Get Herald RSSIn the summer of 1988, my grandparents bought me a toy drum for my second birthday. I'd just barely learned to walk, and I would march in our driveway or, when the guard would let me, up the pockmarked road to our neighbor's gate, chanting the campaign song I heard on TV. "Ben-a-zir, Ben-a-zir, Ben-a-zir, Bhut-TO!" shouted the televised supporters. I too shouted "Bhut-TO!" raising my pudgy right arm in emphatic salute on the last syllable.
When Benazir Bhutto first became prime minister of Pakistan in 1988, she was not the only woman on an electoral throne - these were the days of Thatcher's England. But Margaret Thatcher was a reactionary, promising to undo the cultural damage of the 1960's. Harvard and Oxford alum Bhutto was elected promising to continue her father's legacy of liberal reforms and the marginalization of the religious right. For the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to be endorsing these views was significant, to be electing a woman was extraordinary.
Until I was six, my family spent vacations visiting my grandparents in Pakistan. Young as I was, I have some very clear memories of those summers: the heat and the rain, the leather bound books in my grandfather's study, jasmine flowers in gated courtyards and bucket baths in cold water. By age four or five, I had enough pre-school education to believe that the U.S.A. was the epitome of modernity in comparison to the old houses and low-tech plumbing I found in Karachi.
But I was also old enough to know about some very pre-modern American traditions. I knew that when I told my kindergarten class I wanted to be president, everyone laughed. When the boy sitting next to me took a break from eating Play-Doh to express the same ambition, the teacher patted him on the head approvingly. What was I to make then of the fact that in seemingly backward, low-tech Pakistan, a woman was running for office and winning twice?
By age eight, my desire to be president had become a desire to be Benazir. My teacher asked each student in my all-girls third-grade class to dress up as a famous woman and deliver an autobiographical monologue in persona. I was Benazir. When she was exiled in 1996 I was devastated.
She represented a special womanhood, and already it was one that I liked. Today, I call this "Sex and the City" feminism: the belief that women can be feminine, beautiful and concerned with beauty and still hold positions of power. It's the third way between the 1950's housewife and the bra-burning 1970's liberationist, and it's the feminism I see most often among my peers today.
Most of my female friends wouldn't think twice about considering themselves equal to the boys in their classes, but they're also unashamed of the desire to buy shoes or the ambition to have children, and to take time from their careers to raise them. I am less girly than most of these young women, and certainly less motherly, but I like this feminism that seeks to efface binaries in favor of individual choice.
Scary as the bombings which punctuated her arrival on Thursday were, I am excited and optimistic to see Bhutto returning to the country to contest elections in January. Her success will require a lot of behind-the-scenes pressure from the international community, especially the United States (given its links to the power centers of Pakistan, including the military and intelligence), but democracy is now closer in Pakistan than it has been in many years.
More importantly, the return of Benazir-feminism is a symbolic reminder of the subtlety of such loaded terms as modernism, fundamentalism and secularism, too easily thrown around in our politics today. For Pakistani liberals, Benazir is a reminder that liberal democracy and women's empowerment have a role in the Muslim world and do not have to come at the expense of everything traditional: Bhutto still wears ethnic dress, covers her head and never plays down her femininity. For Pakistani conservatives, she is a reminder that Islam does not have to be reactionary, that a good Muslim woman can ally her country with the West. For American observers, she is a reminder that the Muslim world is not only the land of bearded fundamentalists and dictators.
Benazir has always been a politician of these bold cultural promises. Her problem is that she's twice failed to deliver. Third time is the charm, but it is also the last strike. Between now and January, Bhutto needs to build bridges with old foes and construct a broad coalition to give her government the power to be effective. Once and for all, she needs to make the government transparent, to avoid reopening the unresolved accountability questions that previously led to her fall from power.
With global support to make the January elections safe, secure and fair, the throngs of very real supporters who risked their lives to see Benazir step off the plane might also become the political majority. The liberal-yet-traditional image Benazir presents would be a refreshing change from our current image of autocracy, but it would not represent a total revolution in national sentiment.
If my childhood memories are any indication, January might just bring to light a real Pakistan long hidden behind veils and army compounds, but always discernable to those who cared to look.
Maha Atal '08 is woman, hear her roar.
