An American Brat Read Online Free

minister’s sister was standing at the top of an abrupt flight of steps. She had a thick, straight, tall body and the same features and glowing complexion as Bhutto’s, except that the mold of her countenance was washed by a resigned melancholy they could not even bring themselves to conceive on her brother’s confident and handsome face.
    Her pain wrenched their hearts. Her head covered by a dun-colored shatoose, the woman clung to the latticework of a wide, ornate silver door. It had been installed by Bhutto some years ago, when he was prime minister, as a mark of his gratitude to the saint.
    His sister’s eyes were closed, and her lips trembled in prayer. The concentrated intensity of the crowd’s focus appeared to form a nimbus about her, and her pale profile was clearly visible as she turned her head from side to side to press one cheek and then the other to the ornate gate.
    The shouting and talking that had accompanied them in the narrow lane was muted in the square. The press and the restless movements of the assembly were also stilled.
    In some form or other, the motley crowd standing in the square had heard the elite bitterly complain that Bhutto had aroused aspirations he could not fulfill. He had promised them roti, kapra, makan — bread, clothes, shelter — which he could not provide.
    The images from the television screens, from posters, newspapers, and public rostrums, from the fermenting cauldron of the rumor mills, swirled in the minds of the crowd.
    Some men shouted, “Bhutto Zindabad! Long live Bhutto!” and old women, bandy-legged in their loose shalwars, with labored, crablike movements, lumbered up the steps to pass their gnarled hands over his sister’s shawl and sigh, “We pray for your brother. Don’t fret, he will be free. Allah is merciful!”

    ~

    Feroza banged shut bedroom doors, whipped open car doors, and smashed shuttlecocks over the net at her startled adversaries. She avoided meeting her parents’ evening guests, who had become almost a part of her extended family, and stopped listening to the political arguments that became so heated over dinner. On the few occasions she sat with them, she ventured to speak out, a contribution not encouraged in someone her age.
    Their guests wrangled about Bhutto’s deeds and misdeeds during his prime ministership, the Islamization of state institutions by General Zia, and which way the verdict in the Bhutto trial for the murder of a political rival would go.
    The arguments turned into acrimonious screeching sessions as the trial progressed. Every so often one of the guests would bang down on the table and loudly proclaim, “I’ll never eat in this house again!” and promptly turn up the next evening.
    They debated which of the panel of seven supreme court judges hearing the case were for Bhutto and which were opposed. A judge believed to be unbiased, one of the few whom Bhutto’s paranoia had not antagonized, had a stroke and later died. Another reached the age of retirement.
    One of the diners and imbibers asserted that the defending lawyer was in cahoots with the prosecution. Why else would Yahyah Bakhtiyar drag the trial on and on? Another confided that a Bangladeshi holy man had advised Bhutto’s wife, Nusrat, and his daughter, Benazir, that Bhutto’s stars would dramatically improve if the trial stretched into the New Year.
    The day after their visit to Data Sahib’s tomb, Feroza heard her mother’s passionate voice above the squabbling. “It’s immaterial whether the court finds him guilty or not guilty. The trial’s a farce — the death sentence has already been passed. He will become a martyr!”
    Feroza understood her mother. She had also witnessed the emotion of the crowd at the shrine.
    The lawyer Feroza had always known as Uncle Anwar, tall, long-faced, bespectacled, the pace of the tic in his left eye betrayinghis emotion, shouted,