Bhutto clan battlelines blur at Naudero

The will spoke volumes for how much Bhutto considered the Pakistan Peoples Party to be hers, perhaps almost as deeply as party loyalists believe themselves to be tied to her and her family.

Bloodlines are creatively drawn in any family, and the legendary Bhutto family seemed no different. There were outsiders and insiders, feuds and inheritances, except that in Bhutto’s death, they lay quite exposed to the world.

Naudero House, the mansion in which the party and family gathered, was not actually Bhutto’s ancestral home, but belonged to her father’s first wife. Bhutto’s house in the town next door, called Larkana, had gone to his firstborn son, Benazir’s brother Murtaza, and was named after him — Al-Murtaza.

Murtaza Bhutto, for his part, had fallen out of favour with his sister, apparently over the question of who would inherit their father’s political legacy, and in 1996 he was gunned down in the port city of Karachi; his widow, Ghinva, blamed Zardari.

Over the last two days, in the courtyard of Naudero House, Murtaza Bhutto’s teenage son, Zulfikar, has sat quietly, wrapped in a shawl, never once entering the house where strangers and journalists tramped through all day. It was a stark illustration of the scars that divide the Bhutto clan.

Murtaza Bhutto is buried in the family mausoleum, in a village less than five miles from the house, but not next to his father, who lies in the middle of the shrine, on a slightly elevated platform. The coffins of Murtaza, and of his brother, Shahnawaz, who died mysteriously of poisoning in a family apartment in France in 1985, lie in one corner of the mausoleum. Bhutto lies next to her father. Their coffins are blanketed with rose petals.

Senior party leaders have said that Zardari is anxious to take the reins of the party organisation and that he had been taken into confidence by his wife on all major party matters. Some among them are worried about the prospects of dissension in the future, though not anytime soon.

In the front courtyard of the house, party supporters speculated on the future of the party under Zardari’s leadership. “He understands every inch of politics in this country,” said Sajjad Sayed, a doctor and PPP supporter who had driven more than six hours from Karachi to offer condolences at the Bhutto family house. “At this juncture, for a year, this party has a chance to be together.”

His friend Mazhar Memon, another doctor from Karachi, offered, “In the long run, it’s a big question mark.”

Naeem Aslam Chowdry, a businessman who returned from Britain to run for Parliament from a district in the northern city of Gujrat, said: “What choice do we have? Bilawal will have a role to play. I believe it’s critical. It’s the name.”

Abida Hussain, a longtime family friend and a member of the party’s executive committee, said she hoped he also had his mother’s large heart. Yes, she said, Bilawal matters, because bloodlines matter. “We are like that — we are sentimental,” she said.