Fear & loathing in Bhutto’s land

Blood, sword and suffering are the heartbeat of Fatima Bhutto’s literary soul. And it was fear that propelled her poetry, says the heir to Pakistan’s tragedy-scarred Bhutto family. An accomplished poet, Fatima, 29, captures love, loss and the solitude of her circumstances in her verses.

“I have not written poetry for a very long time, but poetry like prose is ultimately a means of expressing what seems difficult otherwise,” Fatima, who will be in India for the Kovalam Literary Festival (October 1-2), said in an email interview from Karachi.

“Kovalam will be my first visit to south India. And I’m looking forward to seeing more of the country and interacting with new audiences and opening bridges between our cities and stories.”

She won’t be reading out just from her poetry. Fatima has authored Whispers of the Desert, an anthology of poetry, as well as 08.50 am, an account of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, and Songs of Blood and Sword, a searing document of the turbulence that had ripped her family apart on her native turf.

Born in 1982 in Kabul to Murtaza Bhutto, the son of former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Fatima carries the illustrious and violent lineage on her young shoulders. Her grandfather, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged to death in 1979. In 1996, Fatima’s father Murtaza was gunned down in Karachi by the police during the tenure of “aunt” Benazir Bhutto. Eleven years later, Benazir Bhutto met with a similar fate in Rawalpindi in 2007 when she was shot dead at a rally.

Full report here Asian Age

'Poetry was a way of making sense of madness'

Blood, sword and suffering are the heartbeat of Fatima Bhutto's literary soul. And it was fear that propelled her poetry, says the heir to Pakistan's tragedy-scarred Bhutto family.

An accomplished poet, Fatima, 29, captures love, loss and the solitude of her circumstances in her verses.

"I have not written poetry for a very long time, but poetry like prose is ultimately a means of expressing what seems difficult otherwise," Fatima, who will be in India for the Kovalam Literary Festival from Oct 1-2, told in an email interview from Karachi.

"Kovalam will be my first visit to South India. And I'm looking forward to seeing more of the country and interacting with new audiences and opening bridges between our cities and stories."

Full report here Times of India

Kovalam Literary Festival to make Delhi debut

The annual Kovalam Literary Festival will make its debut stopover in the national capital Sept 29 with a daylong session at the India International Centre (IIC), founder-director of the festival Binoo K. John said on Monday.

The stopover in being held prior to the main festival in Thiruvananthapuram Oct 1-2.

The line-up includes Mohammed Hanif, Aamer Hussain, Fatima Bhutto from Pakistan and Shehan Karunatilake, the author of “Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Matthew” from Sri Lanka.

Karunatilake won the Gratiaen Award for his book.

“Hanif is expected to read from his new novel ‘Our Lady of Alice Bhatti’. The India International Centre is sponsoring the mini-edition of the Kovalam Literary Festival. An event in Delhi will give us leverage and will help brand the festival,” John said.

“Delhi has book events throughout the year and an extremely aware audience will get a day’s extravaganza with a music concert at the end,” John added.

Inaugural South Asian Literary Festival line-up announced

Bestselling Indian author Chetan Bhagat, Fatima Bhutto and Hardeep Singh Kohli are among the authors set to take part in the inaugural DSC South Asian Literature Festival.

Announced on 22nd September, more than 30 events are confirmed for the festival which will take place across the capital in venues including King's Place, the Free Word Centre, the British Library, British Museum and bookshops from 15-25th October and then at cities around the UK from 26th-31st October.

At the launch, the longlist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature was also announced, with 16 titles in the running from publishers including Picador India, Faber, Bloomsbury and Constable & Robinson.
Co-directors Jon Slack and Bhavit Mehta of Amphora Arts said of the festival: "The thriving literary and publishing scene in South Asia was the impetus for us bringing a literary festival devoted to South Asian writing to the UK."

Full report here Bookseller

Aunt Benazir betrayed my father, says Fatima

Though Fatima Bhutto is the first person to say that people give too much importance to names, it’s her name and the bloody history associated with her lineage that gives her a special position in Pakistan. From her unique vantage point she has openly and very vocally criticized the governance there. Poet-journalist Fatima Bhutto—daughter of Murtaza Bhutto and niece of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto—is in India hoping that people will read her book called ‘Songs of Blood and Sword’. CNBC-TV18’s Anuradha Sengupta caught up with the gen-next of Pakistan to chat about her future plans.
Below is a verbatim transcript of the interview. Also watch the video.

This book to you is a daughter’s memoir about her father and yet you do know that a lot of people will probably pick it up because they know you as Benazir Bhutto’s niece—is that something that you are comfortable with?
It’s a story about a family and it’s told from someone who is not only lived with the people inside, including my aunt Benazir, but who knew and loved them. The story of Pakistan is also an element of the book and I hope that for whatever reason people pick up Songs of Blood and Sword and that they stay with it to see more of Pakistan and more of a country that really is quite similar to the other ones that we see in the region.

Full interview here Moneycontrol.com

‘I am Bhutto too'

Dynasty seems to rest easy on her shoulders. Fatima Bhutto, in Delhi recently for the launch of her book, is out to prove that while lives can be erased easily in a politically volatile country like Pakistan, memories cannot. Her attempt to get at the truth behind her father Murtaza's death takes her through some of the most explosive incidents in Pakistan's dynasty politics and contemporary history...

No conceit, not a trace of arrogance. Her speech is clear, and for a large part, bright; her eyes, though a shade sad, are luminous. Hope has not died young. Sitting at New Delhi's Taj Mahal hotel, every now and then she pauses to adjust those curly locks so defiant as to cast a shadow over her well-lined eyes. One look at her pearly smile and you could almost think of her as another sprightly young woman from across the border. Appearances, however, beautiful, can be deceptive. But really, dynasty seems to rests easy on Fatima Bhutto's slender shoulders. With a name like Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in her family chart, not to forget her papa Murtaza or wadi bua Benazir Bhutto, really, life must be a series of luxuries for Fatima, now beginning to be known as Fatima, the writer, but equally comfortable with being Bhutto too. But hey, dynasty is no guarantee of peace and contentment. Forget luxuries of life, in her family, life itself has been a luxury, with all her near and dear ones — Zulfiqar and Murtaza — and those near without being dear — Benazir — dying young.

Full report here Hindu

There's blood in Fatima Bhutto's ink

Fatima Bhutto’s first book Songs of Blood and Sword, a saga of Pakistan’s most famous family and an insider’s account of the violent events that rocked it from time to time, is making waves across the world.

In Bangalore to talk about her book, the 28-year-old author reveals that she is loving the fact that she is the Indian media’s current darling.

“I’ve got overwhelming support in India,” she says, her voice a cultured burr with a distinct American twang, easily explained by her long sojourn in the West – she studied at Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. “I think a large part of this support comes from the fact that I represent the antithesis to power. People are fascinated by power, but they are also suspicious of it,” she says.

It is a fascination that is easily understood. Her genealogy – boldly printed on the cover of her book – explains it all. While you wait to delve into the blood-splattered history of her famous family, you get a taste of things to come when Fatima is described as ‘granddaughter to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, executed 1979’, ‘daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, assassinated 1996’ and ‘niece to Benazir Bhutto, assassinated 2007’. It is very clear who is telling this story, and why.

Full report here DNA

The Delhi Walla hangs out with Fatima

Fatima Bhutto came to Delhi in April, 2010, for the launch of her memoirs, Songs of Blood and Sword. Granddaughter to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, Ms Bhutto was born in Kabul in 1982. Her father was killed by the police in 1996 in Karachi during the premiership of his sister, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007. Ms Bhutto maintains that her aunt Benazir was responsible for her father’s killing. She lives in Karachi.
In her interview with The Delhi Walla, Ms Bhutto was sporting blood-red nail polish, as well as a designer handbag and a copy of The International Herald Tribune.

Hello, Ms Bhutto. While we talk, I’ll take your photographs but please don’t look conscious.
Ok. I’ll do my best.

Your third book, Song of Blood and Sword, was launched yesterday evening at Hotel Taj Mahal. How was it?
The audience was very interesting.

‘Interesting’ is an interesting word.
No, I thought I was going to be in front of strangers. And then I saw some of my former classmates from the University of London. I didn’t know they were coming. So that was great. It was also nice to come across Indians who were curious about Pakistan and wanted to know more about it.

Full interview here Hindustan Times

‘Benazir thought Pakistanis owed her a blood debt’

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s granddaughter, and Benazir Bhutto’s niece, writer Fatima Bhutto has an uneasy relationship with her political pedigree. Estranged from her aunt uptill her 2007 assassination, the 27-year-old keeps a distance from political involvement. Her new book, Songs of Blood and Sword, traces the Bhuttos’ history, returning to the day her father Murtaza was gunned down by Karachi police in 1996. From Karachi, in a phone interview with ANIRUDDHA SHANKAR, she speaks candidly on Benazir and Pakistan’s political prospects. Excerpts:

The tale of your father Murtaza Bhutto’s killing has been recounted so often in the press. In interview after interview and even now, in Songs of Blood and Sword  you have returned to that fateful day. What effect has this had on you? How has this whole history shaped you -- are there aspects of your personality you can directly attribute to this? 
I think that at a very young age, you come to realise that such incidents are far more common than once one thought. Whether it’s the killing of Amadou Diallo in New York, who was shot 19 times or Jean Charles de Menezes in London after 7/11, you come to realise that people in power can commit acts of terrible violence with little repercussion. I think that retelling his story and setting out to discover his life really opened my eyes.

When you were growing up, what did being a Bhutto mean to you?
Not very much, really. I grew up outside Pakistan in Damascus, Syria and being a Bhutto meant nothing to the people there. They could barely pronounce the name. (laughs) When I did come back to Karachi, I encountered a bit of curiosity from schoolmates but that’s about it. We were never made to feel like we were special or different children.

Full report here Tehelka

Fatima Bhutto pitches for vengeance

India loves icons and Delhi loves visiting celebrities, and if they come from neighbouring Pakistan and are opposed to the government in power, then they are really feted. It’s happened in the past to the late former prime minister Benazir Bhutto when she was at her least-significant politically, and it happened to former president General Pervez Musharraf, who was hailed as some sort of sub-continental power guru once he was out of office.

Last weekend it happened to Fatima Bhutto, 27-year old niece of the former Pakistani prime minister. She was in Delhi to promote her new book, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir, which traces the country’s blood-letting and appalling governance as it tells the story of the assassination 14 years ago of her father, Murtaza Bhutto – in which her uncle Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s current president, was allegedly involved. A highly self-confident journalist, the vivacious and attractive Fatima Bhutto has wowed newspaper and magazine editors in the US, UK and elsewhere for several years with the same ease that Benazir Bhutto charmed them in ther past.

Benazir conned them, along with many politicians, into accepting her as a significant political figure when she was out of power, even though her reputation as a capable politician was near zero. Fatima’s success – and she is a capable writer – has been to persuade editors ranging from Tina Brown’s Daily Beast website in the US to the New Statesman in London to run her articles highly critical of Pakistan’s rulers as if she was an independent journalist, which she is not. What she is, understandably, is a committed campaigner out to avenge her father’s death and, therefore, to damn Zardari who, as Benazir Bhutto’s husband, is her uncle by marriage. This hefty 450-page book is part of that campaign. It tells of a traumatic family history. Her grandfather, prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in 1979 by a military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq. Both her father and his brother died violently, and Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.

Full report here Financial Times

There's something about Fatima

Her book couldn't be published in Pakistan but in India, it's already caused some stir. It was only a matter of time before Fatima Bhutto, granddaughter of former Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, wrote her memoir. Songs of Blood and Sword, telling the story of the Pakistan's influential but blighted Bhutto family that has seen much violence and death was released in New Delhi on April 3.

At the open-air venue of a five-star hotel, Fatima Bhutto chatted with William Dalrymple, read extracts and talked of life with her father and even with her aunt, Benazir before she became Prime Minister. Suspected to have been behind the killing of her father Murtaza Bhutto, current Pakistan president, Asif Ali Zardari emerged a villain, of course. She recalled how "cruelly" Zardari had broken the news of Murtaza's killing to 14 year-old Fatima on September 20, 1996 and later, delivered his first address on the 12th death anniversary.

It's not just the politics or the story of her family, there's something about Fatima Bhutto herself. She has studied at Columbia University and University of London. The 27 year-old journalist-columnist appeared in a green sari -- bindi and all -- sipped white wine as she spoke of violence and betrayal. Members of the audience complimented her -- "you're looking beautiful" -- bought copies of the books and lined up to get it signed. Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar was also present at the gathering. 

Full report here The Times of India

Enough With the ‘Guns, Beards and Poverty’: Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto, in India for the release of her memoir Songs of Blood and Sword about Pakistan’s foremost political family, took a side swipe at journalists as she spoke about Pakistan, her assassinated aunt Benazir Bhutto, and her search to uncover the murky facts surrounding the killing of her adored father. Mir Murtaza Bhutto was slain by police outside her Karachi home in 1996, when she was just 14.

Benazir was empowered greatly by the Western press because she was “‘One of us,’ as it were,” said Bhutto, 27 years old, in conversation with the bard of Mughal India, William Dalrymple in Delhi on April 3. “Oxford, Harvard, beautiful, speaks English, and follows orders. When the IMF says, ‘Sign this,’ she signs. When America said, ‘Do that,’ she did.”

It is no secret that there is little love lost between the young Bhutto and her aunt and uncle, Asif Ali Zardari, now the president of Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was prime minister at the time her father was killed and the young author holds both Benazir and Zardari ultimately responsible for the death.

Fatima hails move to reduce Zardari powers

Hailing moves in Pakistan that may lead to reduction in the power of President Asif Ali Zardari, Fatima Bhutto, niece of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said there should not be two different laws for the powerful and the common citizens.

"We are yet to see the law passed. It is important that now we are talking about it but in the first place I don't think or believe that Presidents or those in power should be be granted immunity.

"There should not be a law for the powerful and a law for the ordinary citizens. In fact those in power should be scrutinised even more closely and more severely than ordinary citizens," Fatima, who is here for the launch of her book 'Songs of Blood and Sword' said.

Full report here PTI

‘Benazir always kept aloof from her family’

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

Fatima Bhutto says her blood froze twice

Fatima Bhutto says in her recently published book that her blood froze the day when Asif Ali Zardari was elected president of the country and her blood again froze when Asif Ali Zardari, during his address to the joint session of parliament, paused and asked for a moment of silence in honour of death of his brother-in-law Murtaza Bhutto.

She said that Zardari’s election to president prompted to send her younger brother Zulfi abroad, fearing for his safety.

She says that inspite of the violence her family has suffered, including the killing of her father Murtaza Bhutto, she “could never leave” the country.

“Amidst all this madness, all these ghosts and memories of times past, it feels like the world around me is crumbling, slowly flaking away,” she writes in her just-published memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword. Fatima Bhutto is an Afghan born poetess and writer. She studied at the Columbia University in the United States, and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She currently writes columns for some newspapers. Fatima is every inch a staunch Pakistani. Her book has appeared just a week before the death anniversary of her grandfather.

Full report here News

Bhutto scion takes on America on Indian soil

Fiercely critical of the continuing American drone attacks on the northern tribal areas of Pakistan, prominent political commentator and Bhutto family scion Fatima Bhutto has blamed US interference for the continuance of India-Pakistan problems as well as the dropping of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project.

“The history of American involvement in Pakistan involves playing Pakistan against India. They give both of us money, they take away money from one, and threaten the other. First we had British, who divided and ruled us, and now we have the Americans,” Fatima Bhutto told Deccan Herald in an exclusive interview here on Saturday.

In the country on a multi-city tour to launch and promote Songs of Blood and Sword, a book which explores the Bhutto family saga, particularly the assassination of her father Mir Murtaza Bhutto during the prime ministership of her aunt Benazir Bhutto, the author-columnist is of the view that the gas pipeline could have been a major catalyst in bringing peace.

Full report here Deccan Herald

Fatima claims aunt Benazir had a split personality

At 27, Fatima Bhutto isn't busy typing out status updates on Facebook, which she insists she loathes. Instead, she has spent the last six years writing a "love letter" to her father in which she has resurrected him, 14 years after his assassination, and held her aunt and uncle responsible for his tragic end.

In the Capital for the launch of her third book, Songs of Blood and Sword (Penguin), Fatima made it clear that she has no love lost for her aunt, Pakistan's slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and her husband Asif Ali Zardari, the country's President.

On a day when a constitutional reforms package striking at Zardari's powers was tabled in Pakistan's National Assembly, Fatima said, "We don't need a President like Zardari. We need someone who is clean and honest, committed to public service, whose qualifications for ruling 180 million people is more than the fact that his wife was once the Prime Minister." Fatima's father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, brother of Benazir Bhutto, who was then Prime Minister of Pakistan, was killed by the police in a burst of gunfire just outside his Karachi home on September 20, 1996. Mir Murtaza, who was then a member of Pakistan's National Assembly, died along with six others.

Full report here India Today

Zardari tried to bribe my father: Fatima Bhutto

Asif Ali Zardari attempted to bribe his brother-in-law Murtaza Bhutto to swing a deal in the Middle East at a time when his estranged sister Benazir Bhutto was Pakistan's prime minister but was roundly rebuffed, Murtaza's daughter Fatima Bhutto writes in her just released memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword.

Zardari was accused of plotting Murtaza's murder but had been acquitted of the charge.

The book, published by Penguin, comes at a time when Zardari is set to be deprived of his sweeping powers through a constitution amendment being tabled in parliament on Friday to transfer to the prime minister major powers like the appointment of armed forces chiefs and reduce the president to a titular head of state.

"During a state trip to Syria during Benazir's first government and while we were still in exile there, Zardari had gone so far as to ask Papa to facilitate a deal he was considering in the Middle East, offering him a cut of the profits," Fatima writes.

Full report here Hindustan Times

REVIEW: Songs of Blood and Sword

REVIEW

Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir
Fatima Bhutto
Viking
Rs 699
Pp 480
ISBN: 9780670082803
Hardback

Blurb
In September 1996 a fourteen-year-old Fatima Bhutto hid in a windowless dressing room shielding her baby brother while shots rang out in the streets outside the family home in Karachi. This was the evening that her father, Murtaza, was murdered along with six of his associates.

In December 2007 Benazir Bhutto, Fatima’s aunt, and the woman she had publicly accused of ordering her father’s murder, was assassinated in Rawalpindi. It was the latest in a long line of tragedies for one of the world’s best known political dynasties.

Songs of Blood and Sword tells the story of the Bhuttos, a family of rich feudal landlords who became powerbrokers in the newly created state of Pakistan; the epic tale of four generations of a family and the political violence that would destroy them. It is the history of a family and nation riven by murder, corruption, conspiracy and division, written by one who has lived it, in the heart of the storm,

The history of this extraordinary family mirrors the tumultuous events of Pakistan itself, and the quest to find the truth behind her father’s murder has led Fatima to the heart of her country’s volatile political establishment. Finally Songs of Blood and Sword is about a daughter’s love for her father and her search to uncover, and to understand, the truth of his life and death.

Reviews
Bloodline Indian Express
Among the few common features shared by South Asian nations are dynastic power and political violence. The friction between the two is marked by frequent political assassinations in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. And nowhere has the intersection been bloodier than in what Pakistan’s Bhuttos had to bear. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto founded the political dynasty and gave it a powerful populist platform, the Pakistan People’s Party. More than three decades after his assassination, the PPP remains the only mass party with a following in all the provinces of Pakistan.

After he took charge as prime minister following the loss of Bangladesh in 1971, Bhutto helped promulgate a democratic constitution for Pakistan and founded its nuclear weapons programme. As ambition got the better of him, Bhutto was ousted in a coup, incarcerated and hanged by General Zia ul Haq in 1979. That was only the beginning of the Bhutto story, which is so much part of Pakistan’s larger tragedy.

In the name of the father Mint
Of all the stories available to human beings, none is as instantly fascinating as that of a powerful family riven down the middle, feuding in public view and throwing the entire world out of shape with its might. This storyline is central to our epics, and is often reprised by contemporary events, especially in feudal societies. In such cases, the testimony of any one participant inevitably turns the story into one of good versus evil—the stakes are too high for it to be anything else, but the thrill of receiving the inside story more than compensates for the lack of detachment in perspective.

Just such a story—long-awaited since the first metaphorical gunshots were fired in recent years—is served up by Songs of Blood and Sword, 28-year-old Fatima Bhutto’s angry and sometimes incoherent retelling of the macabre lives and internecine warrings of the first family of Pakistani politics, the Bhuttos of Sindh.

Fatima Bhutto bares her famous, jinxed family Financial Express
In the September of 1996, the day her father turned 42, Fatima Bhutto said to him: “Write a book about your life, Papa. It would be so interesting.” He laughed and then said quietly, “You’ll do it for me.” His eyes were sad. A growing nervousness had been rumbling inside her for days. Two days later, Mir Murtaza Bhutto was dead. On the 12th anniversary of Murtaza’s death, Asif Zardari was sworn in as President of Pakistan. He had been acquitted of Murtaza’s murder in the build-up to the presidency.

Daughter of dynasty  TOI  Crest
Though supposed to be a daughter's memories of her father, the book is actually the tragedy-filled story of the Bhuttos, "the ill-starred dynasty" that has dominated the political scene in Pakistan for four decades. Like a good investigative journalist, Fatima has put together an interesting, gripping story, though there are very few new revelations in the book. Almost everything, including Zardari's "role" in Murtaza's death, has been reported and written about earlier.

In fact, the book is an attack on Zardari whom Fatima blames for everything wrong with Pakistan today. And that's the problem with the book. Fatima fails to see anything wrong with the Bhuttos. They are presented as martyrs who died for Pakistan. The fact that all of them died in either pursuit of power or during internal power struggles has been ignored by the writer. With their feudal, arrogant attitude, the Bhuttos have been part of the problem and not the solution. But the writer fails to address this issue.

I can never leave Pakistan: Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto, the niece of slain former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, says that in spite of the violence her family has suffered, including the killing of her father Murtaza Bhutto, she “could never leave” the country.
“Amidst all this madness, all these ghosts and memories of times past, it feels like the world around me is crumbling, slowly flaking away,” she writes in her just-published memoir Songs of Blood and Sword (Penguin/Rs.699).

“Sometimes, when it’s this late at night (she writes in the Epilogue dated April 2009), I feel my chest swell with a familiar anxiety. I think, at these times, that I have no more place in my heart for Pakistan. I cannot love it any more. I have to get away from it for anything to make sense; nothing here ever does.

“But then the hours pass, and as I ready myself for sleep as the light filters in through my windows, I hear the sound of mynah birds. And I know I could never leave,” Fatima writes.

Full report here Thaindian