Victoria Schofield is a reputed historian and commentator on international affairs. She was
educated at Oxford and succeeded late Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007) as president of the Union.
In 1978, she also attended the appeal of late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto against the death sentence in the Supreme Court of Pakistan. She has been associated with a number of prestigious media outlets/platforms like the Sunday Telegraph, The Times, The Independent, The Spectator, the BBC and Al Jazeera. Apart from her present work which is a personal memoir of her friendship with late Benazir Bhutto, she had earlier authored five books including the one titled ‘Bhutto: Trial and Execution’.
‘Victoria and Benazir’s Oxford friendship grew into a deeper emotional bond’ lasting until the latter’s assassination in December 2007 in the tragic context of late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s
appeal and subsequent execution. In her account Victoria Schofield provides ‘first-hand
insights into late Benazir’s transformation from Oxford undergraduate to political activist and the first woman prime minister of a Muslim majority country’. In her narration of the close and enduring relationship with late Benazir Bhutto, the author also draws on diaries and letters besides shedding light on ‘the recent troubled history of an increasingly troubled
region’. From her upbringing in an affluent family (of Bhuttos), ‘the shock of the contrast of
her Harvard and Oxford education, and subsequent politicisation and arrest after her father’s death’, Benazir Bhutto’s life has been full of drama unfolding her undaunted strength, dedication and courage in the face of adversity.
The book is divided into 15 chapters in addition to the ‘Prelude: 27 December 2007’. The titles of the chapters are aphoristically concise e.g., Our Salad Days: 1974-77; ‘Bhutto to hang’: (1977-78); ‘Within fourwalls’: 1978; ‘Martyrs do not die’: 1979; Street Fighting Years: 1979-81; Living But Not Living: 1981-83; Benazir’s Out: 1984-86; The People’s Wedding: 1987; Dear Prime Minister: 1988-90; Leader of the Opposition: 1990-93; Prime Minister Again: 1993-96; Déjà Vu: 1996-99; Exile: 1999-2007; Return to Pakistan: 2007; Assassination.
This book, prototyped on the model of Benazir Bhutto’s famous autobiography ‘Daughter of
the East’, contains a chronological account of its author’s intimate friendship with late
Benazir Bhutto since their university days at Oxford and the sombre trail of events following their separation after completion of studies at the alma mater. It is a kind of a mix of her reminiscences of the university days followed by her eventful trip to Pakistan where she attended the court proceedings of late Z A Bhutto.
The writer has added a good number of family photographs some of which portray her own
images in unison with those of late Benazir Bhutto besides her pencil sketches of many a
character relating to the epic tale of the illustrious father and his great daughter.
The narrative is couched in a racy but lucid style characterized by an inimitable idiomatic
felicity, candidness, and sincerity that create an aura of ‘fragrance’ about it. The mode of
narration being anecdotal, the reader is imperceptibly lured into a wonder of a world where
biography, politics, law, justice and international diplomacy are intertwined into a non-fictive web, as it were, of déjà vu. In the process she has narrated her recurrent visits to Pakistan covering almost all of the crucial events connected to the tragic fate of the Bhutto family as well as late Benazir Bhutto’s ascendance to power twice (1988-90 and 1993-96) in her chequered political career ending with her tragic demise in a bomb explosion in Rawalpindi in the dying days of the year 2007. Concluding the book, the author offers her rich tributes to the departed soul of her life-long friend and affiliate thus:
‘On entering, I took off my shoes, relishing the cool of the marble on my hot feet. Passing
under an archway, I found myself looking at a gigantic portrait of Benazir. It was not a family birth or death anniversary, when thousands traditionally converge and so, with the exception of some villagers who had come in from the fields, and a few attendants, the mausoleum was empty. When I approached, one of the attendants came forward to offer me a basket of rose petals to scatter. Benazir’s grave, covered in a red velvet cloth, was next to her father’s, which now had an ornate marble canopy. As I grasped a handful of rose petals, I thought again of my first visit to Garhi Khuda Bakhsh over thirty years ago, when Benazir and I had stood side by side in the open air by the graves of her ancestors, the triumphs and tragedies of the future as yet unknown. Now she lay with them.
The sorrowful smell of the mist
Lingering over the Indus,
Gentle waves of rice, dung and rind
This is the salt cry of Sindh
As I die let me feel
The fragrance of tears.’
Here BBC chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet’s remark about the book would
seem a pertinent but apt ending to the present review: ‘This intimate account could only
have been written by someone like Victoria Schofield, who stood next to Benazir in everyday and earth-shaking moments, both as an astute observer and loyal friend’.
Title: ‘The Fragrance of Tears – My Friendship with Benazir Bhutto’
Author: Victoria Schofield
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Karachi
Pages: 324 – Price: Rs. 2850/-
