Locked in solitary confinement for opposing the military dictator who had her father killed, Benazir Bhutto ’73 found comfort in her memories of Harvard.

“I remember those long summer nights that never seemed to end when I was in Sukkur jail,” says the former prime minister of Pakistan.

“If I drifted off to sleep, I would somehow find myself back in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’d be walking the Commons. I'd be in Harvard Yard, I'd be going to the little corner shop that sold magazines.”

“I think that was the way my subconscious was coping with surviving,” Bhutto says.

Her name means “without comparison,” and her life — from political prisoner, to youngest head of state in the world, to ousted leader — is a turbulent tale of courage and controversy.

Born into a life of wealth and privilege, very little could have prepared Benazir Bhutto ’73 for the path she would take soon after she graduated from Harvard.

But in her eyes, her Harvard experience was a formative one, solidifying her identity as a woman, a Muslim and a politician.

From Student to Stateswoman

After a stint at Oxford, where she became the first foreign woman to lead the Oxford Union, its most prestigious debate team, Bhutto returned to Pakistan intending to join the diplomatic service.

Within weeks of her return in 1977, however, her father, Pakistan's Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was overthrown in a military coup by General Zia ul-Haq, who had the senior Bhutto killed two years later.

It fell to Benazir Bhutto, then only 24, to lead the struggle against ul-Haq. She paid dearly for it, spending years in squalid prisons, often in solitary confinement, or under house arrest until she was forced into exile in London in 1984.

Returning to Pakistan after martial law was lifted in 1986, she led her party to victory in Pakistan's first democratic elections in more than a decade and became, at 35, the first woman in history to lead a Muslim state.

But her administration was wrought with controversy. In August 1990, the president of Pakistan dismissed her on charges of corruption and ineffectiveness, charges of which she was later acquitted.

Bhutto recaptured leadership in 1993, only to be ousted again by the president in 1996 — again on charges of corruption and misrule. The charges are now under investigation by the Pakistani government.

Meanwhile, Bhutto maintains her innocence, saying she is the victim of rival politicians' scheming for power. She leads the opposition party in the Pakistani Parliament and fights for the release of her imprisoned husband.