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Intelligence Squared
Fatima Bhutto on Grief, Survival, and the Life-Affirming Love of Canine Companions
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- [00:01]
Alex Honnold
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- [01:02]
Mia Sorrenti
to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Fatima Bhutto was born into the world of high politics in Pakistan. She was just 14 when she witnessed the assassination of her politician father outside of their home and was forced to flee the country. On today's episode, Fatima joins host Maithali Rao to discuss how behind the public and political fallout of this story, she was battling anxiety, depression and the entrapment of a dangerously coercive relations with an older man. Drawing on her new memoir, the Hour of the Wolf, she also sheds light on how her relationship with her loyal Jack Russell coco helped her begin to heal. Let's join our host, Maitha Lee Rao, now with more.
- [01:44]
Maitha Lee Rao
Welcome to Intelligence 2. I'm Maitha Lee Rao. Our guest today is Fatima Bhutto. Fatima Bhutto is the author of the novels the Runaways and the Shadow of the Crescent Moon, which was long listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her nonfiction books include New Kings of the World and Songs of Blood and Sword, which deals with her father's murder and the Budo family's history in Pakistani politics. Her journalism and essays have appeared in the New Statesman, the New York Times, and the Guardian. Today, I'm delighted to be speaking with Fatima about her new memoir, the Hour of the Wolf. It's a memoir of grief, heartbreak and the love of a ferociously loyal Jack Russell. Welcome to Intelligence Squared Fatima, thank you for having me. Fatima. This book is about many things. Above all, it's about a man and about a dog. But to start with, it began as a book just about a dog, didn't it? Can you tell me a little bit about Koko, how she entered your life and what she's like.
- [02:43]
Fatima Bhutto
Koko is a 11 year old Jack Russell and I had promised my youngest brother a dog. And in the time it took me to find the dog and bring her back to Pakistan for my brother, I fell in love with her and decided that actually he didn't need a dog, I needed a dog. And Coco was three months when we met. And she entered my life at a period of incredible isolation. And I was in, well, a coercive relationship that had isolated me even further. And I, I was really saved by the lessons and the care and the companionship of, of this incredibly barky Jack Russell. And so it started out as a book about, not her per se, but about the lessons that we learn from the wild, the ways in which us as human beings, the way we betray the wild world under a kind of illusion that we are the most magnificent things around. But if we surrender to the idea that there might be a certain grace and nobility in the natural world, in the wild world that we have lost, I think we could certainly ease a lot of our own suffering. It started like that, but you know, it was really only half the story. And so I had to go into this, the issues of grief and also the shame of, of, of the relationship of, of a kind of relationship I thought a woman like me couldn't find herself in.
- [04:30]
Maitha Lee Rao
I wanted to ask you about that. The man, is, what you call him in this book, treats you terribly. And what you've written is a very clear account of that, almost described from a distance. But you're very much in the story. It's happening to you. It's real. Why did it feel important to put the details of such a terrible relationship on the page? And why not, like you said, with a shame, just put it away.
- [05:00]
Fatima Bhutto
Well, it wasn't something I wanted to write. I wrote many drafts of this book without it. But part of the reason that I was in an emotionally damaging and coercive relations, controlling relationship for so long is because I had built up a certain idea of myself as a woman who was strong, as a woman who is independent, who was tough, and who would never find herself at the mercy of someone cruel and controlling and manipulative. And actually, not only was I very much at the mercy of all those things. But when I understood that, I was ashamed. And that shame kept me there for much longer than it should have because I felt unable to say to anyone else that I was. I was lost. I had lost myself. I didn't know anymore what was real, what was not. I spent, you know, years of my life being gaslit. And I felt very much, once I came out of it, that had I been able to say to someone, I don't think this is correct, but I'm embarrassed to admit that this is where I find myself, that I might have been shaken out of, of that limbo of not knowing what was real, what was not real. And I thought, if I feel this kind of shame, and I've always considered myself someone who can protect themselves and has had to be put in uncomfortable positions, then I thought, what. What are other women feeling? You know, and there has to be a way in which some conversation can be had that, that liberates us. That liberates us from the idea that the people that seek to control us might be special. They're not special, they're totally generic and they follow a very clear pattern. And in, in the brief time that this book has been out in the world, I can tell you that I'm. I'm quite. I'm quite shocked at the amount of women who've written in to me, who I've come across, who, Who've said I've. It's exactly what happened to me. If it sounds familiar to you, it's probably happened to you. And I just didn't want anyone to be stuck in, in the place that I was. And I thought, I'll take all that shame and I'll swallow it if, if it can help.
- [07:43]
Maitha Lee Rao
Reading this book, I did think about the man as you describe him, both as a very specific character, but also as a little bit of a amalgamation of people we read about in the news every day. Various kinds of selfish men acting badly, doing damage in a variety of contexts. Not to. Not to generalize too much, but, you know, there have been a slew of essays about the crisis of masculinity. Male lone, this toxic masculinity. And here you are giving a very close up view of what some of these behaviors can look like in one person. With all his quirks, he sounds in some ways like no one I've ever met. He teaches you to ride a motorcycle. He inspires you to take up jogging. He also throws little pieces of bread at you at a restaurant, bites your hand so badly that your doctor wonders what has Happened. Who did you understand him to be as an individual or, or were you, did you come to be more interested in these collection of behaviors as they sort of sit out in the world? Not just in this one person.
- [08:56]
Fatima Bhutto
I was, I was quite hypnotized by him. I was quite entranced by him because he seemed to me unlike anyone I had ever met. He, he operated in a world of his own creation, which was very seductive, which was very attractive. He did not have the confines that hold the rest of us in place behavior wise. He had a kind of electric confidence, it seemed to me at the time, that made me think he knew more than I did. You mentioned badly behaved men in, in the public sphere. I think they have the same thing. You know, it, it does feel like collectively, we have all been collectively, publicly gaslit for the last three or four years, you know, endlessly. Whether it's by media, whether it's by, you know, government officials, whether it's by a kind of disinformation culture. And I do recognize some of those signs as having a lot of similarity with, with, with the man. But I've also read accounts from women who've been in similar relationships. And what we all seem to feel for a moment at least, is that these are people who know us better than we have allowed ourselves to be known. And, and it allows a kind of crack into a space that you might not let people into. Part of what made me so entranced was he seemed to understand how I was suffering. I, I, I, I've had anxiety all my life. I, I've suffered very bad panic attacks, largely by the violence I, I witnessed growing up and the grief. And he seemed to have an insight into how to cure that. And he was right. He did help me. He helped me a lot. He gave me a lot of lessons that I didn't feel other people had taken the time to show me. But at the same time, there was a kind of grooming, because when he was teaching me to deal with my anxiety, he taught me that I could take terrible memories and transform them. I could overlay them with different memories and manipulate them. I could take a memory that haunted me and I could just erase it and I could pretend it had never happened. And while that helped with the trauma of a lot of my young life, it was also very convenient because when he hurt me, I now had a, I had a sort of template on how to forget his hurtful behavior. And that was very discombobulating because I never knew whether he was managing me or helping me. I Didn't know whether he was protecting me or manipulating me. And it left me on very unsure footing.
- [12:08]
Maitha Lee Rao
Throughout the book you explore this kind of loss and grief and self abandonment. And in this relationship you describe being desperate to have a child, when at the same time, while you're caught in this relationship with a man who hurts you and wastes your time and doesn't want to have a child, meanwhile, Coco emerges as a steadying presence. And it's her pregnancies and her difficult pathway into motherhood that kind of gives a new focal point to your life when you needed one. You become an expert in whelping, of all things. What happened the first time Coco was pregnant?
- [12:45]
Fatima Bhutto
It, Coco got pregnant just as the world entered lockdown. And you know, I, I, I really didn't know anything about whelping. I'd never done anything like that. And I found myself with a, a pregnant dog, you know, under lockdown. I couldn't take her to the vet. The vets wouldn't see us. I was left to my own devices, finding books on the subject and doing research. And Coco delivers at the end, not a litter of puppies, but one very, very deformed pup. And I had, like, I think a lot of us been told all my life that humans were different than animals. You know, why are we different than animals? Because we feel, because we can reason, because we can understand. I do think that's a very western idea because it's not a very Eastern idea. We don't see things in the same way. We don't see life or time or sentiment the same way. Sentience. But Coco, having gone through this quite traumatic experience where she was delivering a puppy that was all bone and no flesh, and, and then finds herself having gone through a delivery with no baby and had all her hormones reacting to motherhood without a child was a, was a shock for me because she did feel, she did feel she was wounded, she was confused. You know, the, the vet told me after that incident that I was under no circumstances to get her a toy. I didn't know what he was talking about. We were all a bit shocked by what had happened. And I noticed that Coco had started to treat my hand as a, as a puppy because all her body was telling her she was a mother, but she had no child. So she would sleep on top of my hand, she would clean my hand, she would groom it and she would protect it. So anytime anyone entered the room, she would sit on top of my hand and pull it away. And, and I just found myself bewildered because I thought animals weren't like us. I thought they didn't grieve. I thought they didn't feel. I thought they forgot. And all of the things that I had been repressing about my own longings and my own fear were electrified by this tiny creature and. And her massive, massive wanting, you know, and it was also a time in the world when we were, I think, all of us, a little bit off kilter because we didn't know anymore how to live and how to think and how to be. And we were learning a new way of being. And it really brought a lot of things to the head for me. And I suppose that initial experience is what began the idea of this book. It would have never occurred to me in my 30s to write about the shame of being in a controlling, coercive relationship, but I was just transfixed by this dog and by what had happened to her. And I thought, if I don't know this, what else don't I know? And it turns out there's a lot
- [16:13]
Maitha Lee Rao
on the what else do I not know? When you write about Coco's second pregnancy, which ends more happily with a litter of puppies, and then you kind of both undergo this transformation, she becomes a mother. You kind of become her midwife and caretaker and auntie to these puppies. And it's a very beautiful part of the book, which I loved. And again, if there have been lots of essays about toxic masculinity, there have also been lots of essays about childbirth and the early stages of becoming a mother. But reading this, I realized I know nothing about what that looks like in dogs. I've never been around a dog that's just had puppies. I've never been around newborn pups in their infancy. And what you were describing was something that was a lot like becoming a mother, but also. Also so distinct. What else did you see when she wasn't grieving the second time around, but was bonding with these little puppies and becoming a dog mom?
- [17:18]
Fatima Bhutto
I mean, I think there's two things. I think, because you mentioned it now, and it does strike me that there is a lot of conversation about toxic masculinity and male loneliness. And I'm not enough about the damage that that culture inflict on the world around it. And. And, you know, I do think again, that is partly because of shame. You know, I think we have an enormous capacity as readers, certainly, to empathize and to be curious and. And to want to know why people suffer. But I also think we are afraid to say how those of Us who've dealt with toxic males or lonely men or dangerous men find ourselves. You know, Helen Garner is. Is an Australian writer, memoirist, and, and a novelist who I really love. And, and she's. She's talked about. She says something in one of her books. She says the world is filled with men whose hearts have been broken and who don't know what to do with that. And those are the men who become dangerous. And that's always struck me.
- [18:27]
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- [18:30]
Fatima Bhutto
I do hope that there's more. More writing that will come from not just women, but. But people who. Who have experience of that on the other side. But about the dogs. I, you know, years later, became a model. And I have to say, when I was with my. My first son, I thought to myself, oh, wait, this feels really familiar. And it was because I had done it as Coco's midwife. Experience of not sleeping anymore, of having broken sleep, you know, interminably broken sleep. I remembered from Coco's puppies. I haven't slept a full night since. Oh, and. And it is. I do say it all the time, and I run the risk of sounding faintly ridiculous, but I will die on this. H. I learned so much about motherhood, my own motherhood, from my dog, from the experience of my dog. It taught me so much. And there was something quite remarkable about Coco's second pregnancy because we found ourselves in another lockdown. It was towards the end of 2021. You know, my best friend and I thought we were taking a little break like we had in the old days, in the before days, and found ourselves locked down in a new city and in Italy, and. And now I have this pregnant dog again. And I was totally panicked that we would just have a repeat. And I really had a lot of anxiety about the fact that I, as, as a lifelong worrier, thought, it's going to happen again, it's going to happen again. There isn't space for something good. And I was pleasantly proven wrong. Everything went right the second time around. There was no disaster, there was no damage, there was no death, there was no suffering. And there was something extraordinary about watching this dog who cannot feed herself without me, you know, because she has no posable thumbs. Guide life into the world without having read a book, without, you know, having someone talking to her and telling her how to breathe. She just knew she had this very primal magnificence. And I thought of that so much when I became a mother. There's so much surrender required. And all the culture, and I mean this globally, all the culture teaches us not to surrender. It teaches us, you know, to, to resist and, and to fight back and to pull and, and some things, some things require surrender. There's some grace and surrendering, some, some dignity in it. And it really has been a magical experience that I feel so fortunate to have, to have witnessed. I'm not sure I could do it again, but it was a really great exercise in care for care's sake. You know, there was no ego involved. I just had to do it to do it.
- [21:44]
Maitha Lee Rao
How have Coco and the puppies responded to you becoming a mother?
- [21:49]
Fatima Bhutto
Coco is less interested in the fact that now there's a new set of babies around. She's kind of territorial and she didn't even acknowledge any of the babies until they were at least three months. She was in fact, quite resistant to their arrival. I would find her sitting in the baby bouncer or trying to, you know, sit in the pram or the crib herself to market. But Coco's sons, who are wonderful Jack Russells but absolutely bonkers, have, have really been wonderful. They've been like little guardians, you know, they, they protect the babies, they follow them around, they adore them, they're fascinated by them. And it's, you know, it's a new pack. It's, it's a new pack for them and for us. And it's been, it's been really lovely to see.
- [22:51]
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- [25:53]
Maitha Lee Rao
It sounds like your life is now very different from the years in which most of the events in this book take place. And I wondered if, as you launch this book and are out in the world talking about it, if it feels strange to be living a new life and talking about the old one, or if Coco and her puppies are sort of a source of continuity and kind of make you feel like you are still that person, but you're. You're not that person anymore.
- [26:20]
Fatima Bhutto
It is very strange. And I suppose the blessing of life, right, is that we are never the same. I mean, not from one day to the next and not from one hour to the next. But. But if I had not had a different life, I'm not sure I could have written this book. Because the events that I write about in the hour of the wolf. You know, I was a broken person then. I was a really wounded person. And in that moment, I didn't know if I would ever have a time when I wouldn't be wounded. I was preparing myself to live broken. And it's because I was in pain, because I was unsure and unashamed. And I think knowing that that would pass has to pass, you know, and did pass, is really what allowed me to write it and what allows me to talk about it. You know, when. When. When the book was still very much in edits and, you know, in production, I was still ashamed. I was still quite uncomfortable with it. And I was sort of begging my publishers to position it as a book about a dog. And they kept saying, well, it's not really a book about a dog, is it? Or even when they put memoir on the book, I thought, no, no, no, it's not. It's not a memoir. It's not. Not about me. Because I. I am uncomfortable still. I'm definitely uncomfortable with all the topics, but I. I will always be until I confront them, until I surrender to that feeling and just accept it for what it is. But it has certainly helped that I've been able to rebuild what was broken and reconstruct it, but also preserve what was important for me to remember about that experience.
- [28:19]
Maitha Lee Rao
You have written about very personal matters before. I mean, your family, conflict within the family, as it concerns your aunt, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, as it concerns your father, who was killed very tragically. Did this feel more exposing than all of that, or did it just feel exposing in a different way?
- [28:40]
Fatima Bhutto
It did feel more exposing. When I wrote Songs of Blood and Sword, that, to me, wasn't a memoir. That was a book about my father's life and his assassination. And because he was a public figure, because my family, our public. I wasn't saying anything that I didn't think really people knew. You know, it was a public history, in a sense. And what I felt I was doing as a daughter was. Was connecting the trail of how we went from a family to being ripped apart, really, by the politics, not just of our family, but of our country and of our time. But I never saw that as my book. I never saw it as my memoir,
- [29:33]
Maitha Lee Rao
or you were elaborating on a story that was already in the public view, in some ways in the public view.
- [29:40]
Fatima Bhutto
And I, as a daughter, which of course is a private and very personal position, was stitching it together. But I. You know, I didn't feel. I had exposed myself so much because of course I was heartbroken by my father's murder. I. I adored my father. I love my father more than anything on. On God's green earth, that's obvious. But, but I, I was trying to tell his story or what had happened to him as, as far as high school. Whereas this is me, you know, this is very much the private me. The me that I had kept private and I had kept secret for many, many years and even from my own friends and my own small world. And so that did feel much more exposing. The thing really that has been quite bracing about this experience so far is that it's actually not. I don't feel like it is my story. I mean, the amount of women that I've heard from just on social media in these few days that the book has been out is, has. I've been sort of blindsided by how many people story this is. And there's this sort of community in that and there's a kind of. I don't. I wouldn't say it makes me feel better to know that so many people have gone through this because I don't feel better that anyone goes through this kind of relationship. But it makes me feel like there's a place for us to protect each other that gives me some kind of sustenance, some kind of hope, and even some kind of strength.
- [31:29]
Maitha Lee Rao
I was reading your book at the pub the other day and I stepped out and someone from an animal shelter in one of those high visbus accosted me and told me about how they're raising funds to rehabilitate animals. And a lot were all these dogs that were adopted during the pandemic and then abandoned later, sometimes in very sad conditions. Lots of people get dogs who shouldn't get dogs. At one point you started thinking about getting a second dog. Before Coco had puppies and messaged lots of animal shelters reached out to animal shelters. I thought it was very funny. You said you wondered if you were going to be put on a kind of blacklist for. For reaching out to too many. Do you have any advice for someone who thinks they want a dog? Because in some ways, as much as you write about Coco being essential to you and sometimes being annoying, how are you going to take her on a plane? When are you going to walk her? I felt that maybe some of the labor of caring for a dog was invisible in this book because she's such a rock to you.
- [32:34]
Fatima Bhutto
Well, I, I would definitely. I'm so glad you asked that question because the experience of I mean, I'd always had dogs growing up, but, but the experience of, of this relationship has totally erased and obliterated all the boundaries I believe existed between animals and humans. Totally. I like, you know, and it, it, I, I am one of those people who takes it very personally. When I'm out walking around and I see someone be not very nice to a dog. I mean, I do that thing where I intervene and say, wait, sorry, why are you. Because dogs are not furniture and dogs are not scenery and dogs are not accessories. It, it is like having a child. It's absolutely like having a child. And it requires of you the sacrifice, the time, even the annoyance of, of looking after life. You know, it's, it's not possible to see them as anything except the precious creatures they are. So if you want to get a dog, just be aware that you will be subservient to that dog, not the other way around. When that dog is sick, you are nursing them. When that dog is going nuts, it's your responsibility to correct your behavior, to figure out what is stressing them out. You know, when they want to go for a walk at 2 in the morning and you'd rather sleep because you've got to wake up at six, you take them out. So it's a full, full time commitment. And they give of us their love so freely. They give us a tenderness and a care that is, to me it can only be described as divine, as godly, because they accept us and love us at our absolute worst. And all they ask of us is a certain attention. And if you're not prepared to do those three in the morning walks and you're not prepared to sit at the vets day after day and you're not prepared to skip events and, you know, holidays for your dog, then don't get one because you would be breaking a heart. And I think we are, we, we are responsible. We, all we can do is not break hearts. You know, that's the only thing we can do in the world. It must be that. So, so think very, very carefully. And you know, it's a, it's a lifelong relationship for them. You know, they may, they don't live all our lives, but, but we are there for all of theirs. So it's a big responsibility.
- [35:23]
Maitha Lee Rao
I think there may be not as many dogs of literature as there should be. There aren't as many books about dogs as maybe there ought to be. I was trying to think of some as I was reading this and the writings of Jim Corbett, the British Indian naturalist, came to mind. He writes about his little dog who accompanies him when he's on these tiger tracking expeditions. And sort of with a kind of reverence for. He sees how his dog thinks. And there's like a respect there. Who are your favorite literary dogs?
- [35:54]
Fatima Bhutto
Yeah, there's not that. There's not enough. You're absolutely right. And you know, I have to say, I am a lifelong abstainer from films about animals because they are only devastating. Only right. Film about an animal, the animal will die at the end. Like we just. There's no other end to that story. I will not watch films about animals.
- [36:15]
Mia Sorrenti
But.
- [36:15]
Fatima Bhutto
But books. J.R. ackerley, I think is his name, is another British writer and he's got a wonderful book called My Dog Tulip. And it's just a beautiful, quite funny in ways, and touching book about him also trying to breed his dog Tulip, a German shepherd. I do love Tulip. There aren't so many others, though, are they? Not near my books. So I can't look and. And check. That one definitely comes to mind. You know, those. Sigrid Nunes is the friend.
- [36:52]
Maitha Lee Rao
Ah.
- [36:53]
Fatima Bhutto
And I, you know, I have to say it wasn't like my favorite book or anything like that, but. But I did enjoy the. The. All the surviving together with this massive great day. And I thought that was really well done. And I wish there were more books. Actually. I don't quite think there are enough. Obviously, Coco is my favorite dog in literature, and she celebrated publication by getting sick for a week and making us walk at 4 in the morning and 2 in the morning.
- [37:33]
Maitha Lee Rao
She said, don't forget this is about me. This is still about me. Don't you forget it.
- [37:38]
Fatima Bhutto
But you know what else? H is for hawk. I know it's not a dog, but I think Helen McDonald's book about. About hawks and about grief and losing her father. I think that's. That's another favorite animal of literature for me. I really was so moved by that book. I. There should definitely be more. You know, I think we, you know, if you think of the amount of books humans have written about themselves, there's a lot of room. And animals that are tender and don't have to be horror stories and don't have to be devastating books that can just be warm, beautiful accounts of friendship. I think we've got a lot of room to grow there.
- [38:29]
Maitha Lee Rao
Finally. What are you writing about next? Will there be another book about a dog? Or are you still figuring out what it is and you'll write about next?
- [38:37]
Fatima Bhutto
I don't think there will be another book about a dog. I'm not really a writer of animals. I don't know what to write about next, to be honest. Every book is such a universe in itself. It takes you a while to come out of it. The writing I've been doing lately, I've. I've been writing about Gaza a lot because it's all I can think about. It's all I can. I'm haunted by what's happening in Gaza and a lot of my essays and journalism has been about that. So I don't know, I'll have to see what, what pulls at me, what appears. And at the moment, I'm just enjoying not knowing and waiting to see what I find.
- [39:30]
Maitha Lee Rao
Fatima, thank you very much. Thank you, Fatima. Thank you. That was Fatima Bhutto, author of the Hour of the Wolf, which is available now online and in stores. I'm Maitha Lee Rao. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [39:46]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by me, Mia Sorrenti and it it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings. You can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future live events, just head to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [40:27]
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