She Looked So Happy

Though I was not surprised by the terrible and tragic news of Benazir Bhutto's assassination yesterday, I am still very shaken and sadden by the event as also my parents are. My parents admired her too. Yesterday morning my dad admitted that he had long felt great admiration for Bhutto because of her beauty and intellect. Last night when I arrived home from my part time evening job, my mother had apparently been standing in front of the television in our den for a long time time avidly watching news reports on several channels about Bhutto's death. Mom told me that Bill O'Reilly of FOX NEWS had been ranting as usual, but this time about how they had in his words, "killed that beautiful woman." Though she was long past the slim college student or the stately leader, Bhutto was still beautiful even though she had put on weight in these last years and looked matronly. Here she is less than a minute before the attack. Indeed she looked so happy. So unsuspecting that so much horror was about to happen to her and some of her supporters.

Today it was reported that Bhutto did not die from bullets to the neck and chest as previously thought. She apparently was critically injured when the suicide bomber who shot at her detonated his bomb, the force of which threw her up against her vehicle's sunroof's lever and fractured her skull. Here are more photos of before and the aftermath of the shooting and the bombing.

Today Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest beside her father. Her dramatic and epic life is over and now she is a figure of history. In a interview not too long ago, she revealed that even though she believed she must go back to Pakistan to carry on her life's mission, she was afraid. Several weeks ago when I went to see the movie Elizabeth: The Golden Age, there was a scene in which Queen Elizabeth I expresses a degree of fear when she learns that her ex-brother-in-law, Philip II of Spain, has sent the Spanish Armada to attack England. She knows that if England is defeated, she will probably be captured, imprisoned, and perhaps executed as a heretic. I was surprised that mighty and iron Elizabeth I would have a moment of weakness, but she was human and so was Bhutto. Aren't we all, but those who are special and who impact lives are able to reach a point that is larger than life and defeat their internal fears and weaknesses. Bhutto must have done this. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in one of his last speeches that he was not afraid or worried because he had "been to the mountain top and seen the promised land." When people learn to believe and care about something bigger than themselves they can attain this level of courage.

In a society and world that is fast becoming desensitived to happenings like Benazir Bhutto's death, what I write here is meaningless and irrelevant to too many. The attitude seems to be to just to live, sit back, self indulge, and willingly accept the next batch of carnage, devastation, trivia, and degradation; accept the next batch of lies.

Fearsome times are coming, I believe. Only those with spirits like Dr. King, Bhutto, Mother Teresa, and the other greats and Romantics will truly see the promised land. The rest will be swept away.

A Romantic Dies

I had no intention to write today because blogging for me, who plan to be a serious writer and who have had some things printed in newspapers in my town, is rather like junk food and other forms of instant gratificaton. But the news I woke up to this morning was both a shock and not a surprise. I could only feel a surge of intense sadness and lament the viciousness and chaos that this world is descending into day by day, week by week, and year by year.

After receiving a phone call from my former hairdresser, my mother told me, "Someone over there has been killed."

"Who?" I asked wondering just exactly where over there is.

Mom said, "Someone in Pakistan."

"Who! Musharraf?!"

"Benazir Bhutto."

"Well, didn't we both say a few weeks ago that they are going to kill her?"

We did predict it just weeks ago, and now less than three months after her return from a 8 year exile in Dubai Benazir Bhutto the former two time prime minister of Pakistan, daughter of one of Pakistan's most influential families, offspring of former president and prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was cut down today shortly after a rally by bullets and possibly a bomb in the city of Rawalpindi, Pakistan . She was only 54. Two years ago on the same date, December 27th, my grandmother also died.

In our society we talk too often and place too much importance on role models. Often the role models youngsters hail as their's are not people to be admired for any significant reason. However, despite her flaws, Bhutto was a person to be emulated for her courage, tenacity, brilliance, vision, grace, and spunk. After looking at her official website site shortly before her homecoming on which a suicide bomber targeted her and narrowly missed, I had planned to write to her and tell her how I really admired her for her courage. Her life was epic in proportion. Her father had been tried and hanged, betrayed by a man who had been his friend. She spent close to 7 years in prison under both house arrest and in a jail cell. One of her brothers died under mysterious circumstances in France. Just a few years ago, her other brother died in a shoot out. Her own mother blamed her for the death of her second son, but later they were reconciled.

Bhutto was the first elected female head of state of a Muslim country. I marvel at how in America where women have independence, a woman has still not been elected president, and probably will not be for years to come. We have no real power houses with such credentials like Bhutto here. Oxford and Harvard educated, Benazir Bhutto was both charismatic and beautiful. She is a modern day Romantic heroine akin to Joan of Arc, Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Elizabeth I of England, and Queen Marie of Romania.

To many of us who did not know her, to have left the safety and calm of Dubai for the vicious climate of unrest in Pakistan may have seemed like pure recklessness on Bhutto's part. She has left behind children who are teenagers, a husband, and a sick mother. Why did she go back there from self imposed exile to her death which came in just a few short weeks? From here on the outside, I can only say she did so because she felt she had a mission, and somehow and someway that mission must be comsummated in her troubled homeland even if she had to shed her own blood. There were probably other myriad reasons why she returned, but I do know that some of us realize we have a purpose and a destiny that go beyond ourselves.

Already Pakistan is on red alert because some of her supporters have vowed revenge. Would Bhutto have liked this? I doubt it since she seemed to stand for peaceful change, but at the same time she knew she was up against the tiger which if cornered would lash out mercilessly. I hope that her supporters will not forget so quickly what she symbolized. So much in this world seems to be ruled by the law of the jungle nowadays. When one more personage of bravery is gone like Bhutto, the world continues to descend into a more dark and dangerous place, and like we predicted her death, I predict that the world will continue to swirl into a more ugly, scary, and terrible phase.

Good night Sweet Princess.