Cross Talk
Curse or coincidence?
Let us say it was a coincidence that Benazir Bhutto got killed at Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi, the same place where, in 1951, the first prime minister of Pakistan was cut down by an assassin's bullet. Let us say it was another coincidence that the doctor who tried to save her is the son of the same doctor who had tried to save Liaquat Ali Khan 56 years ago. But how many times should an outcome coincide with bad luck before it isn't a coincidence, but something else?
Was it a coincidence that Benazir Bhutto should become the fourth member of her family to die an unnatural death? Should it also be a coincidence that, at 54, she was the longest surviving amongst the slain members of her family? Her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged at 51. Then her brother Murtaza was gunned down at 42, and another brother Shahnawaz was poisoned at 27.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto once told a journalist that the Bhutto men didn't live long. On December 27, the fallen two-term prime minister, and the leader of the largest political party in Pakistan, proved it wrong. The premonition of death runs in the family, irrespective of woman or man.
For days to come, Benazir's death will raise debates. People will argue whether she was killed by sniper bullets followed by suicide bomb blast, or whether she died when the blast from a bomb slammed her head against the vehicle, as the Pakistan government now tries to claim. But, at the end of all analyses, altercations, allegations and ambiguities, what happened at Liaquat Bagh is irreversible. Another scion of the Bhutto family, educated, attractive, suave and charismatic, has fallen victim to foul play.
The tragedy reminds one of the house of Oedipus, the king of Thebes, who had two sons and two daughters, just like the Bhuttos. He was exiled after he had committed incest and patricide. When his sons killed each other in battle over the throne, the new Theban king, Creon, declared that the younger son of Oedipus was going to be buried and honoured as a hero, while the elder's body should rot away and be eaten by dogs.
Oedipus's daughter, Antigone, defied the king and tried to bury her brother against the advice of her younger sister, Ismene. An angry Creon banished Antigone from the city, to starve to death in a cave where she took her own life by hanging herself by a rope.
Tragedies come in many forms, but it's said that they always come by the route of choice. Bhuttos also made their own choices. They decided to stare death in the face, the father by defying a military regime, the sons by raising arms to avenge their father's death, and the daughter by picking up the political mantle where her father had left.
Benazir had served two terms as the prime minister of her country, and she could have lived rest of her life in her palatial mansions in Dubai or anywhere else. Instead, she returned to fight, to go to polls, to seek public office and come to power again.
It always worked like the flip of a coin. Face they could win, tail they could lose. They were powerful and then they were dead. And it happened four times in a family that in less than three decades lost its bright and ambitious to the gorge of death.
UK-based Pakistani writer, Tariq Ali, has written after Benazir's death that the Bhuttos shouldn't be asked to make any more sacrifices. The question is, why must it be one family that must make so many sacrifices? Is it just coincidence, or is it a curse that is culminating with each death?
A curse can often cast a lengthy shadow. In 1642, a French jeweler by the name of Jean Baptiste Tavernier visited India and stole a blue diamond from the forehead of a statue of the Hindu goddess Sita. For this transgression, Tavernier was torn apart by wild dogs on a trip to Russia. Louis XV had bought the diamond from Tavernier and, according to the legend, it was because of the diamond's curse that Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were beheaded during the French Revolution.
King George of England bought the diamond, which was sold again to pay off his debt. The next owner of the diamond and his family went bankrupt. After Evalyn Walsh McLean bought the diamond, she lost her first-born son in a car crash, and her daughter committed suicide.
Ms. Evalyn's husband was declared insane and confined to a mental institution until his death. The diamond is currently on display in the National Museum of Natural History in the United States.
Why does tragedy always coincide with the fate of a Bhutto? Where is the connection between cause and effect? If we go back to the '70s, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the undisputed leader of West Pakistan. He dominated his country's politics until a military coup toppled him from power, followed by a grisly death.
How was the seed of tragedy planted in the Bhutto family? Could it be his headstrong politics which led to countless death and untold sufferings in East Pakistan and then led to the bifurcation of Pakistan? Just a thought!
If we think about the other players of the '70s, particularly 1971, the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi lost her younger son in a plane crash, then she was killed by her own bodyguards, and her elder son died in a suicide bomb blast. In Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated along with most members of his family and other relatives on the fateful night of August 15, 1975.
What are we to make of these tragedies, which are matched only by the Kennedys of the US and the Gemayels of Lebanon? Apart from being a tragedy, Benazir's untimely death should also lead us to ask this question: why are the three foremost political families in this sub-continent being annihilated? Is it another coincidence, or a foreboding omen in a fulfilling prophecy?
In Shakespeare's play, Macbeth had said that even the ocean couldn't wash his hands clean of Duncan's blood. How many deaths are needed before the assassins' hands will be clean again?
Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.
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