The New Nation - Internet Edition

THE shock and confusion I feel after learning about Benazir Bhutto's assassination is strangely familiar. One incarnation of Benazir, a woman I thought I knew and wanted to be, died on September 19, 1996, when she was implicated in the death of her estranged brother, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was brutally shot, allegedly by police officials in a planned attack outside his home.

I was barely 16, learning how to flirt and sneaking cigarettes at the first dance party I was allowed to attend, when the power was switched off and an eerily dark Karachi echoed with the sound of gunfire. In the coming days, opposition politicians, armchair pundits, and my parents grumbled about state terrorism, rampant corruption, and Pakistan's devolution into a police state. This incident occurred during Benazir's second stint as the prime minister of Pakistan. I continued to sneak cigarettes and marvelled at the ease with which icons can crumble.

Until 1996, Benazir had seemed like a real-life Wonder Woman, having expanded the conditions of possibility for Pakistani women for over a decade since her entry into politics. While the boys at school emulated cricketers, my girl friends and I would drape white scarves across our heads and try to imitate Benazir's awkward accent when speaking in Urdu, a vestige of her privilege and power. And who could blame us?

During her first term as prime minister, Benazir was a role model, the likes of which Pakistan will be hard-pressed to find again. In 1988, at the age of 35, she became the youngest person, and the first woman, to head a Muslim nation.

Over the years, though, I have found my enthusiasm for Benazir slowing down. Her charisma suffered, owing to well-circulated jokes about conjugal visits during her husband Asif Zardari's eight-year imprisonment. She disappointed Pakistani women when she failed to repeal the Draconian Hudood and Zina Ordinances that continue to curtail the rights of Pakistani women, especially those who have been raped. Her glamorous visage - well-cut shirts, stark-white scarves, a slick of red lipstick - had been supplanted by images of gore from Mir Murtaza's death, violent political clashes in Karachi, and, of course, her own untimely demise in Rawalpindi.

I still mark the day that my admiration for Benazir mellowed into ambivalence as the beginning of adulthood. I suspect her tragic death will similarly age the Pakistani nation.

Huma Yusuf

Karachi-Pakistan