Getting To Know You

She is the daughter of the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, once the Prime Minister of Pakistan. While still in her 20s, she rallied the supporters of her Western-educated father after he was overthrown in a 1977 military coup and hanged two years later. She became the official opposition leader in 1986 and a strong challenger to her father's nemesis, President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. Last week the articulate Benazir Bhutto, 34, a graduate of Harvard and Oxford, astonished friends and foes alike by announcing that she had agreed to an arranged marriage to a wealthy Pakistani businessman whom she had met only twice before.

The prospective bridegroom is Asif Ali Zardari, 34, a handlebar-mustached building contractor and polo player. Like Bhutto, he is a member of a landowning family from Sind province. His father, once a supporter of Prime Minister Bhutto, remains active in opposition politics. The Zardari family reportedly broached the subject of marriage to Benazir's mother and aunt last year. Benazir and Asif subsequently met at a dinner party, but they did not get together again until two weeks ago, in London. Five days later the marriage plans were announced.

( Bhutto explained that her decision had been based on "religious obligation and family duty," as well as political considerations. "My brothers and my sister had love marriages, so I'm the only one in the family not to have one," she said in an interview with the New York Times. Ordinary Western- style dating had seemed out of the question in Pakistan. "For me, as leader of a Muslim party, it would just not do," she said. After meeting Zardari, she decided that he was "nice and had a sense of humor and seemed to be a tolerant person ((who)) could handle having a wife who had an independent career of her own." The wedding will probably not take place until winter, by which time her followers -- and Benazir -- should have grown accustomed to the idea.