At what point do the personal and public meet? How is objectivity even possible when your dearest Papa is killed and you are not even allowed to file an FIR? Can you combat the president of the country, whom you suspect of having a role in the act? Her columns are about the denial of human rights and the like. Her poems, written from when she was 12, are about violence, a cry for justice. If the world ever needed documentation of the lawlessness that pervades Pakistan, Fatima Bhutto almost epitomises the daily travesties. Her just released memoir to her father is called Songs of Blood and Sword. So nothing prepares you for the cheerful, almost effervescent, and diminutive, not to forget vegan author with a strong sense of hope in her land’s future that you encounter over soup and dimsums. Suman Tarafdar came away with quite a few notions demolished. Excerpts:
Given that you learned a lot more about your father while rese arching the book, somethings even hurtful, was it as much a catharsis as a reigniting of wounds?
It was a very important journey for me to go on, not just to bring out the truth behind my father’s murder, but also other murders, which you don’t hear about. Also for my brother Zulfikar, who was six when my father was killed. I was 14 and lucky to have all those years. I wanted to uncover things for him. I met all these people he had known. I made a lot of discoveries and thought of him as alive when I was working on the book.
The idea of the book came in 2004 as the tenth anniversary of my father’s death was going to come up in 2006. Ten years and no justice, no safety, nothing. Despite telling my father just before he died that I would write about him, earlier I had never felt ready. By 2006 I had started interviewing, and started writing in 2008. The writing process took two years.
Full interview
here Financial Express
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