martyrs

So I'm standing in line at the bank today (and I must say that the new Bank of America over at the mall is the cheeriest, sunniest, roomiest bank I've ever been in), and I look up at the TV screens above the teller stations, and the news is plastered with Benazir Bhutto's assassination.

I was horrified and unsurprised at the same time. I had seen a number of interviews with her over the past few months, and while I liked what she stood for and what she was trying to do, I thought that perhaps Pakistan's troubles were too far gone and she'd be in for far more than she realized at the time. And given all the violence and opposition to her and her party, not to mention the previous assassination attempts, how many close calls could she get away with?

Still, I sensed a certain hardness in her that she might be able to pull it off. It may have come from losing her father and her brother to similar assassinations, or growing up in a political dynasty and having to live up to expectations, or all the criticism she faced (although little of it seemed to be about the fact that she was a female politician, so there's some progress), or maybe she expected to die. I wonder if her son will take up her cause the way she took it up from her father after he was killed. He seems to be following a similar path at least - he's at Oxford right now, like she was at his age.

I don't know how much truth there is to the corruption charges against her. It's hard to tell how much of that was political propaganda designed and spun to discredit her and how much was actually true.

So yet another martyr in the dynasty, which doesn't do anything for either side, and makes everything worse, and I half-expect the country to implode from all the tension and rage created as a result of the assassination.

There's a particular image of Bhutto that a lot of news stations and Internet articles are using that's very striking. She's looking directly at the camera, and her head is covered with a cream-colored veil, which makes her dark hair and eyes look even darker. She's wearing some make-up, but not much, and she's amazingly beautiful and young-looking for someone in her mid-50s who's faced a lot of strain and tragedy. Her expression is calm and determined at the same time. It reminded me of a painting I've seen of Christ, the most famous martyr, in a similar pose, leaning to the left slightly, head covered in a light-colored veil, looking directly at the viewer. Martyrdom got him an entire religion, controversial though it is. I wonder what it will get her?