Just before she was killed, Benazir Bhutto had sent the manuscript of a book to her publishers, HarperCollins. Tentatively titled Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West, it is reported to be a memoir and her political manifesto. Her publishers are advancing the publication schedule, and the book may hit the stands as early as next month. Till then, here is a reading list for those interested in understanding Pakistan, a country where something unexpected is almost guaranteed to happen every other day.

Daughter of the East
An Autobiography
Benazir Bhutto
First published in 1988, the year Bhutto became prime minister of Pakistan, Daughter of the East was updated in 2007. Written in a majestic manner — and with some pretty obvious obfuscation — to convey her and her family’s connection to Pakistan’s destiny, the book has some uncanny parallels. For instance, amid all the talk now about the possibility of exhuming her body to investigate the cause of her death, it is interesting to read that similar demands were made after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s burial. The official version was that he was hanged on April 4, 1979, at Rawalpindi Central Jail. But rumours and workers’ testimony at the family graveyard near Larkana, Sindh, hinted that his body showed no signs of hanging, and that he had instead been killed due to violent behaviour by officers at the jail. The surviving family patriarch too recommended that the body be exhumed so that, in Benazir’s telling, “political advantage” could be maximised. She resisted, and those rumours still simmer.
Also of interest, in the updated epilogue, are her recollections of meeting Pervez Musharraf. She says she first met him when he acted as an interpreter during visits by the Turkish military, and that she declined to have him become her military secretary. She also claims to have initially turned down his promotion. She also recounts being invited, during her second term as PM, to the army headquarters to get a security briefing from “Director of Military Operations Major-General Pervez Musharraf”. He explained that she just had to give the orders and Pakistan would take Srinagar.
And with a premonition of death that stayed with her through the book, she anticipated her return to Pakistan in 2007, wondering if she’d be felled on the tarmac itself. It wasn’t that pat, but it came close.

... contd.