I had reconciled myself to a life without marriage or children for the sake of my career. And then my brothers got married. I realized I didn’t even have a home, that in the future I couldn’t do politics when I had to ask permission from their wives as to whether I could use the dining room or the telephone. I couldn’t rent a home because a woman living on her own can be suspected of all kinds of scandalous associations. So keeping in mind that many people in Pakistan looked to me, I decided to make a personal sacrifice in what I thought would be, more or less, a loveless marriage, a marriage of convenience.
ATTRIBUTION:
Benazir Bhutto (b. 1953), Pakistani Prime Minister. As quoted in the New York Times Magazine, p. 39 (May 15, 1994).
Explaining why she acceded to a conventional arranged marriage in 1987 to a near- stranger, Asif Ali Zadari; as it turned out, the marriage was loving and happy.
