Fatima Bhutto feels lucky, even after watching her father's assassination

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0:46the new statesman

0:51fatima buto was born into exile and into one of the most powerful political dynasties in south asia Her life has been shaped by both privilege and profound personal tragedy. Born in Afghanistan, she spent her early years displaced after her grandfather, former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Butoh, was executed under General Zia al-Haq's military regime. Her childhood was marked by instability and violence. Her father, Murtaza Butoh, became involved in militant activism linked to acts including a political assassination and a plane hijacking. When the family returned to Pakistan, tensions deepened.

1:31Though it was his own sister Benazir Bhutto in power, Murtaza was killed in a police encounter, a death that Fatima has long held her aunt responsible for. In 2007, Benazir Bhutto herself was assassinated. Today, the Bhutto name still carries political weight in Pakistan. Her uncle is currently the president. But Fatima Bhutto has chosen a different path, as a writer exploring her family's turbulent history as well as the emerging popular culture of the Global South and moving between memoir, fiction and reportage. Now she returns with her most personal story yet. I'm Tanjul Rashid and this is The Exchange from The New Statesman.

2:13Here is my conversation with Fatima Butoh. Fatima Butoh, thank you so much for joining us here at The New Statesman. First of all, I want to ask you, how does it feel to be a Bhutto?

2:25Fatima Bhutto: I'm not sure how to answer that because I've never been anything else. So I don't know. It's been quite an unusual life in the sense that I've been very fortunate to learn firsthand about my country and about a world that I think could have easily been far away or felt far away for me. And that firsthand education has been illuminating and it has been sorrowful at times. But, you know, it's all I know. So I don't really know quite how to tell you how it feels. I mean, from an outsider's perspective, it would seem that this is the single most important fact about your life. That's how the rest of the world probably sees it.

3:24Would you dispute that?

3:27Fatima Bhutto: That my name is the most important thing about my life? That the experiences that have come with it have been so formative to what you write as a writer, how you see the world as an activist and someone who is concerned with politics, which is what your family business is. I'm not sure, really, because, you know, I grew up the first half of my life was lived in exile in Damascus, where being a Bhutto didn't really mean anything. Because, you know, we were just foreigners and we were foreigners not connected really to the ins and outs of daily life in Damascus in Syria. So I didn't really have a sense of it being meaningful, my name.

4:18Fatima Bhutto: I understood it meant something, obviously. That's why we were in exile. I knew my father's father had been killed. His brother had been killed. I knew there was a danger associated with the family, but I hadn't lived it. So, no, I would say for me what has been incredibly formative was that experience of being an outsider, which perhaps I would not have had had I grown up in Pakistan. And it was incredibly formative for me to grow up in the Middle East and also not just the Middle East, but Syria then, which was a profound education in the beauty of Islam and Muslim culture and the openness of what it entails, you know, to be in the city where you have the Umayyad mosque and yet you're a 40 minute drive away from Marlula where they still speak Aramaic.

5:12Fatima Bhutto: to me has been much more formative than my name or my family. And I would say that's really what shaped so much of my writing is that position. Pakistan was, you know, incredibly formative in the second phase of my life, I would say, because that's where I saw a very different world. And I mean just power and what power does. But the rush and the crash of Pakistan, the way in which people have to fight for the most basic survival was not something I encountered in Syria growing up. So I think those two things have really shaped me more profoundly as a writer and as someone who cares about the politics of the world they live in.

6:04So let's put these places of your life in context. I mean, how did you end up in Syria? I mean, just for the benefit of our listeners who may not be familiar with the story, your grandfather was president and then prime minister of Pakistan. Your father was a very prominent activist against Zia al-Haq, who was the dictator who executed your grandfather. Your aunt later also became Prime Minister of Pakistan. Obviously, you're not a politician, although many members of your family still are. So that's the background. But how did you end up in Syria as a child, for one thing?

6:48Fatima Bhutto: Well, when my grandfather's government was overthrown by General Ziaul Haq, who was a CIA-backed military dictator, one of the first things that he did was to send his sons out of the country because he feared that they would be killed next, which unfortunately did turn out to be true. And my father went first to Afghanistan, which is where I was born, and then to Syria. And why Syria? I don't, you know, it's a matter of, for me, luck that he went to Syria. At the time, Syria was very unlike the Syria it is now in many different ways. But at the time, Syria was not a country open and operating according to the West.

7:44Yeah.

7:45Fatima Bhutto: So it was a safe place. Don't forget again that General Ziaul Haq was backed by, you know, the United Kingdom, America, because he was fighting their wars in Afghanistan for them. Against the Soviets. Against the Soviets. And so Syria was really a sleepy, quiet place in certain ways. It wasn't the Syria that people know now associated with war. And so I grew up there and I loved it. It was really my first sense of home. It was a shock to me when I realized that Syria wasn't my home and that it was a temporary place of refuge. And then you went back to Pakistan at some point. And how was that? My father contested elections.

8:31Fatima Bhutto: He won a seat in parliament. And so we went back. And although Pakistan was a place that I had, you know, loved because of my father's stories and his memories and I had visited, you know, living there was such a change because it was pure chaos compared to Damascus. And there, who I was, did matter to people. And that was an unusual experience for me as a young girl. And of course, it was a dangerous place. The time in which we moved back to Pakistan in the early 90s was a period of a lot of violence in Karachi and Sindh, where we're from. And of course, my father was killed two years, three years after returning when I was 14 years old.

9:24Fatima Bhutto: And, and, um, it really was like having two parallel lives to going from a place that was so safe, you know, your parents were fine with you walking to your friend's house to a place where you could, well, I couldn't walk out my front door. So that was, you know. And you've just mentioned, now you just mentioned it in passing, but something, an event that, you know must have been obviously extremely traumatic for you which was your father's assassination or murder however you want to describe it and you describe it in this book and in your previous writings what do you think happened at that time you've been thinking about that a long time and it's a matter of interest to the rest of the world in the past you have said that your aunt, who is heroized by the rest of the Western world, Benazir Bhutto, may have been involved in that.

10:26Do you still believe that? And how does that make you feel?

10:29Fatima Bhutto: Well, what I always said, and the Hour of the Wolf, I talk about the personal impact of losing my father. But I wrote a whole book about his murder, Songs of Blood and Sword. And And my aunt was prime minister at the time. And it seemed obvious to me that she bore a moral responsibility, if not any other type of responsibility, because it was her government that oversaw, if not the killing, then what happened afterwards. And my father had always, well, he never lied to us as kids. and he always spoke of the possibility. I had hoped it would not happen so soon. I had hoped that he was wrong, but I knew it was a real possibility.

11:23Fatima Bhutto: And, you know, whatever privilege, and certainly I've had many privileges of birth that I've had, really I would trade every single one of them to have my father alive. So that experience of power and that experience of not just the grief, but the fear and the pain of my father being killed in the way he was killed. And with no justice, I mean, the men who carried out the killing are very much still employed by the government, by the police force in Pakistan. They enjoy the highest rungs of power. That has certainly taught me a lot about how power works and shaped my ideas of justice and so many more things.

12:18It seems like the things that are for the rest of us a source of comfort and safety, the place you call your home and the people you call your family, have become unsafe and dangerous and threatening. is that is that what's happened in your in your life is that a fair characterization do you feel safe in Pakistan when you visit I don't think anyone feels safe

12:45Fatima Bhutto: in Pakistan I mean not just me I don't think anyone feels safe in Pakistan and you know Pakistanis are often described as that word that we all hate you know resilient which basically means that we can live through anything which is not something you want to be you know you want to live in a place where you have basic security and assurances. And, you know, no, I didn't feel safe. But in compared to what, you know, I feel incredibly safe compared to what we're seeing around us. So despite the tragedy that you've experienced, you also still seem to feel quite lucky in a way compared to... Oh, I know I'm lucky.

13:29Fatima Bhutto: I know that I'm lucky. I know that I'm incredibly lucky. I had to watch my father being killed and many members of my family being killed. But I'm incredibly lucky. No, we never got justice for any of those killing. But there are grave sites I can visit and do. There is still a roof over my head. There's a home. I don't worry every night that I go to sleep whether I will wake up the next morning. So I have no doubt that I'm lucky. I have no doubt that I'm lucky. I think really you asked earlier what shaped me. Of course, the experience of grief has shaped me and of course, my countries have shaped me.

14:16Fatima Bhutto: But I don't think I will ever be the same as I was before 2023. What has been done to Gaza has affected me more profoundly than I can possibly state. It's very interesting. And we'll talk more about this relationship between the personal and the political in your life. But I mean, just for our listeners who, again, may not be aware of what you've been through, basically, I mean, your father was assassinated. Your aunt was assassinated. Your uncle was also assassinated, as was your grandfather executed. so your name which many people will think of as a very fortunate thing seems like a poison chalice in many ways I mean I really think of it I know it's a fortunate thing and I know that I know it gave me so many things that millions and millions of people in my country don't don't have basic things like the education I was afforded, you know, the safety I was also afforded.

15:26Fatima Bhutto: So I know that. But again, you know, it feels so odd to tell you that it's a poison chalice when people who have none of those assurances have lost so much more than me today. I really, if we'd had this conversation in 2010, I think we'd be having a very different one. It feels absolutely shameful of me to say that I had some sort of tragedy in my life, considering what we're watching today. And what about your view of life, your outlook on life? Has that not been darkened to some extent by the exposure to death? No, it's quite the opposite. I, you know, I write in the hour of the wolf of a certain anxiety that I've always lived with because of my life experience.

16:18But the opposite, actually, because it's made me incredibly grateful and aware of how extraordinary it is to be alive.

16:32Fatima Bhutto: You know, the miracle of being alive. and the gift of life, it's changed totally my perspective on everything. And I don't think in a dark way. I know that I get that from my father who had a romance with the world. He found every day a joy. He found something to enjoy. Tell me a bit more about your father, who is perhaps an under-recognized figure in the history of Pakistani politics. His sister, Benazir, obviously has a much greater recognition. I mean, what was Murtaza Bhutto like? And, you know, what was his mission in life? I mean, he was quite a radical figure and did some very bold and adventurous and risky things in his life.

17:28Could you tell us a bit about that?

17:30Fatima Bhutto: I think my father's life was totally transformed by what happened to his father, possibly quite like me and like his sister and like all of us. When his father's government was overthrown, he was a young man. He was 25 when his father was hanged. Well, we think hanged, executed by a military dictatorship. And if my father hadn't had that life, perhaps he would have, I don't know what he would have gone on to be. You know, he loved to read. He loved books. He studied, he did his thesis on Pakistan's nuclear capabilities and on nuclear deterrence. But all that had to end when his father was killed and he lost his brother very soon after.

18:17Um, but my father basically is, is my political education because I learned about everything

18:27Fatima Bhutto: through him. I learned about Pakistan and, and his idea of Pakistan and his Pakistan is very different than mine. I didn't grow up during my father's Pakistan. So my father had an understanding of, of the possibility and promise of Pakistan, which I've never seen. because I've only seen the betrayal of Pakistan and the danger and the violence of Pakistan. Do you still believe in the ideal of Pakistan that your father and your grandfather had? Of course. Of course I do because they gave their lives for it. And they gave their lives for something that was real. It was not, for me, it's an idea because I've never seen it.

19:08Fatima Bhutto: But for them, it was something true and possible and very real. And I believe in that. Of course, I believe in that. And I don't think it's a Pollyanna belief because I understand it's failures and I understand it's wounds and how it has wounded us as Pakistanis. but but my father really shaped my thinking not just politically um you know i remember my father watching television watching the news with my father as a young girl as a five-year-old or four-year-old or however old i was and seeing israeli tanks you know mowing down children my age in Palestine. And I'm 43. And I'm still watching those tanks mow down children.

20:04Fatima Bhutto: And it was my father who I remember used to told me, you know, you must pray for Palestine at night when you pray for Pakistan, because these are people who want to return home to just like you do. And he connected in a way in a wonderful way, my thinking to people very far away from me and to people very much unlike me and I'm grateful for that. And also, you know, by being somebody who understood the wonder of the world, he taught me not to see it darkly, but to see it in a different light. And I think that's gotten me through life. If I saw the world darkly, I'm not sure, you know, how I would have survived it.

20:52How do you manage that? How do you maintain that faith in the promise of Pakistan, given all the...

21:02Fatima Bhutto: Being Pakistani. Yeah, and given all the fundamental failings of it as a state and perhaps even as an ideal. I mean, I'm from Bangladesh, so I'm very familiar with the way that an entire people who embraced the vision of Pakistan were betrayed. Absolutely. And I don't really know how the idea of Pakistan could even recover from what happened in 1971 when the majority population of the country who fought for the creation of the country were massacred and had to secede. So, I mean, how do you manage to keep the faith? I mean, this is interesting to me. Well, I think it would be very hard to find.

21:47Fatima Bhutto: And I would be very suspicious of anyone, wherever they're from, who doesn't have a healthy, I wouldn't say skepticism, but sense of the realities of their country. I mean, I'm skeptical of patriots because I don't understand how you can be a patriot for any country in the world when you see what our countries are capable of doing. But at the same time, exactly what you said, you know, what was East Pakistan fought for Pakistan, you know, and suffered for Pakistan to be made to become an independent country. I think if you look at whether it's Punjab or Sindh or any of the provinces, one has to separate them from the people.

22:38Fatima Bhutto: All the failures of Pakistan's history belong to men, belong to human beings, belong to people. But that idea meant something. That idea was a promise that has yet to be fulfilled and certainly was broken, was broken in what was East Pakistan, is broken in Sindh, is broken in many, many places. But I don't think that that means the idea was flawed, necessarily. The way in which it was carried out was desperately flawed and criminal in many ways. But when you look at India today, and I think this is a realization maybe Pakistanis have only just had in the last 10 years or so. My generation of Pakistanis didn't quite understand why we had to have a separate state.

23:31Fatima Bhutto: You know, it's difficult to understand that when you speak the same language as people in India, you share the same culture as people in Bangladesh. And for context, I should say this is the history that unfolded in 1947 when India, erstwhile India was split up into India and Pakistan to provide a homeland for Muslims. And you're saying it's now quite hard to for many Pakistanis to envision why that was necessary. Pre-Modi, it was hard. Post-Modi, it makes a lot of sense. Because the idea that Muslims could have enjoyed safety or just equal treatment in India under Modi, to me, seems difficult to believe.

24:17Fatima Bhutto: It was probably difficult to believe before for people who lived there. But for us outside, it was confusing. Now it makes sense. It makes a lot more sense. Because for a long time, we wanted to believe that India was a secular democracy that could provide a homeland for people of all religions. And now with the Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, you're saying the dream is sort of long gone. Well, plenty of Indian friends, when I used to say this to them, would tell me pre-2014 that I was wrong. You know, Kashmiris would have told me I was wrong. Indian Muslims, I'm sure would have told me I was wrong.

25:00Fatima Bhutto: But I think, as you said, for those of us outside, it did seem like they had gotten something right that we hadn't, that they had managed to build a foundation that was imperfectly secular, but let's say aspired to be secular or functioned in some unusual way secularly. And I think that's now obviously come undone in a spectacularly terrifying way. At the same time, I know that it's the whole idea of partition. We have to think about it differently. We have to understand that everywhere the British left, everywhere they left, they left these fissures and those were not accidents. They left them between India, Pakistan, Bangladesh.

25:46And I think on purpose, because you

25:49Fatima Bhutto: can imagine what a force such a unified entity would have been. They left them between Turkey and Greece with Cyprus. They left them in Palestine. They left them with the Irish. They left it as principle, as policy, I think. And so we do have to go back and look at that history and take accountability not only for our own failings, and certainly we have our own failings, but also for the very way in which we were created as independent countries. And the devastations of colonialism. I think one of the things that we don't talk about, you know, is reparations. Reparations are owed by the West to the world.

26:33Fatima Bhutto: and they are owed from the time of the Raj till this very moment. You know, how is the world, what is the West going to do for Iran? How are they going to pay for dismantling, for destroying, for setting back this country? Decades and decades. What about sanctions? You know, these are all things that have to, I think, be much more at the forefront because our conversation of where we went wrong and where we failed as people is incomplete. without it. But it seems to my mind that there's quite a lot of discussion, especially among South Asians themselves, as formerly colonized people, about the role of the British.

27:16And that's very well established. What seems more to be lacking is much of a critical sense of how South Asian, the South Asian elites and politicians and the governing class, and, you know, so on, have failed to live up to the ideals of the great generations that came before them.

27:39Fatima Bhutto: I would disagree. I would disagree. I think a lot has been said about the British by us. The British have not said anything themselves and nor have the British acted in any way. So I don't think the British have had any accountability imposed on them at all. But we've talked about it a lot. So I would agree with you there. But I would disagree only because in Pakistan, the failures of the ruling elite are present at every turn. You cannot escape them. You cannot escape them. When you are living in a mega city like Karachi, and you do not have the guarantee of electricity or water. And if you cannot pay for a tanker to come to your house and fill your water, you have no water.

28:28Fatima Bhutto: when people in parts of the city like Malia or Nazmabad drink water and die, because it is not just not potable, it is fatal. That failure is everywhere. When you are talking today about IMF austerity imposed on the country, that Pakistan will never be able to pay back. That is the failure of the elite of that country. When you are looking at a literacy rate that is so shameful, And again, in Pakistan, literacy is just qualified as the ability to write your name. That's what counts as literacy. That is absolutely in every single possible way, the failure of that political class. So I don't think it's not discussed.

29:13Fatima Bhutto: It's very much discussed. But again, have we acted on it? And no. And yes, I mean, I think people have tried. But there is a structure in place that prevents real action and prevents real conversation. And that's where we as South Asians, I think, are continually held back. I wonder if it's possible to link what you've just said to your book, Hour of the Wolf, which is about an abusive relationship, a personal relationship. But literary critics, I'm sure, will find it almost irresistible to draw a comparison between the public abuse, you know, by the state of, you know, being a Pakistani such as yourself and the abuse experienced in private.

30:06in your personal relationships?

30:08Fatima Bhutto: I don't think they connect, to be honest, because I think what's unusual is perhaps a tragedy that has been publicly lived is unusual. But I think, unfortunately, this kind of coercive and controlling abuse and manipulation that I write about in The Hour of the Wolf is unfortunately incredibly, incredibly common. I, you know, I, since the book has come out, it's not been out in the world all that long. I've been, I've been really saddened actually to see how many people have come up to me and told me that they went through something incredibly similar or it was very familiar to them. And I don't just mean women, but, but men too.

30:53Fatima Bhutto: And that kind of abuse happens in families and it happens in friendships and in relationships and in work. And I think everyone has some version of this experience. It's just that we are ashamed. And because of our shame, we don't talk about it. So I have written very often, not often, very, very deeply already about the personal tragedy which was publicly lived. Yes. But I had never spoken about the private because I was ashamed, because I felt ashamed. Why did you feel ashamed? Because I had, I have, I had, well, I guess I both have and had an idea of myself as being quite a strong person and being a woman who is independent, is intelligent, isn't afraid to speak up for herself, can handle uncomfortable situations.

32:03Fatima Bhutto: And I just didn't think that could happen to someone like that. And it was really only this experience of it happening to me that disabused me of this. I mean, it wasn't, you know, rationally you think, I can, I have been put and I'm not afraid to have uncomfortable conversations. so I would be able to take care of myself. But I didn't. It didn't turn out to be true. It didn't turn out to be true. And I think that actually did a lot of this idea that it can't happen to you if you're strong or independent did a lot of damage for me mentally because I didn't even realize how unhappy I was and how bad the situation was because I just thought it couldn't happen to me.

32:50Yeah, and of course we shouldn't think that it couldn't happen to certain kinds of people. And yet even you still think that at times about yourself and you say you feel ashamed. Yeah. Could you tell, you know, our listeners, not all of whom will have read the book yet, what exactly happened?

33:11Fatima Bhutto: Well, The Hour of the Wolf is about a period of my life where I was in a coercive and certainly a toxic relationship. But it was a private relationship. And so really almost no one knew I was in this, which is, of course, what allowed the relationship to continue so long. and also it is about many other things at the same time which sound disconnected but that experience of being isolated and being very fearful it brought out a lot more of my anxiety and I've struggled with anxiety really my whole life it it highlighted it and at this time when I felt isolated and afraid and alone. I had a small dog to care for.

34:09Fatima Bhutto: And it made me think a lot about love and tenderness and friendship and the way in which we absolutely ignore the non-human world because we have this total assurance that we are superior to every other form of life. and it's just not true. I mean, there's so much extraordinary lessons we can take from the natural world and from the animal world and from even our own cultures, which again, you know, we're coming off, I mean, you like me grew up, I'm guessing, in the age of the war on terror and, you know, being someone who's lived in many places during Iraq, Afghanistan, all this, I found a lot of solace in my culture.

35:05Fatima Bhutto: I found a lot of solace in my religion. And I found a lot of space that helped me understand pain and kindness in Islam. And this experience, And I guess it's a book about secrets in a way. It's a book about not just these personal secrets, but why were we having to celebrate these stories and myths and secrets? Because we lived in an environment that denigrated our culture and our experience. And now watching that same culture that denigrated us engage in acts of unbearable savagery, it makes me angry. And so all these things came together in the writing of The Hour of the Wolf. It's very interesting that you're talking about a personal trauma, but you're linking it to public events, global events.

36:00And it seems that, you know, the personal and the public just keep enmeshing themselves in the way you think about the world.

36:08Fatima Bhutto: But I think they do. You know, I think they do. I'm very attached to my dogs, obviously. And there is this idea that, you know, people in the Muslim world are horrible to dogs or not kind to dogs. And it's just it's false. You know, the Quran tells, I mean, on Judgment Day, animals will be brought to testify how you treated them. So this is a religion and a worldview and a culture that treats life as beautiful, as glorious. It doesn't denigrate non-human life. You know, there's so much in these parables and in these stories that gave me a kind of, not just solace, but hope and strength. And I wanted to celebrate them.

37:01Fatima Bhutto: I wanted to tell these stories that should be the story. We're going to take a quick break, but stay with us. We'll be back after this.

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38:03can we talk about the the muslim world which you've just alluded to here um i mean we've spoken about pakistan the country with which your family is most most linked but your your mother is from afghanistan your stepmother is from lebanon you grew up in syria um these are all countries that are in some kind of crisis or emerging from a crisis or currently being bombed, whether by Israel or by, in Afghanistan's case, by Pakistan. This is a world in crisis, really. And the crisis is most acute in the parts of the world you're connected to. I mean, what's your view of all of this?

38:50Fatima Bhutto: How much time do we have? Why, for one thing, is this part of the world in crisis? What's your analysis? I would do it no justice to try and fit it into the time we have here. But I think what should be said and what should be now just recognized is that all the excuses that the West has given us for their carnage in the Muslim world should be absolutely thrown out and understand for the lies that they are. It's nothing to do with democracy. The West obviously doesn't care about Saudi Arabia or Kuwait's democracy, you know, when there's barrels of oil being discussed. It's got nothing to do with the status of women.

39:40Fatima Bhutto: You know, it's got nothing to do with some kind of justice or it is pure greed and theft. That's it. It's a theft of resources. And that's what it's always been. When the British conquered 80 % of the world, they didn't have to tell us it was because they cared about how women lived or because they cared about spreading progressive ideas. They just did it and took everything home with them. And that was that. So I think we should throw out those ideas. And I think we should understand that the world that existed, that allowed that is dead. It's broken. and none of us should want to continue to live in it.

40:27Fatima Bhutto: And I think that's a radical thing because if we don't want to live in it, we have to begin to build a different kind of world. And that different kind of world is going to have to have different understandings, different histories, different stories and different engagement. How does that work practically, do you think? Well, it's a large thing to say. So I know it doesn't mean like, okay, step one, go out and do X or Y. But I think part of it is about building new platforms to tell our stories. I mean, new ways in which we're going to understand the world. That is already happening. You see magazines like Equator, like Zateo, not to do reverse branding on New Statesman.

41:19Fatima Bhutto: But people have said, I don't trust the BBC anymore. I don't trust the New York Times anymore. I'm going to write for a new type of platform and I'm going to create a new type of platform. I think that's important. Do you think that can really make a difference? I mean, is this partly why you've chosen to become a writer? It is definitely why I chose to become a writer. But I think it definitely matters to how I am a reader. So it definitely influences how I read. It definitely influences how I consume, how I buy, what I choose to put my time, energy, money towards. And I think we'll have to go much, much further.

41:58Fatima Bhutto: It's going to have to be how we live and how we want politics done and who we want to represent us. But I think on a very visceral level, we are seeing that people are changing, are changing what they thought as the standard. You know, you're a writer, I'm a writer, you work in media. We all had a standard, didn't we? We all thought something was like you wanted your byline in that paper. You know, I don't want my byline in a paper like the New York Times. So what you're saying, I suppose, is that your career as a writer is quite engaged with themes of power and an engagement with politics. Would you say that's fair?

42:43A lot of us looking from the outside might have expected you to go into politics rather than to be a writer. But in one sense, being a writer is a form of doing politics. Is that what you're saying?

42:55Fatima Bhutto: I think it is, certainly. I think it is to a degree. If I felt that entering politics was a way to change things, I would have done it. I just don't see it and I'm looking at my own country. I just don't see it as a way to change something. Otherwise, wouldn't you imagine that Pakistan, one of the largest militaries in the world, forget Muslim, but just has one of the largest militaries. Doesn't Pakistan have an obligation under international law to intervene against the genocide? All states do have that obligation. And it doesn't do it. You know, what is... Instead, it's, some would say, perpetrating crimes of its own, whether within its territory or outside it.

43:49I mean, yesterday, they bombed a drug facility in Afghanistan. Hundreds may have died.

43:57Fatima Bhutto: It's horrible. And it's horrible, especially because many of us said when Israel began to bomb hospitals. This cannot stand because tomorrow it will not be Israel. It will be another country and you're going to turn hospitals into acceptable targets and it's going to come to all of our countries eventually. We cannot live with the illusion that we will be safe from it. And there you have it. And there Pakistan has died. It gives me great, great shame and great anger to see this happen in my country. Now, are there any forms of politics in Pakistan or elsewhere in the global south that gives you optimism.

44:37I mean, a lot of people, especially in the Pakistani diaspora, are admirers of Imran Khan. What do you think of that situation? Imran Khan is currently, I should say, in prison. How do you view that situation?

44:54Fatima Bhutto: Well, it's very difficult to answer because I am not a voter of Imran Khan's. I never voted for him and I don't agree with his politics. Why not? Just quickly. Well, let me just finish to say that at the same time as I'm not a voter of his, I think what's being done to him is absolutely horrible. I think the way in which he's being treated is really, it does Pakistan a great disservice. And as a Pakistani, it gives me shame to see that he is kept in the conditions he's kept, that his children are not allowed to speak to their father. And, um, I, I think he should, he's, he's a former prime minister of the country.

45:40Fatima Bhutto: He should, he served his country and absolutely he should not be treated this way. But also no prisoner should be treated that way. No man in prison should be denied contact with his family or to, with his lawyers or, so I, both things are true. Um, it feels wrong to, you know, cause I always get asked about Imran Khan and it feels wrong for me to say why I wasn't a voter of his, given the conditions that he's kept in. I don't agree with his politics. At the same time, I can also recognize that, you know, certain things he did, he handled well, other things I don't think he handled well. But they're moot points right now, because what matters is that he is a Pakistani in jail, who we are told has worsening health, and is not being given the treatment that he deserves.

46:33Fatima Bhutto: So for me, that's more important than why I didn't vote for him. What are your politics or more broadly, what is your worldview? How would you describe it? Because, you know, you've mentioned various things here. You've mentioned your deep feeling for the Muslim world, culturally at least. Your interest in Muslim countries, interest in Pakistan. Your grandfather was ideologically something of a pioneer in melding Islam, socialism, Pakistani nationalism. A lot going on ideologically. I mean, in your family. I mean, where do you stand? I mean, yes, it's there's not one word for it. But certainly I'm interested and I feel very moved by the ideas of Islamic socialism that my grandfather wrote about and espoused.

47:30Fatima Bhutto: But I'm interested in the politics of the global south. It's not just limited to the Muslim world. I mentioned the Muslim world because we're looking at really just Muslim countries being terrorized by the West. So obviously that pains me because we grew up with the idea of an ummah. And what is an ummah? You know, I don't know if the ummah has any meaning when we are watching what we're watching being done to Palestine and to Lebanon and to Iran and to Yemen and so on. But I'm interested in the politics of the global south because I think we connect beyond the Muslim world. when we look at countries in South America for example in Africa I think our our fates are connected because our our histories are very connected and the politics that we see that inspire me are politics in South America in in in a more recent way than in Asia you know you mentioned, is there anyone or is there any kind of politics that give me hope in South Asia?

48:41Fatima Bhutto: Not really. In South Asia, no, it's, it's feels really grim and ugly in South Asia. But you know, when you see, when you see what can be possible and what can be done, and has been done in recent years in Algeria, let's say, you know, or... Algeria? Are you talking sort of after independence? I'm talking about, yes, getting rid of the French and, you know, this idea, of course, it didn't go the way people hoped and dreamed it would. But the experience of Algeria, the experience of, you know, Cuba and Angola, I mean, these are not so long ago.

49:26But if... Yeah, but they are a bit long ago. But this is something I think about as well. So, I mean, you know, we're talking about Algeria, we're talking about, you know, the ideals of someone like Lumumba or what happened in Latin America. There was a great moment of optimism during the initial phase of decolonization. Yeah. Let's say in the 50s, 60s, 70s. But then the dream kind of fails, doesn't it? And how do we reckon with that?

49:54Fatima Bhutto: But the dream is made to fail because either you're sanctioned to within an inch of your life. I mean, we're watching today the entire Cuban electrical grid has been powered off, essentially, thanks to the United States. That's not a failure of Cuba's. That is power in its brutest, crudest form being practiced by the United States. And that power has been working, whether it was the US or it was the United Kingdom, or it was the combination of them throughout this period of decolonization that we're talking about. So it was either made to fail. You were sanctioned. You were not allowed to vote for who you wanted to vote for if you voted for the wrong guy.

50:39Fatima Bhutto: Or if you voted for the right guy who had a vision, that person was killed. I mean, we see this over and over and over again. And I think it's natural that we think of this as bad luck, but this is policy. It's not bad luck. It's policy. And now, thanks to Trump, we're seeing it practiced in its most transparent form. I think it really cannot be clearer what we're watching. And this is how they've conducted themselves against the global south. Always. Always. Is there a sense in which the emerging culture of the global south, which is something you've written about in your book, New Kings of the World, is a form of resistance to Western hegemony?

51:28Is that how you see the rise of things like Turkish dramas or K-pop? How does that work out? How is that a form of resistance?

51:40Fatima Bhutto: Because soft power has always been thought of in the West as something that accompanies hard power. So America didn't get to where it was simply by putting military bases all over the world. They also did it by presenting a version of themselves that the rest of the world would aspire to. So when you think of America as the epitome of cool or of civilization or whatever, you're thinking not of, oh, wow, they've got 137 bases. And, you know, you're thinking of Elvis and you're thinking of Blue Jeans and you're thinking of Bruce Springsteen and you're thinking of, you know, whatever technology, you know, that works in this sort of 24 hour cycle of anything you want is possible and can be given to you.

52:29Fatima Bhutto: And that was not a mistake. That was not an accident. That was a design. And they did that for this result. And soft power only really works when the country behind it is seen as credible. I think the West has lost a lot of its credibility in the last 20 years. It's not to say that that's it, but let's just look at the trajectory. It's going down. It's not going to come up now. And at the same time, other cultures have been really good at showing that they too can compete in this arena. And they can do it as big, as sophisticated, as technologically advanced and as ideologically interesting as the West did.

53:16Fatima Bhutto: You know, you look at K-pop, you mentioned K-pop, you know, if you look at whether it's YouTube or Spotify or the biggest bands in the world, they're not American. They're not English. They're from Korea. And that reflects a new world order, you would say. I think it's definitely a new world order. And what's one of the things that people say? Because when I wrote New Kings of the World, I traveled really widely for it. It's a book of reportage as well. I went to Peru, to Lebanon, to Turkey. And people are not watching American products anymore. People are turning to other cultures. They're watching Korean shows or they're watching Turkish shows.

53:56Fatima Bhutto: There was a period they were watching Bollywood. I think Bollywood is so degraded and corrupted now by Hindu nationalism that no one's watching it anymore. Outside of India, obviously. But the thing that people said to me again and again and again as to why they were looking at these other cultural products, non-Western cultural products, was that they didn't see their lives reflected in Hollywood anymore or ever. Actually, from the majority of the world ever. You know, what does a villager in Nigeria have in common with the cast of Friends? You know, nothing. But what does the student in Bangladesh have in common with some sort of cosplaying medieval warrior on the Turkish steps?

54:45I'll tell you.

54:46Fatima Bhutto: I'll tell you what he has. The Turkish warrior that you see, whether it's the historical drama or the young Turkish man in Istanbul today, has something in common with the teenager in Dhaka because he has a family culture that is absolutely similar. It's a culture where elders are respected, where the family decides what is honorable and dishonorable for the family. They will be a part of the wedding decision, the decision how to raise the children. The warrior, when he goes out, is not thinking, oh, I can't wait to go and kill people. He's thinking, I can't wait to go and kiss my mother's feet when I return home.

55:23Fatima Bhutto: The family is a unit that is to be protected at all costs from corruption, right? Right. Corruption is not just financial, it's moral, it's ethical. And that's what a young person feels, you know, in their home. And that's quite a contrast from the individualism of Western popular culture. Totally. I mean, you know, the example you always give is Sex and the City, which is like, who is watching that show in the world and saying, gosh, that sounds familiar to me. They're not, but they're watching a Turkish show and they're seeing themselves reflected in the Turkish heroine who has to work to survive.

55:59Fatima Bhutto: And she's got to maintain her decency while she does it, while the world around her is ugly. And she has to understand what is it permissible to sacrifice? What is it not permissible to sacrifice? How do I want to be viewed in the eyes of my community? That is something familiar to women all over the world, not the experience that we see in a Marvel movie. And how did you end up at this position? I mean, you are someone who has had a fairly Western education, I think it's fair to say. You spent a lot of time in the West. You went to university in America, I believe. Culturally, many aspects of your cultural life are Western.

56:39You write novels, which is broadly a Western form. but also now you seem to identify more with the culture not of the West but of the global South. How do you sort of navigate this?

56:52Fatima Bhutto: Well, I mean, I wouldn't say it's broadly a Western form. I mean, yes, okay, but, you know, I'm also thinking of wonderful Arab, you know, like Nagib Mahfouz, you know, the Kyber trilogy is just extraordinary. If you think of poetry, which I also love, you know, the world's most beautiful poets are, I think, from the Arabic speaking and from South Asia. Who are your favorite writers from South Asia or elsewhere? Well, I love, I mean, Agha Shahid Ali is just one of the most beautiful writers, I think, in any language. This is the Kashmiri poet. But he wrote in English, I believe. Also, yes, I mean, this is part of our colonial sort of shadowing, isn't it, that we don't write in our own languages.

57:48Do you read Urdu literature?

57:50Fatima Bhutto: I wish I could. I wish I could. I mean, I can read in Arabic and I can read in Urdu, but incredibly slowly. So I wouldn't be able to read the way I read in English. But you do read Arabic literature? I studied Arabic and no, it's an exaggeration to say I could read Arabic literature. I could read very, very slowly. But if I were to read Naguib Mahfouz or if I were to read Nizar Abani, I could not read him in Arabic. I would have to read him in English to take from him, you know, the pleasure that I get in English. Your mother, obviously, is an Arabic speaker, Lebanese. She was a ballet teacher, I believe.

58:28Fatima Bhutto: Stepmother, yeah. Stepmother, that's right. Did you speak Arabic growing up with her? Well, when I was growing up in Syria, I did Arabic lessons in school. And I also, you know, my friends spoke Arabic and it was spoken at home. But, you know, I'm not one of those people that languages come naturally to. So if I'm not hearing something all the time, you know, as you get older, it sort of drifts. I love Arabic. I'm also one of those people who has those apps that teach you different languages. I've got like 10 of them on my phone. I wish I could learn all of them. But yeah, no, I've always loved the literature and the culture and the arts that come from our part of the world.

59:15Fatima Bhutto: But you're right, I was educated in Western schools and American schools. And it's given me, I guess, access to things I wouldn't have had access to. But I wouldn't say that I'm attached to one culture's arts over another. I just think there's so much. there's it's it's a different experience um we don't have the luxury not to write literature about political issues because our lives are impacted in every manner by politics so we don't have the luxury as asian or global south writers to just write that purely domestic drama that jonathan franson can do um i mean i think it's weird that he has the luxury to do that But he also doesn't.

1:00:13Fatima Bhutto: He still writes about, you know. But you also still write about very personal domestic issues. I mean, one of the very moving aspects of your latest book is about your desire for motherhood, which you now are. But during this terrible relationship, your desire to become a mother was thwarted. I want to ask you, I mean, how does all of this baggage of the past, this carnage of the past, shape your parental life and your vision of nurturing a future life? I mean, you know, how do you feel about that? I don't think my personal tragedies have done anything but make me feel incredibly grateful for every experience I have now.

1:01:02So because I loved my father so deeply, it's that love rather than the grief of losing him that I take into my own role as a mother.

1:01:20Fatima Bhutto: But to answer your question, I was pregnant with my first son in October of 2023. 23. And I feel like my, and then I was pregnant, you know, with my second son during the continued carnage, Israel's carnage on Gaza. And I feel like not just pregnancy, but motherhood and raising young children has been lived under this nightmare, this endless terror that Israel has wrought without any consequence over not just Palestine, but now Lebanon, now Iran. And that does affect me. That does affect me really, really deeply. But let me ask you finally, what kind of world do you think you are passing on to your children?

1:02:14Are you optimistic about this new world order you've spoken about? Do you think they'll live to see something like that?

1:02:22Fatima Bhutto: Inshallah. I think it behooves all of us to make sure that this old world order is absolutely dismantled so no one's children have to live through it. Well, on that note, on that slightly optimistic note, Fatima Butoh, thank you so much for joining us here at the New States. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. You've been listening to The Exchange from The New Statesman with me, Tanja Rashid, and my guest, Fatima Butoh. The Exchange will be back next week.

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