Bhutto: Paying homage

Rawalpindi, May 20: If Naseer Iqbal had the chance to sit opposite Pranab Mukherjee at Islamabad tomorrow, the talks would be going like a breeze.

“Terrorism is common to India and Pakistan, and we need to fight them together,” he says.

Iqbal, though, is sitting not in Islamabad but in his stall just outside the Liaquat Bagh park here, an hour’s drive from the capital, selling posters, pictures and CDs of Benazir Bhutto.

It was here that the terrorists, five months ago, killed the woman who might otherwise have been formulating Pakistan’s response at the talks today. And that’s why the park, and in a way Iqbal’s message, looms over the Indian foreign minister’s talks with Pakistan’s new dispensation.

If India and Pakistan can stump up a joint effort against terrorism, Mukherjee said in his diplomat’s prose, it would be a “fitting tribute to” Bhutto’s “memory and legacy”.

Iqbal may not speak such phrases but he makes his living selling that memory and legacy. For him, it’s not a question of money.

Iqbal is the son of Rasheed Mir, a national-level leader of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party that heads the coalition government, and had been working as a sales operative in Saudi Arabia for four years. In January, he chucked the job and opened the memorabilia shop.

“It was my love and respect for Bhutto that prompted me to come back,” he says.

At the stall, a tape recorder plays Bhutto’s last speech over and over again. Iqbal says sales are good: people come visiting the park and the stall round the week, and pray for their slain leader on Fridays.

Iqbal’s shop offers the CD of Bhutto’s last speech at Rs 30, various photographs ranging from Rs 30 to Rs 100, and 10-rupee posters.

The other three vendors in the street don’t have so much variety but still, they say, they are “not doing bad business”.

“We are paying homage to Bhutto and also helping these vendors get a livelihood,” explains Rasheed Alavi, who works at a grocery and often visits the site.

Hasan Ali, the gun-wielding security guard on the street, says: “People come here to remember Benazir and we all want to live in peace.”

So does taxi driver Iqalaq, who claims he was at the spot when Bhutto was killed. Although protocol and security won’t allow it, Mukherjee might have liked a ride in his taxi to the park. Like a true cabbie, Iqalaq has opinions. “The two countries should not be fighting over issues like Kashmir, spending crores that should be used to address poverty.”