Eighteen years have passed since the streets of Rawalpindi were hosed down in a rush that looked less like hygiene and more like a frantic attempt to scrub the fingerprints of history of Benazir Bhutto.
Today, the ritualistic holiday is observed with a quiet efficiency, a day of rest granted by a state that has spent nearly two decades resting its own conscience.
Political Theatre of Benazir Bhutto
It is a masterpiece of political theater to declare a holiday for a woman whose murderers are a matter of public secret, treated with the kind of classified reverence usually reserved for the most sensitive state codes.
We are told to remember a Daughter of the East, yet the very institutions she sought to lead have proven remarkably talented at forgetting the specifics of her departure.
The arithmetic of inaction is perhaps the most cutting sarcasm of this anniversary.
We live in a reality where those who inherited her mantle have held the highest offices of the land for the better part of twenty years.
The Presidency, the Premiership, and the vast machinery of government have been at their disposal, yet the investigation has remained a study in orchestrated incompetence. Her family sits in the highest office today, for much of the time since her blood was washed into the gutters of Liaquat Bagh.
No Interest in Truth
One wonders how a family with the entire state apparatus under their command can find everything except the truth about Benazir?
Husband, children, anyone who actually cares about exposing who killed her then just getting photo ops year after year?
A day of holiday is a poor substitute for a hunt that everyone knows would eventually lead back to the very halls of power where the guests are currently being served.
There is a metaphysical weight to this tragedy that data cannot capture.
There are those who saw the shadow before it fell, like the retired Major in Pindi whose father predicted the exact nature of her end and the identities of those standing in the wings a decade before it happened. These are not mere stories, they are the shared trauma of a witness class that knows the reality is far more graphic than any official press release.
A Woman of Courage
I too have seen her in that liminal space of dreams, six months after the event, images so vivid they felt like a testimony. She was a woman who saw her father hanged and chose to stand where he fell, possessing a courage that even her most ardent critics must acknowledge.
She deserved a nation that protected her, or at the very least, a government that would avenge her with a trial rather than a calendar entry.
The most refined irony of this day is that the investigation has become a permanent fixture of the landscape, a tool used to keep rivals in check while ensuring the status quo remains undisturbed.
Celebrating the Martyr, Avoiding the Murderers
We celebrate the martyr to avoid confronting the murderers, giving the people a day off so they do not ask for a day in court.
To those who believe they can bury the truth under a pile of official flowers and gazettes, may the weight of that silence rot in the ledger of history, both here and the hell they deserve hereafter.
Benazir’s life was brutally cut short by people who wanted her power but could never, and will never, take her place.
