Francis Bacon says, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some to be chewed and digested.”
I have swallowed some books but I chewed and really digested an enchanting book, the autobiography by Benzair. “The Daughter of the East.” I am least concerned with politics and political figures, because I believe them not fair people. That is why I left over all those chapters of her book comprising the aspects of her political life. She too made it clear “I did not want to be a politician, nor wanted to pick up my father’s political mantle” but the assassination of my father and my imprisonment provided me with no exception but to join politics.
After having gone through her book deeply, one thing seems for certain that destiny provided her with the opportunities to discover her inner and spiritual virtues, because there were certain moments so stunning and unexpected which led her to a strange world where everything was new for her. In this new aloof world where she was alone nothing was else to meditate in her inner self. The certain events which happened in her life developed a super human stamina, forbearance and spiritual experiences in her, which was not possible at all if she would not have an aptitude towards religion. At one place she reads in her book “My religion ISLAM is a religion of tolerance and plurism with the caricature of my faith”. When I was leaving for my further studies to USA my father presented with me a beautiful volume of the HOLY QURAN bounding in pearls.
Though hailing from an up-to-date, wealthy family, she lived for days on end in starvation, with her clothing unchanged. She portrays a scene from her imprisonment: ‘I have no sweater, no blanket, only the Shalwar Kameez I was wearing when I was arrested.’ It shows the saintly strength of her resistance.
While giving the account of the execution of her father, she touches the peaks of agony and anguish; it is very difficult for a reader to control tears while breaking the sequence. She writes: “In the early morning of April 4, 1979, they killed my father inside Rawalpindi Central Jail.” We were ready at dawn to accompany my father’s body to our ancestral graveyard. The jailer told me, “I have brought what was left in his room.” He handed me the pitiful items from my father’s death cell: the tiffin box he had refused for ten days and his drinking cup. I stood in a daze, not believing what had happened. I hugged the small bundle, feeling completely empty, as if my life had shattered. It felt as if my body was torn apart. “How much time do I have with my family?” I asked. “Half an hour,” the jail superintendent said. The pain in my chest tightened into a voice: I must not cry, I must not break down and make my father’s ordeal any more difficult.
He is sitting on the floor on a mattress. The light in the cell is dim, I cannot see him clearly, my mother and me squeezed together at the bars of his cell door talking to him in whispers. “Time is up”, the Jail Superintendent says. I griped the bars, please open up the cell” I asked him, I want to say goodbye to my father, I want to hold him the Jail Superintendent refuses, Goodbye – PAPA, I call my father, we both were sat down the dusty courtyard, I know I cannot control myself, somehow my legs more, I cannot feel them. I have turned to stone, but still I move. For days at Sihala, after my father’s death I could not eat or drink, I could not swallow at all, nor could I sleep.
This most pathetic extract from her book is a master piece of literature, every word is in a speaking form coming out to grip the reader. Is it possible to bear all that if the author has not been picked up for the trials from the Divine Hands? God farms the fates according to the capacity of His creatures and if He destinies one for grief’s it is all to bring His creatures near to Him and she was surely near and dear to Him.
The chapter of her book comprising the taking over as Prime Minister reveals the facts that if she was put in the inferno of trials it was preparation period for her to bestowing her to this lofty status of inner and outer, the crumbling of the icon lady was collected and reshaped by the Divine hand. It is December 2, 1989 she took the oath of office as the first woman Prime Minister elected in the Muslim world. This was not the moment but the moment of all who made sacrifices.
—The writer is senior columnist, based in Germany.
