[NYTr] Farewell to Wadi Bua - Fatima Bhutto

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Riaz K Tayob - activ-l

The News - Pakistan - Dec 31, 2007
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=11951

Farewell to Wadi Bua

By Fatima Bhutto

LARKANA: My aunt and I had a complicated relationship. That is the 
truth, the sad truth. The last fifteen years were not one we spent as 
friends or as relatives, that is also the truth. But this week, I too 
want to remember her differently. I want to remember her differently 
because I must. I can?t lose faith in this country, my home. I can ?t 
believe that it was for nothing, that violence in its purest form is so 
cruel and so unforgiving. I can?t accept that this is what we have come
to.

So, I must offer a farewell. One that is written in tears and anger but 
one that comes from a place far away, from the realm of memory and 
forgiving ?- a place where at another time, we might have all been
safe. As a child, I used to call my aunt Wadi Bua, Sindhi for father?s
older sister.

When I got the news, I was told that something had happened to Wadi
Bua. It was an expression I hadn?t heard or used in a very long time,
when I heard it said to me over the phone I remembered someone
different.

We used to read children?s books together. We used to like exactly the 
same sweets ?- sugared chestnuts and candied apples. We used to get the 
same ear infections, ear infections that tortured us and plagued us 
throughout the years.

I have never before written an article that seemed so impossible. We 
were very different. Though people liked to compare us, almost 
instinctively, because well, they could. It is difficult for me to
write about two people, one in the present tense and one in the past,
at the same time.

Especially when one person?s passing makes the other one wonder whether 
there is a cusp to things and whether or not there really is a past and 
present to life.

I never agreed with her politics. I never did. I never agreed with
those she kept around her, the political opportunists, hanger-ons,
them. They repulse me.

I never agreed with her version of events. Never. But in death, in
death perhaps there is a moment to call for calm. To say, enough. We
have had enough. We cannot, and we will not, take anymore madness.

I mourn because my family has had enough. I mourn for Bilawal, 
Bakhtawar, and Asifa. I mourn for them because I too lost a parent. I 
know what it feels like to be lost and left at sea, unanchored and
afraid.

I mourn for the workers of the party, those who have been bereaved of 
their own loved ones in this tragedy.

When congregants gather in a church, temple, or mosque they offer 
prayers for those that reside beyond. The congregants sing to the 
heavens and they offer the divine their hymns of sadness and hope.
There are no hymns consisting of frustration or anger ?- this too shall
pass, they say, remember that. What hymns do we sing now?

In those hymns, there is hope encapsulated in the sadness. There is a 
lingering sense that after darkness a dawn will rise. What then do we 
have to be hopeful for? And how do we proceed to wake the dawn?

I have always been honest with you, I promised that to you at the 
beginning. Honestly, I am at a loss. I am compounded in a state of
shock.

I am in shock because I have yet to bury a loved one who has died from 
natural causes. Four. That?s the number of family members, immediate 
family members, whom we have laid to rest, all victims of senseless, 
senseless killing.

I was born five years after my grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto?s 
assassination. I was born into the void of his absence and for my 
father, Murtaza, I was a new chance at life. I grew up hearing my 
grandfather?s speeches, watching him on old black and white video 
cassettes, enamoured at his every word. My father was a young man when 
his father was killed and it was something he carried with him every 
second, every minute for the rest of his life.

I was three when my uncle Shahnawaz was murdered. I remember Wadi Bua 
sitting with me and telling me stories while the rest of the family was 
with the police.

When I was fourteen, my life was ended. I lost my heart and soul, my 
father Murtaza. I am and have been since then a shell of the person I 
was. I suppose there are cusps in life, and thank god for that because 
that way we can stay in between.

And now at twenty five, Wadi. But this isn?t about me, it?s about those 
whom we have lost. It?s about the graveyard at Garhi Khuda Bux that is 
just too full.

I pray that this is the last, that from this moment onwards we will no 
longer have to bid farewell too quickly. . Wadi, farewell.