The day after Benazir died

Half the country was in a state of paralytic mourning, the other half was out on the streets.

It8217;s 4 am and I can8217;t sleep. It8217;s been exactly a day since Benazir8217;s death and the city where I live, Lahore, is like a ghost town. The police have cordoned off huge swathes of road. There are no cars on the streets and the street lamps are dim. Winter in Lahore is always foggy, but since yesterday, things have been eerily, frighteningly quiet. I went to visit my neighbour yesterday 8212; I needed to get out desperately, having sat like a cadaver in front of the TV all day, watching the black and white tributes to Benazir. My neighbour, also a friend, was sitting in front of her TV, watching the same tributes, clutching at the tasselled corners of her shawl, crying quietly into it.

I found out about Benazir8217;s death when I was walking back from my grandparents8217; house. We were supposed to be going to a wedding when I bumped into my mother, dressed in wedding clothes, crying, 8220;She8217;s dead. She8217;s dead.8221; My father and brother were at her side, shell-shocked. We got into the car and drove to the office where my parents work as journalists. My mother continued to cry 8212; she of all my family members have been most affected by this death. It8217;s not so much that Pakistan has lost an important political figure. It has. But as a woman, a working woman and mother in a patriarchal society such as ours, Benazir symbolised so much for Pakistan8217;s women.

Our family was never aligned with any political party, but, growing up, I remember PPP flags tied to our gate. She was the hope of the nineties 8212; and she let us down twice. But she was back after eight years in exile, the only moderate force, the only politician openly talking about fighting terrorism, the only woman. Some of my friends have argued with me 8212; why should she be let off the hook just because she was a woman? It8217;s not that. In a country like Pakistan, especially now, in her womanhood and in her liberal agenda, she posed a challenge to fundamentalism. In that, she was a unique hope for this country. Half Radcliffe woman, half Oxford, the daughter of a feudal scion, a Sindhi, the first woman to lead a post-colonial Muslim state, benazir was so many things 8212; and thus so important for Pakistan, which is also so many things. Are we Sindhis, Balochis, Pathans, Punjabis or Pakistanis? Are we a moderate nation? Are we Pakistanis or Muslims? Can we be both?

At the office things were, again, very quiet. Normally the newsroom is thick with cigarette smoke, purple-lipped journalists talking loudly with and at each other, the endless tap of keyboards8230; Yesterday, they all sat at their desks, peering hard into their computer screens. When eventually there was an editorial meeting, for the first half hour nobody spoke of headline suggestions or the layout. One of my father8217;s colleagues was uncharacteristically bleak: 8220;This reminds me of 8217;71,8221; he said. Nobody looked up in surprise because the gravity of the situation was felt so acutely by all. Pakistan was violently dismembered in 8217;71; yesterday, a former PM, assassinated. Two different and unrelated occurrences, yet with potentially similar outcomes. Pakistan8217;s Frontier Province has been taken over by the Taliban. There8217;s an insurgency in Balochistan, Pakistan8217;s largest province, and now interior Sindh is erupting in flames. Vehicles are being torched, petrol pumps and banks set ablaze, PMLQ offices set on fire by mobs throughout the country.

Yesterday the local headlines read, 8216;A turning point: election imminent8217;; 8216;Benazir Bhutto voted 2nd most influential woman of 20078217;. Today, the entire country has been plunged into darkness. Half the country is in a state of paralytic mourning, the other half is out on the streets. I hope, desperately, that this is not the beginning of another end for Pakistan.