Another glance towards his wife, who has the same fond look she had when she showed me her son's room earlier, with his stuffed animals, his football trophies, and the diary he kept when he was little and was making New Year's resolutions: to not pick his nose and to do better in math. The next day he wrote, "I am doing better in math but I am still picking my nose."
"And then . . . in that first part of the message, there's something that's absolutely incredible. It's the sentence where he says, 'In B'nei Brak, in Israel, there is a street called Chaim Pearl Street, named after my great-grandfather . . . '"
"Yes," I say. "It was a sentence that I found very odd, too. First of all, is it true? Is there really a street with that name in B'nei Brak? And if so, how the hell did they know about it?"
"Exactly!" exclaims Judea. "Exactly!"
Now he seems euphoric. His expression is that of a great scientist making a major discovery-this must be what Professor Pearl, member of the National Academy of Engineering, world authority on artificial intelligence, looks like in his great moments of heuristic victory.
"They couldn't have known-exactly! No one in the world could have known that! Of course it's true. My grandfather was a local hero in B'nei Brak, a town ten miles outside of Tel-Aviv where he settled in the 1920s, with twenty-five other Hassidic families who, like him, were from Ostrowitz in Poland. But nobody knows that except us. Nobody. Which means . . . "
His face darkens. Often, with both of them, I see euphoria alternating with profound sadness. I assume those are the moments when the most unbearable images return, when everything is erased, everything- the tales and the testimony, the analysis, the courtesy towards the French stranger who is investigating the Pearl affair, the exchange of ideas, effort to understand-and suddenly nothing exists except the face of their child, tortured, calling out.
"Which means that sentence is a message. To his kidnappers, he's saying, 'This is who I am, I'm proud of it, I'm from a family who built cities, for whom building cities, digging wells and planting trees was the most beautiful thing you could do on earth-take that, you who love death and destruction!' But primarily it's to us, his mother and me, the only ones in the world who remember that in B'nei Brak there is a street named after my grandfather. So what is he saying to us? As you can imagine, I've asked myself that question thousands and thousands of times, for months. And my theory is that it's a coded message that means 'I'm Danny. Everything is OK. I'm being treated well. I'm speaking freely, since I'm saying something that nobody else could know except you and me. I am your beloved son. I love you.'"
Ruth has tears in her eyes. Judea's looking up at the ceiling and holding back tears of his own. He gets up and goes to get me a plate of cookies. A hair-dryer for her because her hair is damp and he's afraid she'll catch cold. I'm thinking about those Isaac Babel characters in Red Cavalry who, until the very last minute when the cossack is about to slash their faces or cut them to pieces keep repeating, "I am a Jew." I'm thinking about that old rabbi in I-don't-remember which Isaac Bashevis Singer novel, confronted during a pogrom by a brute about to strike him, cut his beard off, humiliate him, who surreptitiously repeats his prayer and with a thousand little gestures too subtle for the thug to perceive and visible only to He Who Sees All, persists in affirming, without arrogance, calmly, with that inner steadfastness that forges great heroes and martyrs, his unswerving loyalty to his hated community. Why didn't I think of this sooner? How could I have kept saying, like everybody else, and even here in this book, "Forced to proclaim his Jewishness, humiliated"? It was the opposite! A gesture of pride! A moment of dignity! Completely in keeping, in fact, with many of the stories I had heard about him: the party in Islamabad at the home of Khalid Khawaja, bin Laden's former pilot and friend, where everybody started to condemn Israel and the Jews, and he froze the assembly simply by saying "I'm a Jew"; the conversation in Syria with seven militants from Hezbollah discussing the "two religions," Islam and Christianity, and he chimes in, speaking softly and without emphasis, to add a third, his own, Judaism. But Judea is coming back. And I sense that it's my turn to speak.
"What you're saying sheds so much light, suddenly. It's perfectly obvious. Because I saw the video. I watched it dozens of times, frame by frame, image by image. And there were things I couldn't decipher. Disruptions of tone and rhythm . . . different expressions . . . the beard that wasn't the same, the state of his clothing . . . Times when Danny is talking to the camera and others when he's oblivious to it . . . Shots facing the camera, others in profile. When he lowers his eyes . . . He's sarcastic when he's saying 'nowhere where Americans will be safe, nowhere where they will be able to go freely' . . . convincing when he's talking about his great-grandfather . . . bizarrely brutal, adamant, the words cracking like a whip, in that crucial part where he says 'my father is Jewish, my mother Jewish, I am Jewish . . . ' Sarcastic again, or no, delighted, smiling like a child, when he utters the words that in theory condemn him: 'On my father's side I come from a family of Zionists . . . ' If you're right, my dear Judea, everything becomes clear. It's a long interview, isn't it, almost a conversation, shot over a period of time, maybe hours or even the whole day, or even several days-and then afterwards the cuts, the editing."
Judea nods his head. He looks worn out, ten years older in ten minutes, but he's nodding his head silently.
"There's something else I was thinking that goes with what you're saying. I too was struck by how self-assured he looks in certain shots. I'm not talking about the video any more, no. Although when you think about it even in the video he doesn't have the look of a man who knows he's going to die. In the last sequence, for instance, about the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, he really seems to be making fun of them. No. I'm talking about the photos. You know those photos where he's wearing the top of his track suit and he has chains on his legs, the ones they sent to the media when he was being held. There are two photos that were not published in which-"
Judea's face changes once more. He leaps up again.
"What do you mean, not published? There were photos of Danny that weren't published, are you sure?"
"I think so, yes. That's my impression. At least I didn't see them anywhere. I read and saw just about everything that was published on your son's death and those two photos, in which he seems so confident, almost happy, I don't think I saw published anywhere . . . "
The truth is that I don't know any more. His emotion, his excitement, and the importance he is giving to this detail are starting to perturb me and make me uncertain.
"Is it so important?" I ask him.
"Yes, of course. Think about it-there are four photos. Four. Imagine there's a fifth. Where did it come from? Who gave it to whom? You see-what a difference it makes! Come with us, we'll check."
He gets up. Ruth gets up. They take me into the next room, which functions as the modest headquarters of the Daniel Pearl Foundation they have created in memory of their child, and where they keep, on the floor, in cardboard boxes, all the folders, everything that was written, the tributes, the articles. And there we are, all three of us crawling around, moving boxes, searching, looking for every single photo published, even in the most obscure paper. "Maybe in this box. No, the one underneath. Further down. Wait, let me do it, it's too heavy. Take that folder instead, the one with the Israeli clippings . . . "
I'm suddenly ashamed to have unleashed this frenzy.
I can feel that they are in the same state of agitation at the idea of an unpublished photo as they must have been last year, when Danny's death was not yet a certainty and one clutched at every clue, a detail, any fragment of information to rekindle hope.
There is something so utterly poignant, given that the tragedy has already taken place, about searching in the past, in a brief episode from a time now sadly irretrievable, for one last retrospective reason to believe and hope, that I am overwhelmed by emotion.
All the more so when, after ten minutes of showing me photos, always the same ones, among which I could never find my supposedly new picture, they finally hand me an issue of the Jerusalem Post. And there, I am forced to admit, was indeed the photo; it was rare, but not unpublished. I'm sorry . . .
"Let's go back to the video," says Ruth, exhausted by our absurd quest. I had noticed immediately that she had respiratory problems. She is very small. Very slight. But she gets out of breath in a way that is usually associated only with diabetics and the overweight. And then it's awful-she struggles to get her breath back. She pants. She looks like a survivor, I tell myself-still so youthful, so graceful, but with the look of a survivor. How do you live after such a disaster? Where do you find the strength to go through the motions of living? "Let's go back," she says. And I can see that she needs to go back to sitting on the couch.
"We haven't seen the video. We were told about it. We were given the transcript. But actually seeing it, no, we haven't seen it-how could a mother watch such a thing? We would have preferred that it not be aired at all. When CBS showed it, and from CBS it got on to the Internet, we were very angry, my husband and I. You have to show what these people are capable of, the CBS 'expert' on Islamic issues said-and showing it will discourage people from turning to Islam. What a joke! It's the opposite. Instead, for a lot of people, it was an incentive. Used for recruiting and propaganda in the mosques. But what do you think?"
I say you can make a case either way. But in cases like this, when in doubt, censorship is the worst solution. She shrugs-as if to say that in any case the battle is lost.
She goes on: "Since you've seen it, I have a question. How is he dressed? Does he wear his top the whole time?"
She sees that I don't quite grasp the meaning of her question.
"What I mean is whether there's any part of the video where he doesn't have his sweat suit top on. Did you see my Danny bare-chested?"
I know that there is indeed such a moment on the tape. I know that when the hand has finished its butchery, when you see it moving around in the wound, he is in fact bare-chested, but then there's a bizarre final shot, where he's wearing his pink and blue top again. But I don't dare tell her. I sense so much pain in her question, such secret entreaty, that I would like to tell her what she wants to hear, what she is hoping for-but what? I am silent.
"And another thing. Can you explain why they killed him the way they did? The way they cut him in pieces then put him back together to bury him."
I hear Judea, the scientist, the man of rigor, grumbling in his corner: "Too many questions at the same time!"
And she's like a little girl who's been scolded, close to shame: "It's true. But I would really like to know."
His voice is dull, constrained: "They didn't cut him up just so he'd fit more easily into the plastic bags."
I don't know how to respond to that, either. I'd like to tell them what they so much want to hear, what would make them feel better, or at least not as bad. But again, how can I know? So I chanced to say: "You have to look at the Algerians, who are the great experts at this kind of set-up. It seems to me that it's a message. A proclamation to the West. This is how we will treat you from now on. This is what we will do to you. What's more-"
I am thinking that 31 January, the probable date of Pearl's death, is close to the Islamic holiday on which sheep are sacrificed.
"What's more, it must have been not too long before the Ad. So perhaps they wanted to tell us that from now on we won't just be slitting the throats of sheep, but also yours, you American, Jewish, European dogs."
I sense that Judea is trying to figure out with his rigorous, scientific mind whether we were in fact close to the Ad in early February. That's what he used to do when his beloved Danny would call him urgently when a story deadline was looming: Dad, can you figure out for me the dates of Ramadan twelve years ago? What time is high tide in Karachi next week? What kind of weather they had during the battle of Waterloo? The next solar eclipse? What time the sun rose on the day Louis XVI was guillotined?
"As for your second question, Mrs. Pearl, as to why they felt the need to put him back together to bury his-"
She cuts me off. And in one breath, very fast, her little voice choked by oncoming sobs, she says: "Maybe at the end somebody wanted to take care of him."
CHAPTER 6 DANNY'S FACE.
I met again with the courageous parents, Ruth and Judea, and I corresponded with them.
I met Daniel Gill, Pearl's childhood friend, who started a boy's club with Danny at age six or seven, and who was best man at his wedding twenty years later.
I met colleagues, Americans and others, who had crossed Pearl's path in Karachi and in the rest of his professional life.
I read Steve LeVine, his Wall Street Journal colleague who was following developments in an investigation for the paper, and who in fact should have been in Karachi instead of Pearl, but, as it happened, he was getting married, and Danny was assigned instead. The assignment also led to a last-minute cancellation of a Pearl family reunion planned for 18 January in San Francisco.
And of course Mariane, almost immediately-I was in New York to show my movie Bosna!, and she was there with Tom Jennings, another friend of Danny's. Beautiful, dignified, like a modern Antigone, Mariane was considering making a film with Jennings in Karachi about her husband- a film of duty and truth. Go back to Karachi? To follow Daniel Pearl's path, when your name is Pearl? Yes! Without hesitation! To prevent pain and memory from solidifying, to prevent oneself from becoming rigid with grief, and dissolving in mourning. And then there was Adam. She had to think about little Adam Pearl, born after his father's death, who had become her reason for living. She sent me a sweet photo of him for New Year's 2003.
So, Mariane Pearl: The virginal demeanor with ash-gray eyes. Curly black hair pulled back into a chignon, as in the photos. The lovely nape of her neck. Such an odd mixture of French, and now American, and a little bit Cuban, and Buddhist, and Jewish because of Daniel. Mariane, in an uncomfortable and empty apartment downtown in the Stuyvesant Towers: I sense it will be a long time before she can accomplish more than the merest gestures necessary to ensure her baby's well-being. Mariane at the restaurant, that night and the following-her olive skin, no makeup, only the mask of misfortune; an old loose T-shirt thrown on, in contrast to how chic she looks in the photos in the Pearl living room showing happy times. Her answers are brief. She resists pathos. She creates a slight distance whenever the questioning gets too precise-"I pass . . . I can't answer that . . . no, really, that's not possible. . . I can't answer that question . . . " Mariane Pearl, who every time she hears that I'm going back to Karachi sends me a friendly, sisterly little message: Prenez garde vous- "Take care." I remember seeing Mariane in an old BBC interview, when things were at their greatest uncertainty, when everybody was still hoping that the kidnappers had not committed the irreparable: She was six months pregnant, shattered and full of hope, intense. I remember her pleading, "If somebody has to give their life to save him, I'll do it. Please get in touch with me. I'm ready."
With her and the others, I asked the same questions.
Each time I gleaned photos, documents, scraps of memories, shreds of a life.
Searching through a man's past as if I were rummaging in a bag.
Poking, with the end of my pen, through the little heap of secrets and cliches.
I had to look behind the martyred face to find the other, real face- not Pearl's face, Danny's.
I wanted so desperately to understand who the real Danny was that they had targeted, then killed.
To think of Daniel Pearl as alive.
God, according to the prophets who had given both of us some nourishment, is not the God of the dead but, first and foremost, the God of the living.
There's the splendid child, unexpectedly blond, whose room I had found so touching when I visited it in Los Angeles.
There's the football-playing child, kneeling next to the ball with his big orange socks, hair still blond and long, the face of a little prince, fresh as a daisy, posing for the photo and maybe stifling laughter-only his eyes are smiling, but what a smile!
There's the best friend, the stories of kids on Mulholland Drive, children's clubs, school outings, long intervals under the trees, endless summers, coconut cream pie after violin lessons, a happy life.
And very soon there's the music fanatic-photos of him playing violin, guitar, mandolin piano, drums. Group photos in Bombay. Another group in the Berkshires, a typical '80s rock band. Another splendid black and white photo: age eighteen or twenty, in tux and bow tie, hair cut short la Tom Cruise, looking out at the audience, a restrained grin-he has just drawn the bow over the strings to play his last note. I can hear the applause, he is about to take a bow, he's happy. Favorite hobbies? asks the Stanford college application. "Sports and music, windsurfing and violin . . . " What was your relationship? I asked Gill. "Music, girls, but mainly music. There were a bunch of us and music was the link. Rock, pop, but also at fifteen an Isaac Stern concert, or Stephane Grappelli, or Miles Davis." The delight of Judea, a musician himself, when he discovered that his little boy had perfect pitch! Praise the Lord for this miracle! Thank you for this gift!
Here's the good friend, again-his generosity with colleagues. The headline he makes up for one. The catchy phrase he gives another. His kindness to the youngest reporters. The controlled insolence with his elders. His loyalty to the newspaper, there's only one, it's the newspaper, his, and too bad that it also belongs to the Dow Jones Company, which isn't exactly his cup of tea. When the New York Times, right before his departure for London in 1998, tried to lure him away with the kind of offer that makes you think twice, particularly in America, he turned it down, saying "I am not a mercenary. I like the Journal and I like my friends. I'm staying."
Too good to be true? A pious cliche? Fortunately he's there to correct that impression. He's present in his answers to the questions on the Stanford application-modest, teasing, above all not taking himself too seriously. He calls himself "lazy" in his deliberate, very readable cursive, the letters distinct and sometimes almost separated-the still somewhat childish writing of a man who must have been told a hundred times "Be more careful! I can't read your writing!" My problem is that I am "lazy," he writes, and sometimes, "fortunately not often," I feel "contempt for humanity." Sometimes, too, "petty frustrations" drive me to "generalized pessimism."
There's the charmer. There, too, we have to watch out for the too-good-to-be-true. But the charm and magnetism were real. There are stories, in Paris and London, of women who were captivated. He was funny. He had an irresistible imagination. He could make up a song for a girl he liked in ten minutes. He was capable, also, like Solal, of giving himself an hour to seduce her, and succeeding. Danny, his mother would insist- suddenly very much the "Jewish mother," oh-so-proud of her little boy who had become a ladies' man-had two reasons to be a success with young women. And not just women, in fact. He was charm personified- everybody, male or female, came under his spell. First of all, said Ruth, he was interested in them. He looked at them as if at that moment nothing more important existed in the world. Secondly, he had been loved as a child-he was beloved and he knew it. Nothing better than love to create an adult who feels comfortable in his skin . . . a charmer.
There are, again, the photos. They're the photos that I have spread out in front of me on the floor of my Los Angeles hotel room. They emanate a vibration and power that suddenly almost frightens me. Here's Danny all by himself, a close-up, with those sparkling, trusting eyes behind his glasses-"the jewel of the eye, truthful and laughing," says the poet. Here's Danny standing with his parents, the good son, the good boy, with a look of infinite tenderness. Danny with a beard, in profile, in front of a window looking out towards the sea; it has rained, the sky is a powdery blue. Danny from the back, in a shaft of light that isolates him. Danny wearing a T-shirt, his eyes bright, a gentle smile, casually elegant, a handsome chiseled face-he looks like a young Arthur Miller. Danny with Mariane, orange T-shirt over beige pants: they're walking in the streets of a big city, maybe Milan, Turin or simply Paris, the arcades of the Palais-Royal. They're young, they look happy, I can hear them breathing, I can make out their animated voices and their laughter, I see the looks they exchange, I feel their light breath. Danny as a baby. Danny as a child, by the sea. Danny as a teen, holding a baseball bat, good as gold, an ironic stillness. Or with his sisters, at the prow of a white boat, a pontoon, glowing warm twilight, a seagull above their heads. With his sister again, in the garden at home, the end of a California afternoon, a light wind, sunshine, teasing her as two friends look on in amusement. Or in another garden, bathed in heat, light breeze, with his violin, reading a Bach score that his friend Gill is holding up for him. Danny with his 92-year-old grandmother Tova, who lives in Tel Aviv, looking at him in ecstasy while he smiles; he adored her. Danny on assignment, in what seems to be an Arab street-his hair has grown and he's wearing a ponytail and all is right with his world.
There's a wedding photo. He's standing in front of a fence, a photographer in the background, friends. Mariane's shoulders are bare. Orange taffeta skirt. Chiffon scarf. A bouquet of flowers in her hand. A perfect silhouette. Her delicate, exposed neck. I can imagine a Chopin prelude or a mazurka as background music. She's radiant. He's dressed up. Slightly artificial. Beige suit, a little stiff. Freshly cut short hair. He's holding her hand. In his eyes, a confident questioning, a tender glow, the youthful pride of happiness achieved. Not the slightest hint that could prompt someone to say later, "There, it was written, the tragedy was lurking beneath the enchanted image." Not even, in their eyes, that slight hesitation, the distance between me and myself that usually testifies to the possibility of misfortune, or, simply, worry. No. They were absolutly present. Joy and beatitude. I have seen few faces, in my lifetime, so fulfilled. It seems to me that few people know they are happy when they're happy, and Pearl was one of the few. (And yet, it's coming back to me, what Ruth confided yesterday as we parted-the day right before or right after his wedding, when he told her that it was too much happiness. Exactly-too much good luck, and he hoped that one day he wouldn't have to pay for so much luck . . . Did he really say that? Did she really tell me he said that? Or am I dreaming? Or did I misunderstand? I don't know any more. Too many photos, yes. There are so many I get dizzy and maybe I'm talking nonsense . . . ) There's the journalist. I have in front of me the commemorative anthology published by his newspaper, At Home in the World. His whole life, that title. The inner password, the motto of this tireless globetrotter, as interested in the fate of a Stradivarius as he is in the mystery of Iranian Coca-Cola bottles, in the problems inherent in calculating dates for Ramadan and in the quarrel between Yemenites and Ethiopians on the origins of the Queen of Sheba. Unusual columns. Intrepid reporting. The guy who demolishes NATO's pronouncements on the Kosovo situation in the Eastern establishment's favorite newspaper. The one who, when the White House orders the bombing of a chemical factory in Sudan because it believes that it isn't a chemical factory, but rather a clandestine laboratory making weapons for biological warfare, is the first to go look and shout, "No, it really was a chemical factory. America has committed a tragic error." An assignment in Qom. The rock music trend in Teheran. The battle for generic drugs, particularly for AIDS patients. Al-Qaida's involvement in diamond trafficking in Tanzania . . . Daniel Pearl, contrary to what has often been said, was not a war correspondent. "You have to be in practice to cover a war," he'd say. "I'm not in practice. That's why I didn't want to go to Afghanistan and preferred to go to Pakistan." But you can sense the very good, the very great, journalist. You sense the passionate explorer, tirelessly striding through far-away lands, the love of human beings and the world-you sense the news addict who lives his assignments, body and soul.
Was Danny careless? It's been said. During my year of investigation, I kept meeting people in Karachi, Madrid, Washington, who told me: "rash risks . . . was warned . . . didn't want to listen . . . what a pity . . . " One step away, particularly in Pakistan, from lapsing into the hateful: "got what he deserved . . . sad but true . . . too bad for him . . . that's the way it is." It was the opposite, of course. A good assessment of risks. A healthy fear of the country and the lunatics who disfigure it-proved by his e-mails to his parents. He didn't have protection, granted, but who did, at the time? What journalist prior to "The Daniel Pearl Affair" walked around with one of those armed escorts in orange or blue caps who protect Pakistani bigwigs? Even now there aren't many. I was offered one, during one of my trips. But what I immediately realized is that first, it's the kind of precaution that mostly serves to attract the attention of those who wish you harm; and second, that a retired cop getting ten dollars an hour isn't very motivated, in case of trouble, to take a bullet for you. I repeat, Pearl was not a war correspondent. He had not a trace of fascination for this garbage, the violence of men against men. Caution, he would say, is a dimension of courage.
And another thing. Did you know that it was he, Daniel Pearl, who in 1998, three years before "The Pearl Affair," volunteered to compile for the Wall Street Journal a sort of journalistic handbook on security issues? He had thought of everything. The Journal used it to brief its reporters. Except for one subject, only one, which he left out: kidnapping! What to do if you were kidnapped! The specialists are categorical. They all say there's one absolute rule, which is don't try to escape. Never. But there you have it. It was the only rule he didn't know. It was the only situation he hadn't considered. He had anticipated everything, except what you're supposed to do if you get kidnapped. What irony! What a coincidence! As is the dream that Ruth had on 23 January, at the same time as the kidnapping. Danny, haggard, disheveled, appearing to her at the bottom of a dead-end street. "What's wrong, darling? What's going on?" "Nothing. They just made me drink water. Lots of water. It's nothing." But he looks so awful. So pale and so awful. Ruth wakes up in a sweat, and goes directly to her e-mail: "Danny, are you all right? Please answer immediately!"
More about carelessness. The theory that he was being manipulated by American intelligence. Who told me that? It doesn't matter. The reasoning is as follows: A Wall Street Journal colleague buys a used computer at the Kabul market, right after the American war and the flight of the Taliban. He boots it up. He discovers to his amazement that the hard drive contains a quantity of strange information that smells of al-Qaida. He gives it to the Journal. Who pass it on to the American intelligence services. And they, once they've processed the information, come back to the newspaper in the hope-it's classic-that one or several journalists can help them confirm or disprove their preliminary conclusions. It's possible, of course. Everything, absolutely everything, is possible in such a strange story. As for the theory that Danny was in touch with the intelligence agencies, why not? What would be wrong with that? Shouldn't a good journalist, in the search for the truth, look for information anywhere he might find it? Shouldn't he follow up on every lead, make use of anything he can? Turn over every stone? Will I be accused of being a secret agent when I go to New Delhi to ask Indian intelligence what they know about his death? A CIA agent when I go to Washington, check on the investigation, glean there, too, a few clues, scraps of truth, maybe some evidence? The one thing I know is that Danny was a seasoned journalist. Street-smart. He never let himself be taken in by authorities, small-time crooks or spies. The one thing I could never imagine is that he would cross that yellow line between those who love truth and the agents or even militants of any given cause.
There is the Jew who had always thought if he had a son he would have him circumcised and who in 1998 wrote to his mother: "I will pass on to my children all the Jewish tradition I know, and with your help, maybe a little bit more." How Jewish? I asked Ruth and Judea. Jewish. Faithful to that part of his memory. Because to him being Jewish was a way of having a memory. Yom Kippur. The High Holidays. Friday night dinner when he was home in Los Angeles. This other conversation with his mother, or maybe it was the same one, I don't remember, when he asked, "If I married outside of my faith, what would you say?"
He was thinking about Mariane, remembers Ruth. He loved her so much! She made him so happy! And he was so sure that they had the real faith, the two of them, which was the faith of the heart! And that bar mitzvah photo at the Wailing Wall, kippa, prayer shawl, holding the Torah, bigger than he is, that pure light flashing from his eyes.
And those questions that he asked us, recalls Judea, his mother and me, especially his mother, about our families and our roots. How are you Jewish, how am I? Obviously it fascinated him. And there was the way he would call from wherever he was in the world every time there was a bombing in Israel to ask about his grandmother Tova and his cousins in Tel-Aviv.
And Israeli? I asked then. I read in France that he was American but also Israeli, dual citizenship-the French sometimes call it double allegeance-is there any truth to that? Judea hesitated. Well . . . I'm the one who has an Israeli passport, and naturally so does Ruth. So it depends how you look at it. From the Israeli point of view, because his mother and father are Israeli, he was too, automatically, in a certain way. But he never thought about it. Neither did we. The only trace of it was when he was three, and he was listed on Ruth's Israeli passport. But does that make you an Israeli?
And politically? I continued. What were his politics? Was he very critical of his country? Anti-American?
Judea laughed at that. Maybe I hadn't expressed myself correctly. Maybe I was wrong to say "anti-American." Because for the first time in the three hours we have been talking, Judea bursts out laughing, yes, hearty laughter-and just as well, in fact, it makes me happy.
Anti-American, you said? Are you joking? Who told you such nonsense? You're not going to tell me that's why he's popular in France and Europe! On the contrary, he loved his country. He was proud to be an American citizen. He knew all the names and biographies of the presidents from when he was a little kid. Do you know why he wanted to call his son Adam? He found out right before he got kidnapped that it was going to be a boy, and he and Mariane decided to call him Adam. And it was because of John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States, a fervent abolitionist, who fought against slavery. It's true there was the ecumenical angle, OK. There was the idea that it was a name that could be said in all languages and all religions. But it was also a tribute to a great president who was also a great American. Danny, I assure you, was passionately American. Much more than I am, for instance. I'm still a damn Israeli immigrant.
And apart from that? Besides being proud to be American? About Israel? The Palestinians? What were his fundamental thoughts about Israel and the Palestinians?
Judea hesitates again. I realize-he realizes-that he doesn't really know much about it.
He loved the Jewish people, for sure. Deeply loved Israel. Was inwardly appalled when he witnessed the country being caricatured and stigmatized: He knew Israelis hate war, that they drag their feet when they have to do their stints in the reserves. He had cousins there and he knew they cried in their tanks when they went out on operations. But he also loved justice. He refused to have to choose between Israel and justice. And so, a partisan of two states-does that satisfy you?
The root of the problem, Judea continues to insist, is that Danny didn't have ideas, no positions or opinions, because he was a journalist before anything else. You couldn't expect him to get involved or be a militant for any cause. You couldn't hope that he would take sides for the Jews, or for the Palestinians-the Jews are right because . . . the Palestinians have a point because . . . The role of the journalist, he would say, isn't to give out prizes for virtue. The journalist's role is to ascertain the facts, period.
I try to get more out of Danny Gill, his childhood friend, who is ill at ease to be talking about his old friend, intimidated to be there at the parents' house, in the role of final witness. I can imagine him as a little boy, already overweight, dominated by his friend. I imagine them getting together in the evenings when they took their dogs for a walk. Who told me that the last e-mail from Pearl, the evening of the 23rd was to ask about his dog? Maybe Gill. His dog was sick, but now he's better. It's Pearl who's gone. His eyes get blurry; he wipes away a tear, an emotional boy's tear. I keep pushing, anyway. Maybe because I don't want to give up my idea of Danny as a true American democrat, I ask him, "The war in Iraq, for instance. I know it's always hard to make the dead talk, but you who knew him so well . . . what would he say if he were here?" And Gill, in front of Ruth and Judea who are listening, like me, without saying a word, confirms, "He'd be critical, of course. Completely critical. Judea is right when he says this idea that he was anti-American is bullshit. But this stupid war, he'd be against it, I guarantee it."
There's the Jewish-American Danny, but he's open to the cultures of the world and to the culture, particularly, of the other. This Jew learns some Arabic, in London, at age 30-because of his Sephardic mother, born in Iraq? Certainly, but not only that. Also because of this desire for the other, this openness to the enigmatic otherness of his fellow human, near and far. This American rejects the fashionable theories about the collision of civilizations, the inevitable clash of cultures. He and Omar, his murderer, read Huntington, we will see, at the same time. But the killer subscribes to the idea, loves the death that he is promised-Danny resists, refuses the disaster that is foretold. If there's only one left, it will be me. If there is only one American and Jew left to believe that confrontation with Islam is not fatal, I will be that American and that Jew, and I will do everything in my power to avert the inevitable.
Conversation between Danny and Gill, after September 11, on the Koran: Doesn't the Koran preach hatred of infidels? Yes, of course, Danny answered. But not only that. You can't, you don't have the right, to pick out only the negative parts of a book like that. There is another Koran within the Koran, which is a message of mercy and peace.
And this beautiful scene, recounted by Robert Sam Anson in his pioneering report for Vanity Fair a few months after Danny's death: It's November 2001, just before the U.S. bombing of Kabul. There are more and more demonstrations throughout Pakistan. Danny is in Peshawar, caught up in a protest march where they're burning flags and effigies of Bush. Don't stay here, says Hamid Mir, the journalist who is with him. It's dangerous . . . No, Danny replies. I'm here, I want to understand, and I want to see in these people's eyes why they hate us. The anecdote may not be true. A colleague who knew him well told me that it didn't seem very authentic to him. But that would be a shame. Because it illustrates so well the curiosity he had, the thirst to know the other, this radical non-hatred- the best of Americans?
There's the Danny-I've read his articles-who even if he is proud of America, thinks that America and, in general the West, has an obligation to the world, owes the world something.
There is the diehard humanist who, in spite of everything he sees and has seen in his life, continues to want to believe that man is not a predator to other men, but a brother, a kindred spirit.
There is the journalist who through his reporting goes unflaggingly towards the forgotten of the world, pays his debt, our debt, the debt of the hordes of smug and overfed Westerners who couldn't care less about world poverty and don't consider themselves "their brothers' keepers."
There is another debt, he's well aware. He's enough of a Jew to know that the problem is also those other hordes, the Muslims, who too often refuse to recognize their own debt towards a certain Book and the people who carried it. But he pays anyway. He pays in advance, in a way-without waiting and without assurance that he will be paid back. And that's admirable.
There's that face-there aren't that many-in which our era can see itself without shame.
Because in a certain way Daniel Pearl is still alive-because of the emotion his death has aroused, and also because of the values everyone can feel, indistinctly, he incarnated-he is this living antidote to all the modern stupidities about the war between civilizations and worlds.
Did they know what they were doing when they killed him?
Did they know what they were killing when they killed this journalist?
And is it for that reason that I became interested in him-is it for the same but inverted reason that I decided one day, and in fact immediately, to take on this investigation, to retrace his path, to write this book?
I don't know. It's always very difficult to trace the origin of a book. I'm in Kabul that morning. I have just arrived. It's the start of a "mission of reflection on the participation of France in the reconstruction of Afghanistan" that the French president and prime minister have entrusted me with, which kept me busy for part of the winter of 2002 and resulted in my Rapport Afghan. The previous evening when I was out after curfew, I'd had a small run-in with some members of the militia of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a neo-fundamentalist warlord and a former terrorist. And it was President Karza, who, that morning, gave me the news. We're in his office, with a few of his ministers. They bring him a piece of paper. He turns pale. And informs us, first in Persian for Mohammed Fahim and Yunous Qanouni, then in English for my benefit: We have received confirmation of the death-his throat was slit-of the American journalist Daniel Pearl.
Images, a little later. The shock of the video. Emotion. Compassion. Identification, naturally. Every journalist in the world must have identified, even briefly, with this man who suddenly resembled them like a brother. Their own death, the masked angel whose face they watch for in vain from one assignment to the next, and who is there suddenly in the devastated features of one of them. For me, the image, too, of a bright, personable American journalist I had bumped into during the summer of 1997 in Asmara, Eritrea, and who was trying, as I was, to make contact with John Garang, the Sudanese Christian fighting with the Khartoum Islamists. Was it really him? How can I remember? You don't know, do you, when you meet a journalist in Asmara who is trying on Panama hats in a store run by an Italian in the Piazza Centrale, that he's going to get his throat slit four years later, and that his image will pursue you for a year, probably longer? What I know is that for these reasons and others, for those which came to me immediately and for those I know now, because Pearl's story makes me afraid and prevents me from feeling fear, because of what it says about the horror of our times and equally about their share of greatness, because of what Pearl represented when he was alive and what he must continue to represent dead, because of the causes that were his and which remain essentially mine, because of all of that, his image is present now, and stays with me.
A kindred spirit. A brother. Dead and alive. A dead man that I must bring to life. And this pledge, this contract, first between him and me, then between me and myself: to contribute something. Usually you take out a contract on someone to kill him. Here it's the opposite: a contract out on Daniel Pearl, in order to resurrect him.