravest Party of them all

A Party of martyrs

A Party of struggle

A Party that serves

A Party of the people

My enemies wish

I never was born

For them it was a torture and a shame

That I became

The first woman leader of a Muslim State Crumbling centuries of control Triumphantly proclaiming The equality of men and women The pristine message of Islam Hidden under prejudice and discrimination Destiny’s hand moves on Writing its own tale Of triumph and tragedies, Of wars and peace, Of bombs pulverising houses Above the stench of death Life begins again The tide of sorrow turns The sea of happiness awaits The patient pray and persevere Loved ones parted meet Prisoners are freed Fresh ones take their places Or flee Destiny’s moving finger writes on Seasons change Realities change The rest is a test Better a life of test Than a worthless life of rest The land reclaims its own When the dead die They live again Becoming part of a land Centuries old Holding secrets Of great civilisations Of heroes and heroines of bygone times Shaping history and heritage Shaping culture Shaping the future Time begins Time ends We decide What to do with time Remember the poor and the wretched Remember the desperate and the hopeful Remember God’s sacred trust The children of the land Do not let your conscience die For Power and Pride The scent of the homeland Wafts through the ocean air Through continents Its insistent call A reverberating sound Through sunset and dawn Calling Through walls Calling Through mountains Seeking to reclaim Its own To my dear ones I say Worry not Shed no tears Bear no regrets These days will pass After night comes day After sorrow comes joy The daughters of the desert know That Destiny Cannot Chain The dream of a people free Where human rights And economic rights Break the prisons of poverty Break the dungeons of disease The repression of retrenchment The despair of downsizing The evil of unemployment Prisons hold Those that defy dictators Those that pay the price for freedom Knowing the chains holding liberty will break That the desert men Will write of desert courage Of integrity, loyalty and unity Baptised in suffering That a desert maid Will return home Hear the wind It carries the message: Of dictators that came and went Of tyrants now particles in the sands of times How many armies came and went How much blood was shed Conquests proclaimed Kingdoms fell; Tyrants too The desert sands speak The desert winds whisper Truth will triumph The desert maid will return Travellers travel bringing news Of political developments, I hear of miseries Of families without income Of fear of hunger I hear And my own suffering retreats Days pass Life passes I am shackled To the dream of democracy Unhappy are the days Far from Malir and Multan Far from Mardan and Makran My countrymen are far No one can reproach them For they stand strong As the October elections showed One day I will recall these days And forget the pain One day I will recall these days When political storms roared When thundering threats filled the air One day I will recall these days Knowing my commitment to my land Was purified and sustained. I think of those exiled from their homelands In Los Angeles, London, Dubai Of the days they pass Some in despair, Some in frustration Some with determination The seasons change My face with them Theirs too Will my fellow villagers recognise A face Reflecting the seasons of fate Night falls The world sleeps Darkness fills the air I raise both my hands And ask my children To raise their little hands Marvi, of Maru and Malir, In the mists of time She raised her hands While the world slept To God Full of hope Praying to see her homeland Marvi, We raise our hands As you raised yours To God In hope For the homeland I was born in Buried my Father Buried my brother Married Had my children Served a Nation Helped a people Without telephone or electricity Computers or emails Polio drops or iodine Enter the modern age But the bullets were fired Piercing my tall and handsome Brother His precious blood on the pavement fell Where once we walked The angels came And took him away To my Father and my Brother As the Martyrs watched In July we met His warm embrace I recall In the chandeliered Prime Minister’s Hall His special goodbye as he left His voice on the phone When we talked As family members do The phone came It spoke of bullets fired Of Murtaza wounded I took a plane With Holy Book in Hand To the Hospital where he lay God, do not take The brother that I love It was too late He was gone Again I buried a brother The killers buried the Government Husband was imprisoned Tiny children exiled With ailing grandmother Midnight raids and imprisonment Torture and terror Perjury and Perversion Billions spent on false cases On propaganda Psy war and special operations On a Mother Courts calliberated With different orders Caught flights daily From one to the other Lahore to Rawalpindi Then to Karachi The persecutors fell In divine retribution The military marched In Hear the wind It carries the sound Of horses that galloped Of caravans that came Of tanks that rumbled Of planes that flew Before the torch of time Was passed As history’s pendulum swung The desert wind calls Marvi calls A timeless call A call The desert wind carries. Children: Hear the desert wind Hear it whisper Have faith We will win.