It was just a short time after the assassination on Thursday of Benazir Bhutto at a political rally in Pakistan that word of her death began spreading through the quiet blocks of Midwood in Brooklyn and Astoria and Jackson Heights in Queens, neighborhoods with some of the city’s largest Pakistani populations.
From house to house, corner to corner, the news circulated through streets where Urdu signs hang in storefront windows and bakeries serve sweet Pakistani cakes. Some people called relatives in Peshawar or Islamabad to hear firsthand reports of clashes and stabbings that followed the assassination.
Others gathered in Pakistani restaurants and gazed somberly at Urdu satellite broadcasts that showed Bhutto smiling just moments before the rally and ambulances taking bodies away in what seemed to have been a close-range shooting followed by a suicide blast.
“I think there will be a lot of violence after this, and chances are pretty slim for democracy,” said a 27-year-old construction worker walking along Steinway Street in Astoria who gave his name as M Raja.
Whether they liked her or not, New York City’s Pakistani immigrants were mostly shaken by the assassination. They expressed fears that her assassination, days before the January 8 parliamentary elections that could have led to her winning a third term as prime minister, would set off a wave of turbulence just as President Pervez Musharraf ended a period when many civil rights were suspended and three months after another attempt on Bhutto’s life.
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