Here’s Salman Rushdie on Benazir Bhutto in Shame, his satire on Pakistani politics:

Arjumand Harappa qualified in the law, became active in the green revolution, threw zamindars out of their palaces, opened dungeons, led raids on the homes of film stars and slit open their mattresses with a long two-edged knife, laughed as the black money poured out from between the pocketed springs. In court she prosecuted the enemies of the state with a scrupulous ferocity that gave her nickname a new and less ribald meaning; once she arrived at her chambers to find that some joker had broken in during the night and had left, standing in the centre of the room, a mocking gift: the lower half of an antique and rusty suit of armour, a pair of satirical metal legs placed at attention, heels together, on the rug. And laid neadly across the hollow waist, a padlocked metal belt. Arjumand Harappa, the virgin Ironpants…

… for a while Rani kept writing to her, suggesting boys, even sending photographs; but Arjumand would return the letters and the photographs to her mother after ripping them to shreds. After several years of tearing potential husbands in half the virgin Ironpants finally defeated Rani’s hopes and was allowed to continue down her chosen road. She was twenty-three when Isky became Prime Minister, she looked older, and although she was still far too beautiful for her own good the passage of time eroded her prospects, and at last she ran out of suitors…

On Zulfikar Bhutto’s hanging:

‘If the rope did not mark him, it must be because he was already dead… They hanged a corpse…‘

Rani and Arjumand were kept under house arrest for six years exactly, two before the execution of Iskander Harappa, four after it… they were living on usurped soil, in occupied territory, and they were determined not to let the invaders see their tears…

… Arjumand began to do what she had never done in her life, that is, she dressed to kill. The virgin Ironpants swung her hips and wiggled her behind and flashed her eyes at all the soldiers, but most of all at the peach-faced Captain Ijazz… By the end of the period of house arrest… Arjumand had Captain Ijazz imprisoned and tortured…

Related posts: Rude Giuliani, There will be blood, Yes Minister, Homecoming (updated)