At a small evening gathering more than five years ago in Atlanta, Benazir Bhutto sat among fellow Pakistanis, savoring the rich cuisine of her homeland and chatting as though she were just another friend come to dinner. The glitz and glamour that usually whirred about her was absent, though it was hard for anyone in that room to get past who she was. She was the kind of woman who had command presence. All those qualities befitting a queen, really: striking, intelligent, articulate, charming, powerful and, yes, beautiful. Maryam Khwaja came that night, curious to hear what Bhutto had to say. She wanted to go beyond the persona and know her better. Khwaja, a 53-year-old Montessori teacher, was born in Pakistan just a year after Bhutto. Khwaja is of a generation of South Asian women who, as little girls, idolized Indira Gandhi, the first woman to became prime minister of India. I know because I was one of them. In Gandhi and later in Bhutto, South Asian women saw hope. They looked in their eyes and saw stereotypes of their homelands wiped away. Gandhi and Bhutto were like iconic shields worn into daily battles. They were the souls in which women found courage. On that 2002 trip to Atlanta, Bhutto received a thundering standing ovation at a women's leadership conference at the World Congress Center. I recall feeling pride filling me up so fast and strong that I could hardly speak. Bhutto, like Gandhi, was the daughter of a prime minister. Bhutto, like Gandhi, perhaps more than once disappointed the women who admired her in her days as a national leader. Khwaja was angry at Bhutto. The prime minister's reputation was tarnished after she was ousted from power twice — in 1990 and again in 1996 — on corruption charges. Somehow it was more difficult to forgive in a woman who had to work so hard to overcome obstacles that aren't there for male counterparts. In Bhutto's case, it was even more unforgivable that the questions dogging her centered around her husband. Why would she let a man control her after everything she accomplished in a conservative Muslim country? How could she have been so weak, Khwaja thought. That night at dinner, she finally mustered the courage to ask the former leader why Pakistanis should trust her. "Benazir, how can I give you my vote again?" Khwaja asked the then-exiled prime minister. Bhutto explained that she had been judged unfairly and that she needed more time in power to make things right in Pakistan. "Give me another chance," she said. Khwaja came away willing to put her skepticism on hold. She wanted constitutional democracy to return to Pakistan. That was what the Bhutto family had always stood for. And what was the alternative? Military rule? In the end, Khwaja was perhaps ready to overlook Bhutto's ills because of who she was and what she symbolized. "Everything comes down to one thing," Khwaja told me Thursday, still reeling from the news of Bhutto's assassination. "And that is that as a woman she did a really big thing." I listened to Khwaja speak and remembered thinking the same way on Oct. 31, 1984. That was the day that Sikh militants gunned down Indira Gandhi in New Delhi. I was disappointed in Gandhi for the allegations of election fraud and for her authoritarian practices. But I cried the night she was killed. I felt the same emotions bubble up Thursday as I spoke with Khwaja about Bhutto. "She was so brave fighting all those obstacles placed in her way," she said. "She was brave to go back." It occurred to me then that I had asked Bhutto in an October interview whether she feared being thrown in jail if she returned to Pakistan. She had lived in exile since 1999 and was then still planning a return home to stand for elections. She said her decision to go back was "final and irrevocable." She said she was determined to wrest her nation from military rule; to return it to the democracy it deserved. She believed her mission was essential. I never imagined then that jail would be nothing compared to the fate she suffered Thursday. For Khwaja, the flickers of hope she had for her homeland went out with Benazir Bhutto's last breath. She recalled how after that April dinner in 2002, the prime minister had kissed her goodbye on the cheek. Every year since then, Bhutto sent the Khwajas a card for Eid, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Khwaja thought of those things as she watched the shocking images from Pakistan on her television set. And she thought what I did as my phone starting ringing Thursday with calls from Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan friends. Benazir Bhutto, like Indira Gandhi before her, left women from South Asia with inner strength. No assassin can ever take that away.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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