Memories of Benazir Bhutto
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- December
- 28
I met Benazir Bhutto in Oxford, England, in June of 1976. My wife and I were on an extended bicycle tour, and pulled into Oxford one warm evening. We saw a notice about a debate scheduled that night at the Oxford Union about whether the United Kingdom should retain its “special relationship’’ with the United States.
We showed up but were told that we couldn’t get in because we weren’t members. A pretty young woman standing behind us in line asked what the problem was. We told her that we wanted to see the debate and were from the U.S.
“Where are you from?’’ she asked.
When we replied Boston, she said she had just finished studies at Harvard, and of course we could watch the debate. Benazir Bhutto, it turned out, was president of the Oxford Union then.
She took us to a party afterwards, where she introduced us to a friend whose father was a member of Parliament. He told us to look up his father when we got to London so we could view “Question Time,’’ the weekly ritual (now familiar to many Americans thanks to C-SPAN) where the prime minister has to withstand often withering questioning from opposition members of Parliament. We saw then-PM James Callaghan take it on the chin from Tory Leader Margaret Thatcher. I’ve often thought since that I wish the colonies had adopted that particular Old World custom.
We paid attention to Bhutto’s political career ever since, and were amazed when she became the first woman ever to run the government of an Islamic country, and saddened when her father was hanged. Hearing recordings of her voice yesterday after her assassination brought back memories of the kind woman who helped out a couple of strangers 31 years ago.
This entry was posted
on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 10:07 am by Jay Gallagher.
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