Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

ethnic and sectarian murders rose. There were also rampant rumors of corruption involving Asif Zardari, Bhutto’s husband, and supporters.

At the luncheon she hosted for me, Benazir led a discussion about the changing roles of women in her country and told a joke about her husband’s status as a political spouse.

“According to newspapers in Pakistan,” she said, “Mr. Asif Zardari is de facto Prime Minister of the country. My husband tells me, ‘Only the First Lady can appreciate it’s not true.’”

Bhutto acknowledged the difficulties faced by women who were breaking with tradition and taking leading roles in public life. She deftly managed to refer both to the challenges I had encountered during my White House tenure and to her own situation.

“Women who take on tough issues and stake out new territory are often on the receiving end of ignorance,” she concluded.

In a private meeting with the Prime Minister, we talked about her upcoming visit to Washington in April, and I spent time with her husband and their children. Because I had heard that their marriage was arranged, I found their interaction particularly interesting.

They bantered easily together, and seemed genuinely smitten with each other. Only months after my trip, accusations of corruption against them grew more harsh, and in August 1996, Bhutto elevated her husband to a cabinet post. By November 5, 1996, she was ousted amid allegations that Zardari had used his position for personal enrichment.

He was convicted of corruption and imprisoned; she left her country with her children, under threat of arrest and unable to return.

I have no way of knowing whether the accusations against Bhutto and her husband are well-founded or baseless. I do know that during the short time I was there, I was drawn into a world of unfathomable contrasts. Nasreen Leghari and Benazir Bhutto came from the same culture. President Leghari put his wife in purdah while Ali Bhutto sent his daughter to Harvard. An arranged marriage seemed to produce genuine delight. Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have all been governed by women elected as Presidents or Prime Ministers in a region where women are so devalued that some newborn girls may be ‘ killed or abandoned.

I wanted to know what would become of the future generation of ‘! educated Pakistani women, some of whom Chelsea and I met the next “ day at the Islamabad College for Girls, Benazir Bhutto’s high school. Many of their concerns were familiar to the mother of a curious and enterprising young woman. They worried aloud about how they could change their society and where they might fit into it as highly educated women.

“You’re never going to find the ideal man,” said one girl. “You have to be a lot more realistic.”

Her voice would stay with me. She was of a culture where choice in marriage was rarely the woman’s. Yet she knew enough of the realities of modern life to contemplate the uncertain options of women everywhere.

I continued that conversation about women’s choices when I visited Lahore University of Management Science, where women were studying business. The program was supported in part by Pakistani Americans who understood that Pakistan’s economy and standard of living would never advance unless women were educated and played an active role. No one could doubt the success of South Asian immigrants in America, where they flourished in business and the professions.

Their successes in our country illustrated the importance of a well-functioning noncorrupt government, a free market, a society that values individuals, including girls and women, a culture that tolerates all religious traditions and an environment free of violence and war.

No country in South Asia has yet achieved all these conditions. Men and women who could have contributed to their own country’s advancement are instead contributing to ours. Sri Lanka, for example, where I ended my trip, had a high rate of literacy for both men and women, but the country had lived in terror for years because of a guerrilla insurgence by the Hindu Tamil Tigers against the majority Buddhist Sinhalese population and government. The relentless campaign of terror undermined its potential for economic growth and foreign investment.

Before we left Islamabad, Chelsea and I paid a visit of respect to the Saudi-built Faisal Mosque, named for the former Saudi King and one of the largest mosques in the world. With its nearly three-hundred-foot tall minarets and magnificent canopy, this modem mosque was one of more than 1,500 the Saudi government and private citizens were building on six continents. We removed our shoes and padded around the vast prayer halls and courtyards designed to accommodate up to one hundred thousand believers.

Chelsea, who had been studying Islamic history and culture in her school, asked our guide well-informed questions. Like the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Quran is open to different interpretations, most of which promote peaceful coexistence with people of other religions; some, like Wahhabism, do not. Wahhabism is an ultraconservative Saudi brand of Islam that is gaining adherents around the world. While I deeply respect the basic tenets of Islam, Wahhabism troubles me because it is a fast-spreading form of Islamic fundamentalism that excludes women from full participation in their societies, promotes religious intolerance and, in its most extreme version, as we learned with Osama bin Laden, advocates terror and violence.

The next day I visited the embassy to talk to the American and Pakistani staff, who were terribly shaken by the recent murders of their colleagues in Karachi. I wanted to acknowledge their courage in serving our country and reassure them that, despite isolationist voices in Congress, their services were invaluable and appreciated by the President and by millions of American citizens. This was a not so thinly veiled reference to some Republican House members who boasted that they didn’t have passports, never traveled outside our country and planned to slash the State Department budget. I also wanted to thank the embassy staff for all the extra work my trip had required of them. From their perspective, the best part of a VIP visit was the