YouSaid · the spoken record

Fatima Bhutto

lines on the record: 56
first: 2021-12-14
most recent: 2021-12-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's another book. I don't know yet. I mean, the way it happened, the runaways came out with not that much space between new kings of the world. So I'm not sure what I will do next, whether it will be fiction or non-fiction, but I'm going to take a little marination period, I guess, to wait and see what strikes”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can send to days in an interesting position in the world. It's always been. But I think our population is tired of war and tired of corruption, untired of the same old same old, and I don't think they're going to allow it for forever.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think there's a difference between being hopeful for the people of a place than for the government of a place. I think if you look at the people of Pakistan, they're incredibly young. We're a huge population, something like 70% of our 200 million people almost are under the age of 30. They're a population that has this under 30 population has survived life under military dictatorship, terrorism, invasions, occupations, the survivors and their hardworking. In that senses, you cannot be anything but hopeful and excited to see what will happen. Governments are obviously not great sources of hope for anyone, I would say. But I think Pakistan's”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Bahisan, but at the same time, you know, I'm free to say what I think at the moment and I'm free to have opinions that might otherwise be impossible if I were in politics. I mean, those are enormous freedoms. I'm not sure I would rush to give up ever. And also, I do think I have a lot of hope for Pakistan. I don't see that it's waiting for me in particular. I don't think that I have any special answer with no one else.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't really think so because I think that but there are many answers. I mean, I think I'd point I have considered it and I have wanted to and I made the choice not to.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know, really. You know, I think that I worked consistently as a writer really since I left college. So I don't know if people will take that as proof that I'd like to stay a writer or if they just see that as a placeholder job until I do. I really couldn't answer that. I don't know.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Completely, I mean, you know, we were everybody in the world who is not white was essentially supposed to stand up and give a standing ovation to crazy rich Asians, as though somehow this has now encompassed what it means to be Asian. Why would we do that when I can go and watch any number of Korean films which are nuanced and sophisticated and incredibly elegantly told in their diversity in their multiplicity for one American film when there are libraries of film out there? To me it seems absurd.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, of course, the enlightened objective center, as though such a thing could exist. And, you know, Hollywood has come so late to the idea of representation. They think that representation means that you put an Asian American person in a film, you know, one character or you put a Mexican character in a TV show. And boom, that's the end of the problem. Everyone feels seen and heard. But what they don't realize is why would we watch your show with one measly character when there is a whole industry industries everywhere else in the world where the stories are Mexican, the producers are Mexican, the actors are Mexican, you know, or Asian American or African. There's a world out there. We live in a multipolar world and there is culture blossoming in so many points. We're not restricted to only one.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why does there have to be a white woman in the story for us to have sympathy with a refugee's tale? And also, you know, Ethiopia has its own stories and its own narratives. Aren't they allowed those? I also think that's partially why Western culture is under threat from so many places, because it assumes itself as the center.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Novelist night. No. I mean, I try to go by the Hippocratic Oath, so I don't want to cause harm to anybody, and I don't want to be insulting to anybody or demeaning to anybody. But I think if somebody is exclusionary, and if somebody is bigoted or somebody is offensive, then I think you have a right to say Stops where you are. I don't accept that. And there's a problem with your conversation. I think we have to say that. I think it's important. I think the idea of Hollywood telling that story, okay, none of us have seen the film, but it sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't see myself as a voice for anyone, really. I mean, I speak out about those things because I'm personally affronted by them. I believe in the idea of discourse. I believe in the idea of conversation and dialogue. And I don't think you get either of those from Richard Dawkins or Fox News. It's the same pushing of an agenda. And what I'm personally affronted by is that Richard Dawkins can be incredibly patriarchal and insulting, you know, when he stands up and says Muslim women need help. That's so demeaning to Muslim women as though we don't have capacity and capability to help ourselves. We need this sort of white savior like Richard Dawkins. So I'm personally offended by him. That's why I say it. And Fox News is just an insult to everyone, isn't it?”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the shows that are coming on Netflix or Amazon Prime. They were a little more interesting than what's coming out of Bollywood.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His campaign, you see it most recently. and at that time I was in Islamabad and Pakistani public figures were coming out to say we do not want war we do not want Indians to die we do not want Pakistanis to die we do not have any appetite for this at the same time Bollywood actors were coming out and cheering war and were cheering strikes on Pakistan and to me that was I mean unimaginably disgusting you know can you imagine I don't know Tom Cruise cheering a drone strike I mean it sounds completely misplaced that's not the role of an artist so I think it's been impacted like that I think a lot of recent Bollywood films have been specific I mean there have been many films about Moody himself there have been films about Moody's programs you know his sort of initiatives his sort of soft initiatives if you want to call them that now have Bollywood films about them I think what's more interesting coming out of India are TV shows at the moment you know streaming”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's completely militaristic. And I think that's alienating and I think it's dangerous. And I'm one of those people that really does believe that politics is in everything. When I sit down to watch a Bollywood movie today, I'm not comfortable. I'm uncomfortable watching it. And I think unfortunately culture only moves when it's free of constraints. It moves beautifully when it's free of constraints. It can have politics. It always will have politics. But when it constrains itself to a message, to pushing a message, then that culture is going to be wounded. And I think that's what's going to happen with Bollywood moving forward.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You play porters, play working class. Shoe shine boys, farmers. And then you have 1990s neoliberalism. And then there are no more farmers in Bollywood films. And there are no more shoeshine boys. And they are all multinational bankers who live in London and summer in Switzerland and have fast cars. And that's fine. It reflects the time when India's undergoing neoliberal reforms. But today, Bollywood films are about war. Know they are about this muscular jingoism that is violent and exclusive.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you Um, well, you know, Samir, if I started writing New Kings of the World in 2016, and that's why I made the choice to include Bollywood, if I was writing the book today in 2019, I would not have included Bollywood. Because I think that Bollywood has been always a very faithful mirror to Indian society. It's reflected the aspirations and the struggles and the fissures of Indian society from the 1940s, the 1940s, 1950s Bollywood films were really idealistic films about brotherhood and nation building and moral tales. The 1970s films were about injustice and about the poor being dispossessed.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tom Cruise films exactly it was first a TV show in the 60s and 70s, whatever it was. And now it's this mega billion dollar series of films. And Tom Cruise's character works for an organization called the IMF, you know, the impossible missions force. But that's crazy. It's not even subliminal. It's so transparent. We don't even think about it.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had to be entertained somehow, they had to have something to do when they weren't doing the work of soldiering. And if you were a young Korean and you wanted to play rock and roll and you wanted to dance, you couldn't do that in clubs and soul because they played foxtrot music. They played the stodgy sort of limp sounding music. But you could on the basis, you could go to the bases and play You know, electric guitar. And K pop is really born out of that beginning. It sounds like a strange beginning, but it's true. And I think that's really how this culture spreads. And American culture is just innocently accepted by all of us. We watch the movies. We don't even think twice about who's behind them or what the messaging is. And one example I always like is mission impossible.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can I think our understanding is that Americana is spread by virtue of cool, that it's just Elvis was just entrancing, and that's why everyone in the world wants to wear blue jeans and sing rock and roll. But it's really accompanied by militarism in a lot of senses. Today, for the first time in history, you have the lowest number of US bases and troops globally dispatched. But that number was incredibly high in the 1950s and 1960s. You had American army bases essentially all over the world. And those bases were not only conduits for American culture. They brought with them American movies, American music, American dress, American fashion. But in the case of Korea, I think it's a really interesting example. When the Americans set up their bases in South Korea around the time of the Korean War in the 1950s, if you had all these troops,”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There you go. And they suffer the same impulse, which is that they are clinging to a past. And that past is decades ago. That past is maybe even something they've never even lived through. But they cling to it because they see in their present that they are not respected, that their voice is not given a space, that people like them are somehow excluded from society, and they feel wounded and humiliated by that. I mean, ISIS is born out of that, but so are these Nazis, these neo-Nazis. You know, I hate the word white nationalist because what does that even mean? It doesn't mean anything. If you're brown, they call you a terrorist. If you're white, they call you a white. I mean, it's not even a word that. But they are born exactly of the same impulse.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To anyone who offers you a future. And I think that's what's happened with a lot of these young people who have picked up left lives of essential comfort, let's say, and gone off to join Daesh in Iraq or Syria.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you. We've now had years and years and years of evidence. You want to change the world we live in, if we want to be safer and more secure, then I think we have a duty to understand why people would be vulnerable to radicalism, why people would be drawn into violence. And we see what happens when people dismiss it and say these are barbarians and we don't want to talk about them. It makes it worse. And particularly if you come from the non-Western world, then you know that the reasoning is flawed to begin with. The reasoning has been since 9-11, that these are people from a certain place, these are people of a certain religion, and this is how they are infected with these impulses. And of course, that's not true. I don't think radicalism is born out of religion at all. I think it's born out of humiliation and isolation, and the fact that many, many young people today don't see a future for themselves in their countries, and if you don't see a future in your country, you will be vulnerable”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think maybe people thought I might, nobody ever forced me or made it seem like I had to. I always wanted I always said I wanted to be a writer. I was allowed the freedom to choose. I mean nobody really groomed me in that sense. But at the same time, you know you have a bit of grooming anyways, don't you? Because you learn how to navigate certain things that you wouldn't otherwise. So I traveled across Pakistan with my family, with all of them, with my aunt, with my grandmother, with my father on their political tours and trips. But it's those things that made me a writer, not a politician.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well I did for a long period very seriously consider that, and I've always been fascinated by politics and interested and disturbed by politics. And I did study it and At the same time as all that's true, I wouldn't really say I'm not in politics, I mean I am not in active politics, but I feel what I do is quote political, but at the same time much freer than it would be if I was an actual politics. I write about things that I care about, that are meaningful to me.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I did and I didn't. I mean, I never really feel 100% safe in Baisen because of the fact that you really don't have any recourse in a country. Like where do you go when something bad happens? You know, the courts don't protect you, the police don't protect you. So you do feel vulnerable. I think that's most people would say that, not just me. But at the same time where is safe? You know, I don't know what's safe or where safe. There's no place that's going to be 100% safe anywhere.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why I guess I've done a little bit of everything in that sense. I started my wedding career really as a journalist, I wrote for a Pakistani paper and they sent me out. Yeah, Zhang was the Urdu paper and the news was the English. So they sent me out to do different stories and they sent me to Iran. They sent me to Cuba. And they gave me space to write about what I wanted, so I learnt, really, how to begin working as a proper writer”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so after he was killed, it became even more important for me to publish those poems in his memory. And so I did Oxford University Press Pakistan published them at the end, a year after the murder. I guess I Kept writing always thinking that I would one day become like a proper grown up writer, but still felt far away at that time.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I had been already, I was very, very young and I had studied writing poetry for a school project. I would show them to my father the poems and he said to me Oh you have to publish these he was incredibly supportive but I thought no that's crazy I'm a kid like I'm a kid why would I publish poetry? And he'd gone and found publishers' addresses and clipped them out and written sample letters for me and so we were actually before he was killed we were in the process of like talking to these small presses and things like that and because I was underage I had to have a guardian signature on one of these contracts and I remember as things were changing in those days and growing menacing I said to my father well if you go to jail who's going to sign my contract and he said don't put it in my put it in my bag you know sign in jail and and of course that bag was packed in his room”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know I don't know. I think that power is an incredibly corrosive corrosive force. I think it produces a fear that's unexplainable in some cases. My father was a threat to her. My father was a critic and people had a hope and a promise for him. It hadn't been tested yet. It didn't have the chance to be tested, but unfortunately, myself, There's no chance to ask her One of the men who was on the road that night she later inducted one of the police people, a high ranking police intelligence officer was on the road that night. My father was killed. And after my father's death, my aunt welcomed that man into the Central Committee of her political party. I mean, there's a strange things to do. They defy logic. So I couldn't possibly answer why she did them”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, my aunt certainly has a responsibility. In the aftermath of the killing, all the witnesses and survivors were arrested, but none of the police were. Again, in the immediate aftermath, a tribunal was put forward by the government that was to investigate the assassination, but that had no legal power to pass sentence. Tribunal was organized by my aunt. And even though it had no legal power to pass sentence, it concluded that the assassination could not have been carried out except with approval from the highest bench of government. That would be her. And unfortunately, the way she continued to conduct herself didn't lend itself to any claims of innocence.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when I insisted and said it was very urgent something had happened I needed to talk to my aunt, he said Don't you know your father's been shot That's how he found out.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did when we were not allowed to leave the house, this isn't the days before cell phones and Twitter and satellite news and all that. So we had no idea what had happened, but my father wasn't coming home and we were waiting and expecting him and expecting him. And we started to get nervous and I called the Prime Minister's house. Talk to my aunt to find out what had happened, thinking maybe he'd been arrested. And I remember the ADC, the Secretary, came on the line and was already saying to me, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I didn't know what he was talking about. So I just kept repeating that I needed to talk to my aunt. He kept telling me he was sorry. And at the end, he connected me not to my aunt, but to my aunt's husband. And it was Zardari who told me A that I couldn't speak to my aunt?”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had no idea that that would be in days. But my father had encouraged my writing from a very young age, and he encouraged me not only to read, but also to write, and I wanted to be a writer really at that point. So it remained in the back of my mind, and I always felt it was a promise I owed my father, but also it was a promise I was scared to have to fulfil. I didn't want to do it in a sense, because it would mean really that he was gone, that there was no one else to do it but me. And so it was almost ten years later that I started. I studied slowly the work of research that then became songs of blood and sword.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, my father was killed two days after his birthday, and he had just turned forty two years old, and we'd come back from a birthday dinner, and he'd been very quiet at dinner, and my father was never quiet. He was always talkative and He was very quiet, and we came home and I decided to ask him about his life and you know if he had any regrets what did he remember from certain periods things like that and as we were talking I said to him you really have to write a book and he loved riding my father and he loved reading and he said no no no you you do it you write my book for me and I got very excited that he would think of that or trust me and I got a pen and a paper and he said no no no when I'm gone not now”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And my father and six other men were killed that night. They were shot multiple times, and then left to bleed on the road, they were left there for about an hour, and when they were moved they were not moved to hospitals, they were moved to clinics, and nowhere that could treat a gunshot wound because the aim was to kill these men. And I was at home, I was waiting for my father in his bedroom, actually, and so we heard everything when we tried to leave our house we were told by the police that there had been a robbery in the neighbourhood, and that we had stay indoors.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what we thought might happen, or at least that's what it looked like might happen. But he was coming back from an election, not actually an election rally, but a public meeting on the outskirts of Karachi. And when he was reaching the road of our house, he was stopped. There were about 100 policemen on the roads that night. Some were in trees and sniper positions. And they had closed all the street lights, and they had moved all the guards of nearby residences and embassies into their house. And when my father stepped out of the car to ask what was happening a signal was given to Shoot to commence firing.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Venizer was the Prime Minister at the time and they didn't have a good relationship. My father was very critical of her own corruption And we started to feel that things were To feel something sinister in the week before my father was killed. It had always been a very tense city and it was a tense time, but our house started to be surrounded, they started to put armored cars around the house, and one day there was one armored vehicle, the next day there were two, the third day there were three. So we were expecting something and my father had said that they were going to try and arrest him and he'd packed a little bag with books and things he wanted to read.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I remember everything really about that night It was a very tense time because my father was a very outspoken critic of the government. He spoke a lot about the corruption of the state and the violence of state forces. And at that time in the early to mid nineties, they were a spate of extrajudicial killings in Karachi in particular. I mean, some 3,000 people were killed by the police in what they called encounter killings. You know, an encounter means the police turn up in an area to arrest someone. This was the police version, of course. That person resisted and they got shot in the back.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean that you all eat certain food or, you know, you all sound a certain way. Everyone does that stupid accent from Apoo the Simpsons, you know, that sort of accent at you. And they wonder why you don't speak like that. I remember, I guess the same thing anyone who grows up outside their country feels like my grandmother came to visit and I said, oh, my daddy is here, which is your father's mother. And people were like, your daddy, and they make fun of you for how you speak. So actually it was the opposite. I had that kind of thing.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Growing up in Syria, no, in that sense my father was given shelter really, so Syria Syria was a refuge, was a haven. But no, I don't think so. My father also had a quite international upbringing in that sense, and like me he had one of those sort of odd accents that's like neither here nor there, so he could fit in places and he loved to travel. So we didn't have that at home. We didn't have that at home. But in fact, it was the opposite, you know, to be a Pakistani in Syria was an unusual thing because people hadn't really encountered South Asians. So they thought there was only one kind of South Asian. And they had, I guess the usual stereotypes people would have about South Asians.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So little things like that, but I always wanted to learn and I wanted to know what was wrong with things, why they were wrong, and could they be better?”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“God trying to think now. I mean, I just understood myself to be an adult and people spoke to me like I was an adult. So it depended. I mean, I used to get agitated about, I mean, when I was a child growing up in Syria, in the first grade we started language lessons and all the native Arabic speakers went into the native class and all the foreigners went into the foreigner class, you know, the colloquial Arabic lessons. And I went into the native class, and my father said Oh no, no, no, you shouldn't be in the native class, you're not Arab, but you should go into the foreigner class. So he moved me to the colloquial class, and I moved myself back to the native speaker class because I thought I'm not going to go to like a lower level of language class just because you want me to stay foreign.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm afraid I was actually. I different I was. I mean, I was a sensitive child, I think, but at the same time... I was always outspoken, and no one had told me I shouldn't be.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He died a very slow death and his wife had been in the house the whole time, and had not alerted the police or called for an ambulance So yeah, I knew these things were happening around us. I didn't quite connect them well, maybe I did, but not consciously. I suppose the first time I realized there was something was the first time I went to Bagasan, which was when I was seven years old. And that was the first time I saw this country that I'd only heard about and that my father had sort of dreamed about all these years. And there I understood that there were people who knew who this family was, and it meant something to people and maybe good things, maybe bad things, but something, nonetheless.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, I saw that my father was an exile, that I was growing up in a country that wasn't mine, my father's younger brother, my uncle, was killed when I was three years old. We were all there when it happened so.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I knew things had happened in our family, and I had seen some things happen in our family. So I understood that there was something around us.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly like an MP. And he was going to go back and he had always lived with Pakistan even when he was away from it. So he always spoke about it in very romantic terms, about the sea, you know, the Arabian Sea and the smell of salt in the air and all the food. So, in a way it was like returning home even though it had never been a home for me, at least not up until that point. And so nineteen ninety three we went back to Bagisan.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was nineteen ninety three, so I was eleven at the time, and he decided to contest elections in Pakistan and return home after sixteen years of exile. And I thought, okay, well, fine. If he doesn't win, we won't go back. And he's not going to win. And he did win. And so sort of overnight, we had to start making preparations to leave. At the same time, as that was true,”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“that my father lived constantly in that limbo, and he would say to me, you know, we're going to go home, we're going to go home soon. And I would say when? And he would say soon, really soon. But then I realized there was no soon, you know, and I would press a bit more this year and he'd say, yes, yes, this year. And the year would pass and we wouldn't leave. And so I started to ignore his predictions of when we would go home. And then one year he happened to be right. He said it, and that was the year we left.”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess our home was always culturally mixed because my father's mother was Iranian, and so there was already that we then were living in Syria growing up as a child of exile, I thought I was Syrian, essentially, and my father was always reminding me that I wasn't, and not only that I wasn't, but that this was temporary. So I would put a post drop on my wall as a kid and he would say, oh no, don't put that. We're leaving soon. And I'd say, yeah, well, okay, but we live here now. And he would say, no, no, no, but it's not for long. And so that created a strange Being somewhere and not being there at all”
2021-12-14 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT