Mother courage
In 1988 Benazir Bhutto became the only head of government ever to give birth while in office. Here, the former Pakistani prime minister tells the extraordinary story of her three pregnancies, of how a new mother took on a military dictatorship - and of her painful separation from her children
The Guardian: March 28, 2007
I didn't choose this life; it chose me. Born in Pakistan, my life mirrors its turbulence, its tragedies and its triumphs. Once again Pakistan is in the international spotlight. Terrorists who use the name of Islam threaten its stability. The democratic forces believe terrorism can be eliminated by promoting the principles of freedom. A military dictatorship plays a dangerous game of deception and intrigue. Fearful of losing power, it dithers, keeping the forces of modernisation at bay while the flames of terrorism flourish.
Pakistan is no ordinary country. And mine has been no ordinary life. My father and two brothers were killed. My mother, husband and I were all imprisoned. I have spent long years in exile. Despite the difficulties and sorrows, however, I feel blessed. I feel blessed that I could break the bastions of tradition by becoming Islam's first elected woman prime minister.
That election was the tipping point in the debate raging in the Muslim world on the role of women in Islam. It proved that a Muslim woman could be elected prime minister, could govern a country and could be accepted as a leader by both men and women. And while the debate between the modernisers and the extremists continues, women across the Muslim world have made great strides since I first took the oath of office on December 2 1988.
Few in this world are given the privilege to effect change in society, to bring the modern era to a country that had only the most basic infrastructure, to break down stereotypes about the role of women and ultimately to give hope for change to millions who had no hope before.
It's not necessarily the life I would have chosen, but it has been a life of opportunity, responsibility and fulfilment.
Twenty years ago, in light of the developments in my life - my father's assassination, my imprisonment, the responsibility of picking up his political mantle - I had little expectation of finding personal happiness, of finding love, marriage and of having children. Like England's Queen Elizabeth I, who had also endured imprisonment and remained single, I thought I would never get married. Yet my personal life defied these narrow expectations. I found joy and fulfilment in marriage despite difficult circumstances. I am proud of my husband for his courage and loyalty in standing by me through 19 years of marriage.
During these years, he lived either in the prime minister's house or as a political prisoner held hostage to my career. And I found our relationship strengthened despite the physical separation and the attempts to turn us against each other.
No, life isn't what I would have predicted, but I don't think I would change places with any woman in history. However, I do believe my career has been more challenging because I am a woman. Clearly it's not easy for women in modern society, no matter where we live. We still have to go the extra mile to prove that we are equal to men. We have to work longer hours and make more sacrifices. And we must emotionally protect ourselves from unfair, often vicious attacks made on us.
Nevertheless, we must be prepared not to complain about the double standards, but to overcome them. We must be prepared to do so even if it means working twice as hard and twice as long as a man. I am grateful to my mother for teaching me that pregnancy is a biological state of being which should not disrupt the normal routine of life. Trying to live up to her expectations, I almost ignored any hint of physical or emotional limitation during my pregnancies. Yet I was acutely conscious that what should have been a family matter became a topic of intense political discussion from military headquarters to editorial boards. Aware of this, I kept the exact details of my pregnancies secret.
I have three lovely children: Bilawal, Bakhtwar and Aseefa. They give me much joy and pride. When I was expecting my first child, Bilawal, in 1988, I was 35, and the then military dictator dismissed the parliament and called for general elections. He and his top army men believed a pregnant woman could not campaign. They were wrong. I could and I did. I went on to win the elections held shortly after Bilawal's birth on September 21 1988. Bilawal's birth was one of the happiest days of my life. Winning those elections that year, despite predictions that a Muslim woman could not win the hearts and minds of her people, was another.
Shortly after I was elected prime minister, my mother told me to "hurry up and have another child". She believed that a mother should quickly have children before she realised the challenges of raising a family and fulfilling other responsibilities. I took her advice.
Once the political opposition learned I was pregnant, all hell broke loose. They called on the president and the military to overthrow me. They argued that Pakistan's government rules did not provide for a pregnant prime minister going on maternity leave. They said that during delivery I would be incapacitated and therefore the government machinery would irretrievably break down for that period of time. This, to them, was unconstitutional, necessitating the president, backed by the military, to dismiss the prime minister and install an interim government to hold new elections.
I rejected the opposition's demands, noting that maternity rules existed in the law for working women (my father had legislated maternity leave). I argued that the law implicitly applied to a prime minister even if not stated in the rules for conducting government business. The members of my government stood by me, noting that when a male leader was indisposed, it did not translate into a constitutional crisis. Nor should it were a female leader indisposed.
Hardly mollified, the opposition drew up a plan of strikes to pressure the president into sacking the government. I had to make my own plans.
My father had taught me that in politics, timing is very important. I consulted my doctor who assured me that my child was full term and, with his permission, decided to have a caesarean delivery on the eve of the call for strike action.
I didn't want to encourage any stereotypes that pregnancy interferes with performance. So, despite my condition, I worked just as hard, and probably a lot harder, than a male prime minister would have done. In the end, I chaired a meeting of my cabinet in the capital and then left for Karachi. I woke up early in the morning and with a friend left for the hospital in her car.
It was a small car, very different from the black Mercedes used for official duties. The police on security duty hardly gave it a second glance. They concentrated on cars entering my home rather than those leaving it.
My heart was beating fast as we raced to the hospital, where my doctor was waiting for us. I could see the surprise on the faces of the hospital staff as I got out of the car. I knew the news would begin to spread fast through the mobile phones and pagers that my government had introduced (we were the first country in South Asia and the Middle East to have mobile phones).
I hurried down the hallway to the operating theatre. I knew that my husband and mother would be on their way, as we had discussed earlier. As soon as I began to wake from the mists of anaesthesia as my hospital trolley was wheeled from the theatre to the private room, I heard my husband say: "It's a girl." I saw my mother's face beam with pleasure. I called my daughter Bakhtwar, which means the one who brings good fortune. And she did. The strikes fizzled out and the opposition's movement collapsed.
I received thousands of messages of congratulations from all over the world. Heads of government and ordinary people wrote to me, sharing the joy. It was a defining moment, especially for young women, proving a woman could work and have a baby in the highest and most challenging leadership positions. The next day I was back on the job, reading government papers and signing government files. Only later did I learn that I was the only head of government in recorded history actually to give birth while in office.
Bakhtwar was born in January 1990. Seven months later, on August 6, the president undemocratically dismissed my government, while world attention was diverted by Iraq's occupation of Kuwait. My husband was arrested and my mother suggested I send my children abroad. It was heart-rending for me to be parted from Bilawal, who had turned two, and Bakhtwar, who was not yet one. My sister, who lives in London, lovingly took them into her home. My in-laws chipped in, too, by shifting to London. Back at home I had nightmares where I heard my children cry for me. My sister would tell me not to worry during our many telephone conversations. Yet those dreams never stopped.
With the sacking of my government, the port city of Karachi was gripped by anarchy and chaos.Terrorism was rampant. Innocent civilians were massacred while riding in public transport or outside their homes or in their offices. I knew it was safer for my children to be in London. Yet I found it hard to sleep night after night, only to wake with those nightmares.
My mother and I were now living largely in the capital city of Islamabad. My husband, elected to parliament in the 1990 elections, was also kept under house arrest in our residence during parliamentary sessions. I confided to my mother and husband how draining it was that the children were living away from me. I felt I was abandoning them, and worried that it could hurt their emotional wellbeing and growth.
By 1991, Bilawal had started attending a pre-kindergarten school in London. Bakhtwar was still only one year old: I could keep her hidden safely in our house in Pakistan, I reasoned. I flew to London and could hardly wait to get to my sister Sanam's flat. As soon as I knocked on her door, I heard my daughter crying, the same cry that had sounded in my dreams. I quickly gathered her in my arms and pulled my son towards me. "I have decided to take Bakhtwar back with me," I told my sister. She was relieved. "I didn't want to upset you," she said, "but that child has not stopped crying for months."
Without words being spoken, it seemed that both children knew what was to come. I shall never forget as long as I live the sight of Bilawal sitting in his white shirt, blue striped trousers, white socks and black shoes on the floor of the corridor with his back against the wall. He was staring at me silently and stoically with the saddest brown eyes in the world as I took Bakhtwar with me and left him behind. No mother should ever have to leave her two-year-old son behind. No child should ever feel his mother has taken one child with her and left the other behind.
With the fall of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) government in 1990, the election campaign, the separation from my children, the witch-hunt against my party and my family, I had lost a lot of weight. In the spring of 1992 I found I was expecting another baby. As one of four children, it gave me great pleasure to know our family would grow.
Yet it was a time of uncertainty, civil strife and bloodshed. The prime minister wanted to turn Pakistan into a theocratic state, an idea that was opposed by the majority of Pakistanis. But powerful elements in the military backed the prime minister, who had gained a two-thirds majority in the lower house of the parliament with their support. The opposition parties came together in a grand alliance known as the Pakistan Democratic Alliance (PDA), and called for a protest meeting in Rawalpindi on November 18 1992.
I was so thin no one suspected that I was to have a baby. Despite the weight loss, or perhaps because of it, I felt healthy and energetic. Our protest call had re-energised me. People across the country responded to it. From the four corners of Pakistan, caravans were getting ready to move to Rawalpindi in a display of people's power. The aim was to restore democracy, stop theocracy and address the bread-and-butter issues of the people.
On the eve of the protest meeting, we heard that the regime had decided to use brute force to stop us from gathering. "That means the regime might use tear gas," I said to my political secretary, Naheed Khan.
I was worried for my baby. Someone promised face masks similar to those used by the army but they failed to show up the next morning. So we took wet towels with us. A crowd had gathered outside my house overnight. The next morning we awoke to a barbed-wire barrier around the house. As I left my front gate, with party leaders, we were baton-charged.
A small group of us managed to cross the barbed wire, find a vehicle and make our way towards Rawalpindi from Islamabad. Periodically we would come across police vehicles looking for us and we would drive slowly with our heads down to prevent identification.
Later the police told me that when a report was sent to them of my presence in Rawalpindi, they laughed it off. But within minutes they received so many calls that they decided to check it out for themselves. They found the reports were correct. Now a mad chase started in the Rawalpindi streets.
Our single jeep was tear-gassed from all sides. Police sirens were blaring away. There was pandemonium. The car chase was like something from a James Bond movie - or perhaps more like a Bollywood movie.
The crowd was cheering us on, their slogans filling the air. More and more police reinforcements were called in and different streets blocked with police cars and vans. Now the police were lobbing tear gas directly at the car windscreen and aiming at us. The windscreen cracked. Finally our driver had had enough. He braked, jumped out of the car and melted into the shadows. The police surrounded the car and arrested all of us. Later we were released but the day's events had weakened the regime.
Although the two may be unconnected, after this tear-gassing incident, I began suffering from gall-bladder pain. I took homeopathic medicine but the pain continued. It was often excruciating. If I had an operation to fix it, I risked losing my child. I didn't want to take the risk. As the pain got worse and worse, I flew to London. The doctors advised that I should have a caesarean as soon as possible, followed by keyhole surgery to remove the gall bladder. On February 3 1993, my little daughter Aseefa was born. I cuddled my adorable little baby.
Although I did not know it at the time, with the birth of Aseefa my family was complete. Soon, on October 24 1993, the PPP was re-elected. In the repetitive cycle of Pakistani politics, the second government was undemocratically dismissed in 1996 and my husband Asif arrested. Sadly, by the time he was freed in November 2004, I was too old to have another child.
As I write this in London, I must confess that my life is as difficult as it is interesting. I live from suitcase to suitcase, travelling the world lecturing on Islam, democracy and women's rights before universities, business associations, women's organisations and foreign-policy thinktanks. I continue to pound the halls of the House of Commons and Congress. I remain the chairperson of the Pakistan People's Party. I visit my husband, who is having medical treatment in New York. I prepare my children for their exams in Dubai.
And I lead the combined democratic opposition of the secular political parties of Pakistan in fighting for free and fair elections, as mandated by the constitution of Pakistan, in 2007. It may seem much too full a plate. But that is the nature of my life, and I accept it.
· Extracted from Daughter of the East by Benazir Bhutto, published on April 2 by Simon & Schuster, price £12.99. To order a copy for £11.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875.
To buy it in Pakistan - click here
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