Cross posted on Kos and The Motley Moose

I was born in Pakistan in the early 1980s. That's where I grew up, my first years under a repressive dictatorship.  When Zia-ul-Haq died I was six years old. One of my early memories is hearing that news on the television, the newscaster on the state run TV channel crying as he read it out. I also remember the odd air of elation around me on what seemed on the face of it, at six years of age, an unambiguously sad event. I remember the electricity in the air when Benazir Bhutto was elected Prime Minister and the slow return of cynicism as it became obvious things weren't getting a whole lot better anytime soon.