Toughing it Out, All the Way

I was at Holland Village with the Boy when the headlines of a large stack of newspapers caught my eye. The staid black lettering of the broadsheet, published in bold caps, calmly announced that Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated.

I actually strolled past it a little bit before it actually sank in, and I actually gasped, stopped dead in the middle of that busy walkway and turned back to glare at the innocent newspapers. I couldn’t believe it.

I had read her autobiography as a gawky, frustrated teenager, and though I could see that, as most autobiographies are wont to do, it whitewashed her errors, gilded her successes and romanticised her and her nearest and dearest, Benazir Bhutto had impressed me. I cannot remember every bit of that book now as clearly as my teenage self could, but I remember thinking to myself that I must learn from her to be strong, tough and smart – and to do it all with grace, even if I may not be making great changes to history like her.

Benazir Bhutto swerved the course of her life and the world she lived in. She may not always have been respectable – the corruption charges come to mind – and she may not always have trodden a clear road; but even her death ignited a debate about power, its use and its mandates; about truth and the different perspectives each person has of it; and about terrorism and the need for a united resolution to its end. Benazir Bhutto would doubtless have had plenty to say.

I saw on a website that had voted her one of the 11 most influential women in the world for year 2007 this adage that they said particularly applied to her: “well-behaved women rarely make history”. I think I shall adopt this particular idiom for a while.