It was in 2005, on the banks of the Indus River, that a young Zulfikar Ali Bhutto first spotted a dolphin. Only 15 years old at the time, he was already interested in conservation, and was visiting the river while volunteering with the World Wildlife Fund. The Indus River dolphin is one of the world’s most endangered cetaceans, with less than 2,000 known individuals. Most people in the region had never seen one, and at that time, some dismissed them as extinct. When he saw the small, four-foot dolphin with a huge bulbous nose and prehistoric jaws, it looked nearly alien.

“It was like coming across a unicorn,” Bhutto says.

For Bhutto, this exquisite moment would launch a years-long fascination with the dolphin and the beautiful, sometimes fragile river it calls home.

Born in Damascus, Bhutto currently lives in the port city of Karachi, northwest of the Indus River delta. Of mixed Pakistani and Lebanese descent, the 32-year-old activist and textile artist is the scion of a political dynasty – the nephew of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and grandson of former president (and his namesake) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Rather than pull him into a political career, his family history, which is rife with political assassinations, pushed Bhutto away from politics entirely. But he has long pursued causes of justice and equality.

“I didn’t have any interest in politics from the beginning because I have seen it up close since childhood,” he says. “My father was martyred in 1996, my grandfather, my uncle, and my aunt were also martyred. They all fought for very just causes.”

Instead, after completing his undergraduate studies at The University of Edinburgh, Bhutto pursued a Master of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2016. In San Francisco, he created performance art pieces like Side by Side and Silent Crisis to challenge the narrative that Islam and queerness are oppositional, following repeated exposure to Islamophobia in the city. After finishing his master’s degree, Bhutto returned to Karachi in 2020 and continued his many creative endeavors – and rediscovered his interest in conservation and the Indus River.

The Indus River originates in the Himalayan mountain springs in Tibet, crosses Indian-controlled Kashmir, and flows through Pakistan before emptying into the Arabian Sea near Karachi. It’s an ancient waterway that separated from the Ganges River around 600,000 years ago. Humanity and wildlife have depended on the river ever since – including the Indus River dolphin.

Pakistanis have deep cultural and spiritual ties to the river. Sadhu Belo, an old Hindu temple that is still in use, stands in the middle of the river by the city of Sukkur. Slightly further upstream is Bukkur Fort, an Arab fort situated on a limestone-rock island. The shrine of Khwaja Khizr also sits on an island in the river. Beyond religious significance, the river forms the backbone of agriculture and food production in Pakistan. For the Indus River dolphin too, the Indus is a life source. About the size of an average person, this dolphin is native to the thousands of miles of the river, but over the years, overfishing and dams have fragmented its range rendering 80 percent of its habit uninhabitable.

Between the melting glaciers that feed the river, irrigation and hydroelectric projects that drain its flow, and water theft caused by rampant corruption, the future of the Indus – Pakistan’s primary source of freshwater – is precarious. Bhutto felt that he needed to produce work that addressed these issues. As he approached a creative piece centered on the Indus river, he thought back to the moment in 2005 when he first saw a dolphin.

“Because my surroundings in San Francisco were a little different… my mind was elsewhere,” Bhutto says. “But upon my return, it just made sense to continue looking not only at the Indus River dolphin in relation to its environment, but also the dolphin and the river in relation to the very diverse spiritual practices around it.”

Less than two years later, that goal manifested in the form of his Bulhan Nameh series, an ongoing project that was that was exhibited at Koel Gallery in Karachi last year.

The series, which takes its name from the Sindhi words for “dolphin” (bulhan) and “diary” (nameh), explores a 10 km stretch of the Indus River that’s punctuated by the British-era Sukkur Barrage at one end and the dilapidated island shrine of river saint Khwaja Khizr at the other. Collectively, this swatch of river represents wildlife, history, spirituality, colonialism, and capitalism. Downstream of the Sukkur Barrage represents, to Bhutto, the beauty and possibility of the Indus River.

Here, hundreds of dolphins swim between religious monuments, a living symbol of the spiritual connection between humankind and nature. It is, as Bhutto describes, a magical place. But just past it, the river changes. Billions of gallons of water are pulled from the river and diverted into canals to irrigate fields. The ancient river becomes a thin trickle on its way to the ocean. “The river becomes a very sad place right after,” says Bhutto. “A few hundred kilometers downstream, the river runs dry for most of the year.” The artist believes his art will help re-mystify the river and allow audiences to reimagine it as a living and dynamic entity worth revering rather than an exploitable resource.

For the series, Bhutto created a simple yet evocative sequence of maps on a type of fabric called khaddar, using the traditional tanka stitch to illustrate the ever-evolving hydrological history of Pakistan’s Sindh province. In another piece, Sindhu Mata, a goddess considered a personification of the Indus River by Pakistanis, is seated on a mythical creature resembling a crocodile embellished with gold sequins and brightly-colored thread. In the piece Ellahi, Mirani, Pilleri, Bhutto stitches cyanotype prints on cotton with embroidery and mirror work to form the outline of an Indus River dolphin.

Bhutto is not the first one in his family with a fascination with the cetacean and its habitat. His grandfather, the elder Zulfikar Bhutto, also had a personal interest in the dolphin and, according to Bhutto, is a major reason why the Sindh Wildlife Department and Indus Dolphin Reserve exist.

In 1972, the World Wildlife Fund estimated there were only 132 Indus dolphins left in the river, and the cetacean was declared endangered. Within two years, a reserve was created on a 105-mile stretch of the river between the Sukkur and Guddu barrages.

The dolphin population has since grown to about 2,000. “It is a legacy, but it’s not why I’m involved – it’s just a good coincidence,” Bhutto says. “But, yes, I understand that my voice carries a different weight than other artists. And I’m using it because this matter is urgent.”

That urgency is underscored by recent catastrophic flooding, which was preceded by a severe drought. Pakistan is ranked amongst the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change. Rising temperatures led to melting glaciers and unprecedented monsoon rains, which contributed to the worst flooding the country has ever seen. Subsequently, an overflowing Indus River encroached on homes, agricultural fields, and infrastructure downstream in the Sindh province. Satellite images show that a massive, 60-mile-long lake has formed over what was previously homes and agricultural fields.

In contrast, mere months before the floods, the country’s Federal Minister of Climate Change Sherry Rehman expressed concern over how Sindh’s “dangerous” water shortage was putting farmers at risk of losing their crops.

Although the population of the Indus River dolphin has grown over the past few decades, these water shortages inevitably pose a threat to their survival, too.

“The less water we have, the first indication will be a decrease in the health and the population of the river dolphin, so they become the proverbial canary in the coal mine,” Bhutto says. “As our water crisis grows in intensity, it poses a larger and larger threat to our river dolphin population.”

Beyond his art, Bhutto tries to use his platform to advocate for protection of the Indus river and its dolphins. As a wildlife advocate, Bhutto is especially vocal on Twitter, consistently trying to draw links between human society and the environment, wildlife, and the Indus River.

“I try to make it about humans because there’s this unfortunate association between privilege and environmentalism,” Bhutto says.

In Bhutto’s view, it is not the regular Pakistani people he is trying to influence. He believes farmers, fishermen, and indigenous populations fully grasp the importance of sustainability and the health of the Indus River. They feel the urgency because their livelihoods depend on the river. Instead, Bhutto says that it is the Pakistan Army that holds the power to make any real change.

“The army in Pakistan has huge control over everything – be it environmental, social, political [issues],” Bhutto says. “It then becomes the job of the political system to convince the army of the importance of nature and wildlife. Environmental stability is very, very political in Pakistan, and it’s very close to those in power – that’s the only anxiety. We must convince the people up there.”