There's something about Fatima

Her book couldn't be published in Pakistan but in India, it's already caused some stir. It was only a matter of time before Fatima Bhutto, granddaughter of former Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, wrote her memoir. Songs of Blood and Sword, telling the story of the Pakistan's influential but blighted Bhutto family that has seen much violence and death was released here on Saturday.

At the open-air venue of a five-star hotel, Fatima Bhutto chatted with William Dalrymple, read extracts and talked of life with her father and even with her aunt, Benazir before she became prime minister. Suspected to have been behind the killing of her father Murtaza Bhutto, current Pakistan president, Asif Ali Zardari emerged a villain, of course. She recalled how "cruelly" Zardari had broken the news of Murtaza's killing to 14 year-old Fatima on September 20, 1996 and later, delivered his first address on the 12th death anniversary.

It's not just the politics or the story of her family, there's something about Fatima Bhutto herself. She has studied at Columbia University and University of London. The 27 year-old journalist-columnist appeared in a green sari -- bindi and all -- sipped white wine as she spoke of violence and betrayal. Members of the audience complimented her -- "you're looking beautiful" -- bought copies of the books and lined up to get it signed. Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar was also present at the gathering.

Asked to draw a family tree and indicate which diseases particular family member suffered from for biology-class, high-school student Fatima was flummoxed. A good part of her family was claimed by political violence, not any disease. But the death at the centre of her memoir is that of her father Murtaza.

Fatima's parents split when she was still an infant and Murtaza raised her. They lived in Damascus and Syria, and Murtaza did his best. She recalls her father chopping her hair in a fashion that made her "look like Mowgli." She thought herself as Mowgli till she figured he was a boy. Her father remarrying and her stepmother Ghinwa Bhutto, a Syrian-Lebanese and former ballet dancer, brought some semblance of order in her life. If she had fond memories of moments with her father, unlikely though it may seem now, she says she's had a few of those with her aunt, Benazir as well. As the first Bhutto child of her generation, she was taken for icecream, read stories by her aunt. She's been told she is like her aunt several times. But what she once considered a "compliment" now sounds like an "admonishment."

Fatima still feels cornered. She had a column in a paper in which she wrote on politics. After Zardari became president, she says, she was encouraged to write on travel and food. She however maintains columns in several other dailies and websites. Her writing includes a volume of poetry, Whispers of the Desert.

Her father was no angel either, he too had cases against him, reminds Dalrymple. "He was not male Aung San Suu Kyi," she said, but political propaganda rendered Benazir in angelic tones and painted the brothers as the monsters. That was "part of the mythology built around him," she says.

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