Bereaved

My grief for Benazir is akin to my grief for the inmates of the Lal Masjid Madressah – I did not agree with either’s politics but it’s impossible not to feel for the way they were killed. Whether it was the bullets in her neck that ultimately proved fatal or the lever of the sun roof collapsing on her head, she is dead and the religious right was behind it. While Karachi and most of Sindh burns to mourn her, there is a fatalistic resignation among people that peace will return once wounds begin to heal. What I find most troublesome is the statement of power that the religious right has made to the US by taking down one of the West’s fair-haired girls and to Musharraf by doing it in his garrisoned city, so close to the capital. Two possibly ensuing scenarios are: 1> the religious right will take over Pakistan in due course and make life hell for a primarily culture-driven Islam-observing Pakistani people; 2> whether preemptively or to reclaim the power promised by nukes, the US will step in and Pakistani people will suffer the same fate as the ordinary Afghans and Iraqis ruled by their respectively “oppressive” governments. Like citizens of felled countries, we bide our time until fate unfolds what is in store for us.

Postscript: A few months later I reflect on how Fundophobic I have become over time. Her murder was the work of the agencies and Fundos, the convenient scapegoat.