<i >Outlook</i> meets the young Bilawal, Benazir's 18-year-old son, in Dubai, and finds out what it means to be a future heir of the Bhutto legacy
Bilawal was then just a baby. The family was staying at Sindh House, waiting for the Prime Minister's House to be prepared. Careening up Islamabad's empty roads, past security checkposts and guards, heading into Sindh House, was a jeepload of armed men who looked like Afghans. Bilawal was being wheeled outside in his pram. Benazir recalls, "The jeep had no number plates. It was coming straight towards him. It could have all been over in seconds. They could have snatched Bilawal and Allah only knows what would have happened next. But some instinct for self-preservation must have come over the woman who was taking care of him. She scooped him up and ran indoors." An inquiry into the incident predictably came up with no leads.
In fact, Benazir and husband Asif Ali Zardari's children have lived in exile for most of their life. It began when they were spirited away to London as babies in 1990. Bilawal, then two, and Bakhtawar, not even a year old, were in the care of Benazir's sister Sanam and Zardari's parents. But Bakhtawar, who didn't stop crying for weeks, had to be brought back home by Benazir at the height of the political crisis in the country after her government was dismissed. In 1996, soon after Murtaza bled to death after a shootout yards away from their Karachi home, Nusrat insisted on taking them to London, and to safety. In September that year, she arrived in Dubai with the children. Benazir joined them in 2000, the children cocooned from the political uncertainties of their homeland.
"I've made many friends here and Dubai has grown on me, I like my life here," says Bilawal. His surname means little to his fellow students, and the measure of anonymity helps him concentrate on his studies. Yet, asked what he remembers of Pakistan, he says the memory of "thousands of people shouting slogans in support" of the Bhuttos persist, drawing him to his country's people in an overwhelming way.
"But it's too early for him to take part in politics," protests protective mother Benazir, as she proffers chocolates and cups of steaming green tea. Juggling overseas calls from journalists who scent the change in Pakistan, Benazir is completely clear that whether or not there's a deal with the military, at no point will her children's safe haven here be jeopardised. "As a mother, it's my duty to protect my children; their education is a priority. Even though I come from a political family with a strong sense of duty to my country, I'd strongly advise them to stay away from politics, to serve the country in other ways. As a doctor, a social worker, anything."
"But I'd like to go back to Pakistan to vote," interjects the young man with an uncanny resemblance to grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his youth, whose portrait as prime minister dominates the living room of their home. "I'd like to participate in an election that brings true democracy to Pakistan. I hope this time it's an election, not a selection," says Bilawal. Indeed, reports that he had received a voter identity card set off fevered speculation that he will be by his mother's side when she makes the epic journey home, even throw himself into campaigning for the family firm.
But with his eye not so much on the political ball as much as on the world of academia, Bilawal, who graduated from Dubai's prestigious Shaikh Rashid School last week, is heading for college in the UK. His choice of history as a subject of study—"one has to study the past to understand the future"—is no surprise. "He's a lot like my father in his ability to marshall facts to present his argument," says Benazir. "He's also so much like Mir (Benazir's brother), the same sense of humour, the same quiet wit."