Is Pakistan primitive?

By new Precedent, ceasefires are lifted by default, and maintained only where a commenter requests one on Online Safety grounds, as K has (BB – RNJ – 0M).

We argued in “The Patriarchy Survives Everything” that has no religion.

Over the last month, in order not to be Islamophobic, a line was surreptiously moved. The proposition that women should be confined to the home and kept out of higher education stopped being an outrage to be dismantled in public and became a “perspective” to be weighed.

Silence on the right of a woman to leave her own house, and called the silence respect. A space loud for one liberty and mute on another has not been even-handed; it has been captured. That is the moment the emperor lost his clothes and the courtiers agreed not to mention it.

How a country starts eating halal

RNJ consistently brings up Nassim Taleb’s seminal piece on “The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority.” Continue reading Is Pakistan primitive?

Persian Princess of Pakistan; Benazir Bhutto

Since Benazir and I are both half-Persians I always found her life to be interesting (I could never get enough of her quip that she knew enough Persian to understand the family gossip). I was randomly googling her when I came across this startling excerpt. I don’t know much about this incident?

You surely know that one of the most psychologically formative experiences for the young Benazir was growing up in a house where her father (Zulfikar) gave his Persian mistress pride of place in the home. Benazir would come to breakfast with her father and mistress at the table while her mother ate from a tray quietly and alone in her bedroom in another wing of the house. When one tries to understand how Benazir came to have her husband kill her brother, it helps to know what a strange childhood she had. Salman Rushdie’s thinly-veiled roman a clef about the Bhuttos and Zia, Shame, captures some of this atmosphere quite well.

Apparently Nusrat left back to Iran for 6months but wasn’t allowed to take the children with her (Islamic law on divorce & custody being as enlightening as it was) but to be fair I’ve always found Zulfikar to be a somewhat disdainful and problematic character. I had heard in his last years that he had a Bengali mistress (nicknamed Black Beauty) who now lived with her female lover in Karachi but I have no idea what to believe.
It’s remarkable the extent to which Benazir looked like her mother. In the picture below I could have sworn this was was Benazir, not Nusrat, who was with the Shah and his elegant wife Farah Diba.
Born on March 23, 1929, Nusrat had lived a life of comfort after marrying Mr Bhutto as his second wife in 1951. In this file photo, Begum Bhutto is seen along with their imperial majesties, the Shahanshah Arymehr and Shahbano of Iran, Prime Minister Zulifikar Ali Bhutto and President Fazal Illahi Chaudhry. ? Dawn File Photo

A few remarkable facts about Benazir were: Continue reading Persian Princess of Pakistan; Benazir Bhutto

Shaheed Rani. Hasan Mujtaba’s Poem for Benazir Bhutto

The poet Hasan Mujtaba wrote a famous poem on the occasion of Benazir Bhutto’s martyrdom (December 27th 2007), and it is an absolute classic. I have translated it with his approval  (the full urdu text is here, and it also posted at the end of this post):

How many Bhuttos will you kill?

A Bhutto will emerge from every home!

This lament is heard in every home

These tears are seen in every town

These eyes stare in the trackless desert

This slogan echoes in every field of death

These stars scatter like a million stones

Flung by the moon that rises so bright tonight

How many Bhuttos will you kill?

A Bhutto will emerge from every home!

Continue reading Shaheed Rani. Hasan Mujtaba’s Poem for Benazir Bhutto

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