There is an unfamiliar buzz around the Bhutto mausoleum, a white-domed simulacrum of the Taj Mahal that hovers like a mirage above the rice paddies and guava groves of rural Sindh. The entrance hall is freshly whitewashed. The half-finished interior echoes with the sound of welding and marble-cutting. Fresh petals are strewn over the tombs.

Ghulam Nabi, an elderly sweeper, is weak from fasting for Ramadan but, like many here, is working double time to prepare for Benazir Bhutto, the exiled former prime minister, who is to return to Pakistan on Thursday.

Ask him why and he holds up a crumpled, laminated picture around his neck. It shows Ms Bhutto, her two dead brothers and their late father, the first populist Prime Minister of Pakistan, who was overthrown in a coup in 1977 and executed two years later. “I came here 17 years ago to pray for a son,” Mr Nabi, 56, explains. “The next day, my wife became pregnant.”

Such is the quasi-religious fervour with which many regard the Bhuttos in their ancestral seat of Larkana, 300 miles (480km) from Karachi, in the province of Sindh. Supporters say that thousands will travel from here to Karachi to meet Ms Bhutto, 54, as a flight from London delivers her from eight years’ self-imposed exile.

Bhutto was killed by bomb blast

The team from the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command have backed the claim that Benazir Bhutto was not shot

Multimedia

• Pictures: death of Benazir Bhutto

• Pictures: Pakistan

Background

• Pakistan in turmoil as ‘martial law’ imposed

• Bhutto escapes as bombers kill 126

• Timeline: Pakistan's period of turmoil

• The man out to oust a President

• Internal crisis gives Pakistan reason for hope

No matter that the Harvard and Oxford-educated politician has already served two unsuccessful terms as prime minister or that she fled the country in 1999 to escape corruption charges. No matter that these will be dropped under a controversial deal sealed last week with President Musharraf, the army chief who seized power in a coup in 1999.

“People here have blind faith in Ms Bhutto,” said Mohammed Ayaz Soomro, the local leader of her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

He meant it in a good way. But inadvertently, he summed up the doubts surrounding the political future of the world’s second-biggest Muslim country and its pivotal role in the War on Terror.

Ms Bhutto’s PPP supporters hope that she will win parliamentary elections due by mid-January to become prime minister again. She would in theory share power with General Musharraf, who was re-elected President last week and has promised to resign as army chief by November 15.

America and Britain, who pushed the odd couple together, hope this will expand the Government’s support base and halt the spread of Islamic extremism from tribal areas on the Afghan border. “It’s our best hope for a stable, democratic Pakistan,” said one Western diplomat.

A visit to Larkana raises as many questions as it answers about Ms Bhutto’s ability to meet those expectations.

The area is littered with reminders of her family’s feudal background and its history of infighting, intrigue and confrontation. Most obvious is the mausoleum to her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, which towers over the impoverished village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. Despite his request for a simple grave, his daughter started building it in 1994 as a monument to his vision of a moderate, democratic Pakistan.

Thirteen years, two design changes and half a million dollars later, the building, like his vision, remains a work in progress and is, for some, a symbol of the vanity and arrogance of Pakistan’s feudal aristocracy. The centrepiece is his marble tomb where illiterate farmers come to pray - even to sacrifice goats. Near by, in brick and concrete tombs, lie Ms Bhutto’s two brothers, who died in mysterious circumstances. Shahnawaz was poisoned at a family holiday home in Cannes in 1985. Mir Murtaza was shot in Karachi in 1996. Murtaza’s widow, Ghinwa, fell out with Ms Bhutto soon after and now leads a splinter faction of the PPP, which opposes her return. “Benazir Bhutto is coming to serve as President Bush’s envoy in Pakistan,” she said. She lives in Al Murtaza, the family home in Larkana where Ms Bhutto was kept under house arrest in 1979. Another family home is occupied by Mumtaz Bhutto, an uncle who objects to a woman heading the family and has started his own movement.

The real threat is from the Islamist militants who have threatened to kill her. But Ms Bhutto could face hostility from other quarters - including her own party. Many senior PPP figures opposed her deal with General Musharraf. Others think she has promised too much to the Americans. In Larkana, the party faithful have commandeered 1,000 buses to take people to Karachi and are trying to hire a train. But some say that they expect the crowds to be a fraction of the one million who greeted her return in 1986.

“She’s in trouble,” said Barkat Ali Shaikh, a local tourism official and lifelong PPP supporter. “People expect a lot from her because of the legacy. Even a small blemish and people will point fingers at her.”

Explore Asia News

• China News

Times Recommends

• No cause for celebration in crushed Sarajevo
• Jazz funeral for the final victims of Katrina
• French fined for 'insulting' civil servants