Benazir Bhutto and I

From September 1976 to July 1977 I attended a course at Oxford University.

On the first day of semester, I had a very memorable encounter. It was Assembly Day marking the beginning of the first semester. I was not allowed to enter the Great Hall as I did not have the university robe, which was the compulsory attire for the occasion. An exotic young lady suddenly appeared and told me not worry and she would get me one. I watched her briskly walked away towards an open-top sports car parked nearby and she speedily drove off. Minutes later she returned and handed me the robe and thereafter I was allowed to join the assembly.

My saviour, the exotic young lady, was none other than Benazir Bhutto, daughter of the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. She was in fact one of the participants in my course. Later, when we were assigned to our tutorial groups, I was pleased to find out that she and I were in the same. She had already obtained a degree from Harvard and was in Oxford to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics and took the opportunity to join the course.

Benazir Bhutto was a celebrity of sorts from the beginning. She ran for the Oxford Union’s Presidency and won, becoming the first Asian woman to head the prestigious debating society. She was very vocal and articulate in class and always had an opinion. Sometimes during tutorials, the less prepared among us would just sit back and let her do all the talking. A few times she would get into arguments with our tutor, especially if the subject shifted to anything that would bring Pakistan into discussion. It did not help that at that time her father’s premiership back home was under a heavy strain. We once witnessed a drama when our tutor made references to Pakistan’s current political situation which Benazir strongly objected to and an argument ensued. She finally stood up and reiterated her defence of her father’s honour, ran to the door in tears, turned around and had her last say before slamming the door and bolting. Our tutor was speechless, while the rest of us were quietly stunned.

Her outbursts aside, I found her pleasant and warm and with no airs. She took exception to an unsolicited special attention by one of our male classmates and she complained to us and eventually to the suitor that she did not want that kind of attention.

It was hard to imagine then that barely weeks after she completed the course, her father’s government would collapse and she would be put under house arrest and later see her father hanged. Her subsequent exile and political struggle thereafter is well-known and she later documented it in a book titled “Daughter of the East”

Her untimely death exactly two years ago on 27 December was sad and tragic but she had unreservedly claimed her place in history.

I can still today picture her as the friendly, hyper young lady in tight jeans, with hair fashionably tied up, always balancing a cigarette and zooming around in her nippy sports car.

May Allah bless her soul. Amin.