Fragmented grief

The first disturbing question is: what if, to her, the idea of intimacy is indelibly shaped by her instability? That would spare us from shoehorning Bhutto into the well-worn trope of strong women who should have known better than to get caught in the undertow of the wrong man. He told her she looked like a mouse with eyeliner on. He was indeed the most uncivil knave, and so are many others who dictate to women about their agency.

Then the dog got the better contract, replacing The Man as principal companion. What if it is a deliberate act of Bhutto’s narrative justice? Bhutto was a decade-long hostage to his velvet leash, fashioning a cage from her own tenderness.

The complaint should be about arithmetic. The book gives too much weight to the one grief and too little to the wolf.

Her father's grief becomes a ballast for the grief that follows. And yet, for its faults, under the weather of her grief, the memoir remains strategic. It seems to inherit from three generations of Pakistani life and from the old knowledge of how blood is stained. Her grief is laid bare. We have a writer whose work proves grief is real and privilege doesn’t shield it. Her grief reaches your heart in the most ruthless way. She struggles with pain that is everlasting and has no cure. She mourns the ground where her father died. It reminds me of WH Auden's Funeral Blues: “the stars are not wanted now; put out everyone.”

However, Bhutto’s book disagrees with Auden’s idea of grief, the sense that nothing can ever come of it. She honoured her own without cheapening it.

But what if The Hour of the Wolf tried not to re-litigate her father’s assassination, since she had already given its full accounting in Songs of Blood and Sword?

Well, Bhutto may have wanted to keep this memoir about a dog, but her agent advised her to do the opposite and to recall other griefs. That is, if I may be so bold.

But if you read it, read it on Bhutto’s terms.

Bhutto’s talent in ink is well established. This is my third crossing through her book, and somehow I found myself still in the dungeon of her grief. This memoir asks little of your time, but it may borrow one of your afternoons and will hit you where it should.

The writer is a defence policy analyst and Youth Coordinator at the Pakistan International Human Rights Organization. She is a book reviewer and writer of fiction. She can be reached at zainshabir758@gmail.com