Benazir Bhutto

My wake-up call goes off several times. I wish it would stop. It does not. Another day has dawned.

I get ready and go down to the office. It is empty except for my political secretary.

We go through the morning mail. The Portuguese ambassador has sent me a book by their poet Fernando Pessoa translated into Urdu. The Portuguese have done this to commemorate our golden jubilee year, which is really thoughtful of them.

I flip through the pages. I see the poems about women and sadness. I close the cover.

I jot down some additional points for my budget speech, slip an explanatory note for the office and leave.

As a Muslim woman, I cover my head with a veil, called a "Duppatta." It keeps slipping unless one has a bee-hive hairstyle. Every time there's a big speech, I have to try and make it to the hairdressers.

As a Muslim woman, I almost always go out accompanied by a lady companion. Gone are the days when I could hail a taxi or drive a car. I miss the informality of the past.

My political secretary Naheed accompanies me. I have two cups of tea at the parlor. Not good for my blood pressure, a little voice whispers, but I drink the tea anyway. You only live once.

We return to the house to find that the government has cut our electricity. It's boiling hot. The computers are not working. I make corrections with sweat dripping all over. It gets into my eyes and blurs the page. I am angry but I concentrate on the work.

We enter the National Assembly at 5:00 p.m. There are hardly any members. Good. There will be less heckling.

The speaker has broken with precedent and decided not to give the electronic media permission to film my speech. I get angry. Stop it, I say. That's what they want. You are not going to play their game.

"I call upon the leader of the opposition to begin the general discussion on the budget proposals," the gray-haired speaker intones.

Taking a deep breath I begin:

"Mr. Speaker, Sir,

"The budget proposals for 1997-98 presented by the finance minister are based on deceit, disinformation, distortion. This is a breach of the privilege of the House. The budget theme is to borrow. Borrow time and borrow money."

I notice the House is beginning to fill up. The back-benchers can hardly contain themselves when I speak. They start muttering.

The finance minister has admitted that the civil servants are in a deep crisis. I respond, "When customs officials are punished for performing their duties, when police officials are accused of extrajudicial killings, when senior bureaucrats are tortured into making false statements, there will be a deep crisis."

The Treasury benches start heckling. There are only 17 of us in the House and 160 of them.

I mention that the politics of revenge has frightened capital and paralyzed the economy. I begin to give a few examples. When I mention my political secretary, who has been imprisoned and freed on court orders three times, off-loaded from a flight once, tortured and asked to lie about me, the Treasury benches burst into an uproar.

I shout as loud as I can over the microphone, "Sir, why do they panic every time they hear the name of a woman?" That shuts them up. At least temporarily.

When I finish, the Treasury benches start discussing my speech. Their first speaker makes sexist remarks--"She is melodramatic. She should have gone to New York and performed in the theater. She would have been a prima donna."

Bored, I sit back and begin to read the "Tasbee," the Muslim rosary. When I finally get to my office in the Parliament I am too tired to meet the press. Instead I ask for water, tea, sandwiches, deep-fried chicken wings. I am rewarding myself for the one-and-a-half-hour speech delivered in a House where we have only a handful of supporters.

Now the work is done. It's time to go home.

I go into the verandah and call the cats. One of them is from Maui. I got her in 1992 when I visited Hawaii. I gather their plates, wash them in soap and water, get a can of food and put it into their plates. They are jumping and purring all over me. I love it.

Then I call Dr. Ashraf Abbasi, the former deputy speaker of the National Assembly, a remarkable lady. She worked with my father and gave me the love of a mother.

We go to the upstairs lounge, put on CNN, call for some green tea, and sit down to watch and chat.

Bliss.

Tomorrow is another day.

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