Small wonder: Tale of a Jiyala

While the world was quick to write him off, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto saw in him what others didn’t.

ISLAMABAD:

When Qazi Sultan Mahmood remembers Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a certain spark comes into his eyes. In that moment, this man who stands at just about 3 feet tall, becomes a larger than life storyteller.

A hotel clerk turned political activist who was drawn to the sincerity of Bhutto’s promise to end discrimination, is now a member of the Pakistan Peoples Party’s Central Executive Committee in Rawalpindi. Bhutto’s message of equality and equal opportunity for all resonated with him, for Mahmood has had to face bias and discrimination his whole life.

“I have spent my entire life trying to guess whether people are laughing with me, or at me,” says Mahmood, who was born in Pind Malkan on the outskirts of Islamabad, and never married because of his own insecurity about his physique.

Warm spring air flows into the tidy sitting-room where Mahmood talks over a cup of chai, pausing only to answer important phone calls. Every time his phone rings, the screen lights up with a beaming portrait of the late Benazir Bhutto and President Asif Ali Zardari.

Mahmood recalls his first meeting with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto at the five-star hotel where he was employed. That is where he caught his first glimpse of the PPP’s founder, who reclined on a sofa in a  smoke-filled room busy conversation with the central leader of the then nascent PPP, Khursheed Hassan Mir.

“I was afraid Bhutto would be taken aback by my appearance,” he says, his face involuntarily hinting at the hurt and rejection that he had been through. Instead, the encounter ended up changing his life.



“I admire you more than you think,” Mahmood quotes Bhutto as telling him, leaving aside his own Punjabi dialect as he replicates Bhutto’s gentlemanly poise and colonial accent. In that single sentence, Mahmood felt his dignity restored. Bhutto’s confidence in Mahmood sparked a fire that still burns bright in this Jiyala.

Mahmood’s transformed from a self-conscious and often ridiculed clerk to a feisty party worker, who braved the iron fist of Ziaul-Haq’s dictatorial regime to organise secret rallies and meetings, riding on the bars of a bicycle to lift the spirits of his PPP comrades who were in danger of torture and imprisonment. Much of Mahmood’s own days were spent in chained journeys to the torture cells of Lahore’s looming Lal Qila, where he was subjected not just to torture but also humiliation, constantly being reminded of his physical shortcomings.



“’If you weren’t educated, you would be in a circus somewhere’ they would say,” he said, recalling the mockery of the officers in charge, who would often chain his neck and roll him around in a drum. Mahmood’s spirits, however, remained undimmed; his political allegiance remained unwavering, earning him the title “dangerous prisoner” from the military courts.

Coincidentally, many a time in his 44 years of activism, Mahmood would be arrested in March, would face hardships in April and be released in June.

“When a policeman informed us about Bhutto’s hanging, we vowed to avenge his death,” he says. And so he has, not through violence but through dedication and devotion. One of the oldest veterans of the PPP, Mahmood has never participated in the electoral process. His role is that of an icon and his current task, though taxing to his health at the age of 64, is to help overcome intra-party differences and increase party support.

Exclusion from the limelight has not made Mahmood bitter. He refuses to hear any criticism of the PPP, including allegations of corruption and decline.

“I don’t understand fair-weather politicians,” he says with a lopsided smile. “Influential people should not be given party tickets during power because their motive is to exploit, not to serve.” The real sacrifices, he feels, are made by loyal workers like him.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 9^th, 2013.