Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar (13 page)

Two other key processes were under way of which Bhutto appeared, in our many conversations in this period, largely unaware. The first was the enrichment of a substantial segment of Pakistani society in the miniboom sparked by Musharraf's economically liberal policies, easy credit, the lifting of sanctions post-9/11, the influx of remittance money as Pakistanis began to feel less secure in the West or the Middle East, and the new aid that began arriving. At the same time, Pakistan's cities and towns continued to suck in millions of people from rural areas. The result of these two processes was the creation of a new urban lower middle class. You only needed to stand on the corner of a Karachi street for a minute to see this. The families who had owned only a motorbike now owned the tiny 800 cc Suzuki Mehran car. Those who had had a Mehran now had a Corolla. Equally important were the values of this growing swath of the population. The late 1990s and the post-9/11 era had seen a hardening of Islamic identities at the expense of more pro-Western identities across the Muslim world. Pakistan was no exception. The new lower middle classes, millions strong, saw links to the West as suspicious, a marker of foreign dominance. The aspirational example had become the Persian Gulf. The dream holiday was no longer Europe or the United States, for which visas were difficult and the atmosphere for visiting Muslims unpleasant, but the United Arab Emirates or Malaysia. For such people, raised on a diet of news and discussion heavily informed by the prejudices once restricted to hard-line Islamists, the world was run by imperialist Americans and their Jewish allies who hated Muslims, the Taliban were righteous mujahideen, and the Indian secret services, or Mossad or the CIA, were behind most of the ills of their country. They were culturally, socially, and religiously conservative nationalists. They were increasingly numerous, increasingly dominant in public conversation,
increasingly dominant in the security establishment. They were not, it is fair to say, natural voters for Bhutto, but nonetheless Bhutto gave no sign of having recognized this new tendency. When she spoke of Pakistan she spoke of “my nation,” “my homeland,” even “my people.” But the Pakistan she wanted to come back to—to reclaim—was not the Pakistan she had left.

Zardari House had become Bilawal House, named after Bhutto's young son rather than her controversial husband. The lane that led to it was clogged with the concrete blast walls that, after a decade of covering the various theaters of conflict in the War on Terror, were wearily familiar to me. I negotiated three checkpoints and was shown into a small lounge. On the table were a flask of rose water and a small plastic tray of
burfi
.

It was December 2007 and Bhutto had been back in Pakistan for less than three months. Her return was largely the result of President Musharraf's internal and external weakness. Inside Pakistan, the former general's erstwhile popularity was long gone and his authority had been undermined by angry lawyers, an increasingly confident opposition, an economic downturn, and the security situation. Musharraf's primary justification for holding on to power was that he brought stability. But a series of bloody suicide bombings had made very clear the extent to which his rule had seen local militant groups establish themselves as a genuine threat to Pakistan as well as to the region. The growing evidence of the Pakistani security establishment's continued support for elements within the Afghan Taliban, whose senior leadership remained based in Pakistan, and their apparent reluctance to move seriously against the panoply of extremist groups operating on Pakistani soil, had sapped support for Musharraf overseas too, particularly given the vast military aid that had been supplied to the Pakistani army. The ideal, it was decided in Western governments, would be for Musharraf to remain president and for Bhutto to become prime minister.

Partly through the work of British diplomats, a deal was worked out in the summer of 2007 and Musharraf agreed to Bhutto's return, as well as
that of Nawaz Sharif, her political archrival. Before she left Dubai, she told me that her slogan in the campaign for the parliamentary elections due in January would be
roti, kapre, makan
—that of her father in the 1970s. The corruption allegations were long forgotten. Bhutto landed in Karachi in October, to be greeted by a massive bomb that killed eighty in the procession leading her from the airport to the tomb of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam, the great leader and founder of Pakistan.

By early December she was in full campaign mode. Every day she left Islamabad, driving long distances to rallies in the Punjab, Pakistan's easternmost province. This was not where Bhutto was most popular, and it was far from the family's hereditary heartland of Naudero and northern Sind. She also headed west, toward the Afghan border, into the North-West Frontier Province. Politically this made some sense. In this area, ruled for several years by a coalition of religious parties, popular opinion was running against the radicals, who had notably failed to improve roads, schools, health care, or any of the bread-and-butter issues that so often determine voting. Personally, however, Bhutto was taking a very significant risk. She had already survived one assassination attempt and had publicly stated that many wanted her dead—although those she named were probably not those responsible for the bombing in Karachi. Nor was winning votes in gritty towns like Charsadda or Nowshera vitally important to any electoral strategy. But Pakistan was “her homeland,” and to reclaim it she needed to feel that no place was forbidden to her.

We left about ten o'clock, driving very fast on the new motorway that links Islamabad to Peshawar and cuts the journey time from four to two and a half hours—or less if you are traveling in a motorcade of a dozen vehicles with armed escorts. By noon we had reached Nowshera, a large town and army garrison thirty miles short of Peshawar and fifty-five miles from the Afghan border and one of the places frequently targeted by the militants. Once Afghan refugee camps had lined the roads around the city. They had gone, but the madrassas had not. They are not the suicide bomber
factories they are often said to be, but are part of a broad transnational network linked to the rigorous and literalist Deobandi local southwestern strand of Islamic observance increasingly dominant in western Pakistan, particularly among the Pashtun tribes. Bhutto, a Shia steeped in Sufi traditions—westernized, moderate, secular—was everything they detested.

Bhutto lunched with local activists and members of Parliament, and the rally began. The local candidate in the forthcoming elections made a sycophantic speech. The crowd, sitting in long lines on the ground and carefully segregated, cheered and Bhutto took the stage. There are people who want to rob Pakistan of its future, but we will not let it happen, she told them. “There are those who abuse Islam for their own political ends and turn Muslim brother against Muslim brother.” They cheered. “My government will bring you what you need: roads, water, electricity,
roti, kapre, makan
.” More cheers.

And then it was over and she was gone and calling me over. Still breathless after forcing our way through the crowds, we climbed together into her heavily armored four-wheel drive and, amid sirens and horns, pushed out onto the main road that led to the motorway. We had gone only one hundred yards before she called for the hatch in the roof to be opened and stood up, waving to the traffic and to those along the roadside, receiving bemused acknowledgment in return from people who only after she had passed recognized who had just bestowed a regal wave upon them.

Stopping the convoy beside the market, Bhutto got out of her vehicle and, flipping her white
dupatta
over her hair, headed off among the stalls, asking the price of fruit. In her wake, overweight policemen tried to control the crowd, with little success. We were in Pabbi, a scruffy road-stop town that had been the site of one of the biggest militant training camps in the early 1990s. Working her way back to the vehicles, she brandished a bag of oranges like a lantern before her. “I wanted to know the price, Mr. Burke,” she said, exhilarated by her own daring in making the unscheduled stop. “I need to get back in touch with Pakistan. The price of oranges is important. . . . And you stay safe by being unpredictable.”

I interviewed her formally for an hour in the car as we drove back down to Islamabad on the road she proudly, and without foundation, claimed the credit for building.

I reminded her that a decade before at Naudero I had told her, to the shock and concern of her courtiers, that I thought she would be out of power for at least a decade. Bhutto laughed and asked me what my next prediction would be. She told me she had never expected to be out of power so long. “Are you on the brink of power now?” I asked.

“I think the people are with us and we have the momentum,” she said. “And the international community is supporting a return to democracy.”

Her biggest concerns were security and vote rigging at the polls in January. She was convinced the elections would be manipulated, the only question was how badly. “It's all in the numbers,” she said. She also spoke of how she did not want Pakistan to be a base for international militancy—partly because the West was suffering from international terrorism but more because it was her own nation that was hurting most. She would be making more impulsive visits to markets, she said, because she needed to “meet the people.”

Then, once I put my notebook away, she relaxed, slipping off her flat shoes, calling to her personal secretary in the front seat for sweets and sandwiches. Two Tupperware containers were passed back, one full of neat cubes of
burfi
. She spoke about those she said were trying to kill her—a cabal of retired senior military officers and intelligence agents in league with radical Islamic militants “embedded in the country” who formed a secret parallel state of immense power, she said. She spoke, too, about the long summer negotiations with Musharraf.

“What do you call him when you speak on the phone?” I asked.

“General Sahib,” she said, smiling.

And what does he call you?

“Bibi,” she said.

It was long dark by the time the motorcade halted outside Bilawal House. We said good-bye. She invited me once more to tea and to Naudero. “It will
be just like old times,” she said. Ten days later she was killed at a rally in the city of Rawalpindi about ten miles away.

Coconut
Burfi

2 cups sugar

1 cup water

2 cups shredded coconut

1 ounce cashew nuts, coarsely ground or crushed

1 teaspoon ghee

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

Boil the sugar and the water together in a pan for 15 minutes to create a syrup and then add the coconut. Boil the mixture for another 15 or 20 minutes, stirring all the time.

At the same time, toast the cashew nuts in the ghee.

When the coconut syrup is thick, add the cardamom and cashew nut pieces and stir. Pour onto a greased plate and, using a knife, score the flattened mixture to create diamond-shaped pieces.

When it's cold you can cut it up and serve.

FARNAZ FASSIHI

ON A HOT AFTERNOON IN THE SUMMER OF 2003, I WATCHED THE
abduction, at gunpoint, of three student activists belonging to a pro-democracy movement in Tehran. They were standing only a few feet away from me. The gunmen appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, as I discussed where to eat lunch with a few of my journalist friends.

We were leaving a press conference organized by Iran's main student movement, the Office for Fostering Student Unity. The press conference had dragged on and turned out to be a nonevent. The students had announced that they were in fact canceling a large demonstration planned against the government.

We huddled in a small room in the middle of the dry heat of a particularly baking July day without air-conditioning. A single fan whirled the hot air around the room. Sweat dripped down my neck, my hair sticky and wet under a blue silk scarf. I dutifully scribbled down a few quotes, and soon the thoughts of lunch began.

I craved delicious Persian food, the kind that my grandmother would take hours to prepare and then serve with pride. Fluffy saffron rice layered with sour cherries and slivers of pistachio and almonds, called jeweled
rice, or a thick simmering stew of tiny eggplants and tomatoes flavored with dried lemons and a spice mix of cinnamon and cardamom.

Where would be the closest restaurant that served the most decent food downtown? Anyone who has ever traveled to Iran can attest that Persian cuisine is one of the richest and most varied in the Middle East. But much like the lives of the country's citizens, the food suffers from a dual identity: there is the private food, sensual and delicious, found only behind closed doors at home; and there is the public food, bland and standardized, served at restaurants around town.

Why? Iranians like to eat out—the restaurant business remains one of the most lucrative—but they want different food from what they find in their own kitchens. Eating out is also pricey and considered entertainment for families, who usually opt for pizza, sandwiches, hamburgers, or grilled kebab meats.

On one of my earlier reporting trips to Iran, the same abducted student activists who hosted the press conference had introduced me to their new favorite restaurant, called the Artist House Café. Perhaps we could all grab lunch there after the press conference, I thought, because it served homemade dishes with a twist and the students would feel at ease at their favorite spot to talk candidly about the brewing dissent among reformers.

The Artist House Café is unusual in many ways—it is the hangout place for student activists but also for intellectuals and artist types, located in an old brick building that was once part of a military base in the center of town. The building also sits in the middle of a beautiful garden with tall cypress trees, rose bushes, and small blue pools.