Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

The Persian mistress at the breakfast table: Tales of the Bhutto childhood

This note from a genuine old AfPak hand arrived over the weekend. Yup, I’ve ordered the Rushdie novel : You surely know that one of the most psychologically formative experiences for the young Benazir was growing up in a house where her father (Zulfikar) gave his Persian mistress pride of place in the home. Benazir ...

By , a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy.
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons

This note from a genuine old AfPak hand arrived over the weekend. Yup, I've ordered the Rushdie novel :

This note from a genuine old AfPak hand arrived over the weekend. Yup, I’ve ordered the Rushdie novel :

You surely know that one of the most psychologically formative experiences for the young Benazir was growing up in a house where her father (Zulfikar) gave his Persian mistress pride of place in the home. Benazir would come to breakfast with her father and mistress at the table while her mother ate from a tray quietly and alone in her bedroom in another wing of the house. When one tries to understand how Benazir came to have her husband kill her brother, it helps to know what a strange childhood she had. Salman Rushdie’s thinly-veiled roman a clef about the Bhuttos and Zia, Shame, captures some of this atmosphere quite well. 

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

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