Some time before he was ambushed and killed by a large police posse, Murtuza had summoned his brother-in-law to the Bhutto family bungalow in Karachi, ostensibly for ‘peace talks’. But instead of burying the hatchet, Murtuza got his henchmen to shave off one-half of Zardari’s impressive handlebar moustache. Both men knew that the ultimate insult for a wadera grandee was to have his moustache forcibly removed.

Who ordered the police to gun down Murtuza Bhutto is still a mystery, even though a three-judge tribunal concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a ‘much higher’ authority. However, Fatima, now a columnist for the Pakistani daily The News, broke years of silence shortly before her aunt returned from exile last October and alleged that the ‘not-so-hidden hand’ behind her father’s cold-blooded killing was Zardari’s.

Benazir was aware of the strong emotions her husband aroused in Pakistan. Even at the time of her arranged marriage to Zardari in 1987 with the blessings of her mother, Karachi high society tut-tutted about the alliance. The Bhuttos were aristocracy; the Zardaris, despite being landowners in Sindh’s Nawabshah district, were seen as upstarts.

Even though Zardari, who was younger than Benazir, led his own polo team, had a disco at home and styled himself as a playboy, his father was often derisively referred to as “that cinema hall owner”.

The marriage was the result of political necessity, with Benazir, pushing 35, requiring a mandatory husband before launching her bid to become the first woman prime minister of a modern, male-dominated Islamic state. She confessed later to Claudia Dreifus of the New York Times Magazine: “I decided to make a personal sacrifice in what I thought would be, more or less, a loveless marriage, a marriage of convenience.”

... contd.