The one, in other words, that may have ended at the gates of the promised land, the way Asad Khan described it. And another, soon after, without Khan, without the Convoy of Mercy, just him, just little Omar, erasing the failure of the first journey and, this time, going all the way. I'll come back, of course, to Asad.
"What do you think?" I ask. "What do you think of the possibility of Omar returning, without you, to Bosnia?"
Asad thinks about it. Nods his head. And replies, confirming Saquib's words, "Yes, why not? Omar wouldn't have lied about it. Perhaps there was a second trip, without me."
And then, there's a last hypothesis, a sort of a middle-ground theory, between one extreme and the other. There is one hypothesis, ultimately, that is the most plausible, and that both the supporters of the golden legend and those of the lamentable, subconsciously deliberate mistake can agree upon. But no-I'll wait and reveal this last theory in due time, at the moment during the investigation when it actually occurred to me . . .
For the time being, what matters is this fact, and this fact alone: Whatever Omar may have accomplished, whether or not he went to Mostar or Sarajevo, whether or not he saw combat, whether or not the man at Bocinja Donja is telling stories or if it is Asad Khan who's rewriting history to disengage himself from responsibility, what is important in any case, then, is that the Bosnian affair, in Omar's own, never-varying words, decided everything. In other words, we can assume that this sudden consciousness of a world where it's a crime to be a Muslim, and where another destiny seems possible for European Islam, profoundly shakes the happy Englishman he was. Here, without the shadow of a doubt, is a model student, an Englishman, a cosmopolitan adolescent who, everything seems to indicate, has never thought that his belonging to the world of Islam and to that of the West were in the least bit contradictory, and who topples over the edge into madness in a very precise place.
And that, this obvious fact, I find profoundly disturbing.
Let me be clear.
Basically, I'm not surprised.
I always knew there were foreign fighters in Bosnia.
I saw them in Donji Vakuf, strange, haggard, marching like robots, without apparent fear, along the Serbian lines.
I saw them at Mehuric, near Travnik, Ivo Andrik's city; at Zivinice, Bistricak and Zeljezno Polje in the Zenica region; at Igman where, on 23 August 1994, during one of my last trips, an "international brigade" liberated the village of Babin Do; and even on the Dobrinjna outskirts of Sarajevo itself, where the 50-man "Suleiman Fatah" unit took part in defending the area during the darkest hours of the siege, in April and May 1993.
And I learned from Izetbegovic himself-who had received the information when the little plane taking us to see the Pope in April 1993, when the war with the Croats was at its fiercest, landed in Rome-that a brigade of foreign combatants (the 7th, linked to the 3rd Corps of the official Bosnia-Herzegovina army) had been discovered to have committed heinous acts of violence in the towns of Dusina, Vitez, Busovaca and Miletici, in the Croat zone. I myself wrote the draft of a communique, to be sent to the chief of staff and the press agencies, disowning irrevocably the "handful of lost soldiers" who had committed these horrors and dishonoured the Bosnian cause.
I quickly learned, as well, of the questionable role played by the Muslim NGOs-for example, supposedly charitable organizations like "Muassasat al-Haramain al-Khairiya," or the "Charitable Establishment of the Two Holy Mosques." I contacted them in Zagreb in the spring of 1993 before learning they were channeling money to the dreaded "mujahid battalion" of Zenica, and that their operations were a secret to no one, including the Croat authorities. (It should be remarked in passing that President Izetbegovic is not entirely wrong in saying these foreign fighters did not fall from the sky, and that to get to Sarajevo, they had to have strong non-Bosnian-in other words, Croat-accomplices.) One day at staff headquarters in Travnik, when I was looking at some archived video images I was thinking of using in Bosna!, I came across footage the archives service of the 7th Corps had inadvertently left on the cassette, where one could see Arab mujahideen, their long hair dyed with henna and tied with a green band, playing soccer with the heads of Serbian soldiers.
And, concerning the mere presence of foreign fighters, I'm not mentioning all the things I heard but did not personally see, yet, given the sources, feel compelled to grant a certain credibility: another detachment, linked, again, to the 7th Corps, in the Mount Vlasic region; a unit of Tunisians and Iranians in the Bistricak village area, not far from the headquarters of the 33rd Division of the regular army; another in the Banovici sector that reportedly took part in the Vozuca offensive; the seventy Pakistani and Kuwaiti "Shiite mercenaries" of Tuzla; the detachment of the Revolutionary Guards from Iran, who arrived in May 1994 to act as "religious police" in the ranks of the mujahideen battalions. For further evidence there's the interview of Abu Abdel Aziz, the Kashmir-trained war lord who became inter-army commander of all the foreigners stationed in Bosnia, that ran in Time and in the Saudi London daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat.
To say nothing of after the war, when all these "foreigners," contravening the conditions of the Dayton Accords requiring them to leave the country, remained in Bosnia, married, had children and obtained Bosnian nationality, and might have made Sarajevo the center of international Islamic terrorism in Europe, had society not resisted. Their projects were many: a plan, in liaison with the Algerian GIA, to assassinate the Pope, in September 1997; two years before that, a plan for a car-bomb, in revenge for the condemnation to death of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack; the 1998 affair of Algerian Bensayeh Belkacem, which imagined a simultaneous attack on the American embassy at Sarajevo and the bases of the international forces stationed in Bosnia; the case of Imad el-Misri, an Egyptian close to Osama bin Laden, who was arrested in July 2001 in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza, carrying a Bosnian passport; and finally, the case of the Bosnian veterans-such as Jasin el-Bosnevi of Sarajevo, and Almir Tahirovic of Novi Travnik in central Bosnia-who went to Chechnya to fill out the meagre ranks of the fundamentalist brigades and, more often than not, lost their lives.
In short, the case of the foreign fighters has always been an open secret for the handful of intellectuals, journalists, and humanitarians who pleaded for Western military action from the very first day.
But the foreign fighters' presence had no influence upon what those cognescenti observed in Sarajevo, and in central Bosnia as well, of the profoundly tolerant, moderate, and, to sum it up, European nature of Bosnian Islam itself-women without veils, alcohol served in the cafes, secular habits. And when confronted by these foreigners with their ridiculous rules, their sermons, their empty pharaonic mosques, Bosnians showed the solid cynicism of those who have no desire to die and who, abandoned by all and dependent solely on their own forces, took what little help was offered to them.
Better still, no matter what one may say, the albeit shocking presence of these combatants remained marginal, circumscribed to certain regions of the country and in no way contaminating (or at least less than has been said) the morale, the culture, or the functioning practices of the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina: soldiers of three nationalities with Serbian and Croatian officers in some cases commanding troops made up of a majority of Muslims. Of course there were imams, but they were no more than chaplains in a French regiment. And there was the 7th Regiment, to which many of these units were attached, which was commanded by General Alagic, who, in that capacity, covered up their war crimes-but I observed them enough in action to be able to attest to the fact that they were not, in any case, a fundamentalist or Islamist corps.
As for Izetbegovic himself, I knew his past. I could see that, like all the Bosnians, he used the support of these "Arabs"-whom he disliked and feared-without scruple. But I also saw that I could talk to him without difficulty about Salman Rushdie and his support for the Bosnian cause. I saw that Gilles Herzog and I had no trouble convincing him, the pious Muslim just returned that day from Ryad, to come to Europe to meet Margaret Thatcher, and the King of Spain, and, especially, the Pope. I can see him still, strangely pensive after his meeting with John Paul II, in the Mystere 20 Francois Mitterrand-either clever or a good sport- had sent to Rome to bring us back to France, and then to Sarajevo. Could it be that the holy man had unsettled him? What kind of an Islamic fundamentalist could be so moved, so shaken by the head of the Catholic church? When I had doubts, when people in France jeered at my support for the author of the "Islamist Declaration," I remembered how uncomfortable everyone was following the screening of Bosna! in his honor at a cinema in the Latin Quarter in Paris. "BHL!" the Bosnians of Paris chanted, "BHL! Bosnia-Herzegovina Libre!" No, no, some of his counsellors grumbled, we don't like the "secular Islam" mentioned in the film's commentary, we really don't like that. But this led to Izetbegovic's typical style of arbitrating: "BHL is right. Maybe we should think this idea of 'secular Islam' through." A conservative. Perhaps a nationalist. But one who never gave in when it came to the essential, the multicultural dimension of Bosnia that he had defended and whose cause brought us together-he, the Muslim man of letters, astute reader of the Koran; and I, a Frenchman and a Jew, a friend of Israel, who never, in any circumstance, failed to say who I was and what I believed. How many discussions between us, but peaceful ones, about Jewish destiny, the mystery and the question of Israel . . . And as for his Bosnia-our Bosnia, I should say- how many times did he tell me, with the touch of melancholy that appeared every time he found a moment's respite from his role as commander-in-chief to reflect and talk: "I could be happy with a little Bosnia. I could consent to the partition that everyone, from the West to Milosevic, seems to desire and whose first effect would be peace. I could build a refugee state for all the persecuted Muslims of the region. Well, maybe I'm wrong. I know I'm considered a stubborn old man, a dreamer, but you see, that's not my idea. I cannot say good-bye to the beautiful dream of a multicultural, cosmospolitan Bosnia!"
Even if I think that at the time I should have brought up the issue of the Islamists' presence more clearly, denounced it more loudly, devoted more than just allusions to it in Le Lys et la Cendre, even if I say that I gave in, at the time, to the classic syndrome (whose effects I have often pointed out in others) of the intellectual who fears he will harm the cause he stands by in telling the whole truth, I still think, today, that I was- that we were-right to respect this simple theorem. Not: "The fact that there are Islamists in Bosnia should dissuade us from intervening." Rather: "The longer we wait to intervene, the more Islamists may rush in. It is because we do not intervene that, politics by nature detesting a void, Islamists utterly foreign to this Bosnian civilization may assume our role and profit from the despair of an abandoned population, to take root in the Balkans."
The new element, then, is, as always, the appearance of an individual, of a singular destiny, of a discreet body.
The new-and terribly troubling-element is this idea of a man, one man alone, who plunges towards the worst in the very location that was, in my eyes, the center of honor and courage.
Here is a man who arrives in the European capital of sorrow. Here is a course of action that follows motives initially not all that different from those at the very same moment inspiring French human rights militants, as well as others who see, in the situation in Bosnia, the great test of late 20th century Europe-the advent of fascism, the Spanish civil war of our generation, etcetera. Except that, since noble causes sometimes produce dissimilar effects, his conversion to Islamism and to crime dates exactly from this point.
The Devil is not in the details, but in the great causes, and in History.
CHAPTER 5 FROM ONE PORTRAIT, ANOTHER.
In Pakistan, I did all I could to meet Omar.
I contacted his family, who referred me to his lawyers.
The lawyers advised me to consult the President of the Supreme Court.
In November 2002, I went to see the police, who said, "Yes, why not? You just have to go to Hyderabad and negotiate with the warden of the prison." So I went to see the warden of the prison who said, "It's not as simple as all that. Omar has just been transferred to the prison's maximum security sector, the Mansoor Ward, and only the minister, Moinuddin Haider, can authorize you to see him."
I requested an appointment with the minister.
"They tell me you are a lover of literature. Well, I am an novelist. I am writing a novel whose main characters are based on Pearl and Omar, and so I need to meet Omar," I told him, using my good old cover.
The minister listened to me. He had a strange, old-fashioned face, a mixture of Paul Claudel and Saint-John Perse, with an amazing capacity to change expressions instantly. He would be amiable in the extreme, excessively so. And then, when he thought I wasn't looking, a gleam of murderous ferociousness would shine through. I read in his eyes that he dreamed of someone ridding him of these foreigners who incessantly bugged him with this goddamn Pearl affair.
And in fact, he told me clearly, "What? A novel about Pearl and Omar? Since when does one write novels about such characters? Has the French literature I so love and respect fallen so low as to find its sustenance in such appalling affairs?"
Well, at least he listened to me. He saw I was persistent, and that I seemed to really believe that the nobility of literature could lie in creating a story out of an actual fact. He even pretended to take notes. But I had come at the wrong time, he said. They had just had elections, and the government was resigning in an hour. So I would have to introduce myself to Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, the spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, who was really in charge here. Yes, I can assure you, he is the boss now. I'm leaving, it's over, you're my last appointment as minister, but he, on the contrary, is staying on. He'll take care of this for you, you'll see.
Now it was Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema's turn to give me a lecture.
His hair and moustache were colored with henna, and he wore a green, houndstooth suit that complimented his tall figure. With a steely look that expressed an absence of affability, he began by asking me, "But what are you all coming to this country to look for? In every society, there are areas it's not a good idea to walk through. What would you say if I, Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, started messing around in the underworld of Paris or Chicago? That's what this American Jewish journalist did, he went outside the boundaries. Be careful not to make the same mistake."
And then, "Besides, why did he rent a house? Doesn't it seem suspect that a Jewish journalist, based in India, would rent a house for 40,000 rupees a month? Suppose I want to see someone in France. I get a room in a hotel and I sit down with him in my room, I'm not going to rent a house. The fact that he did proves that he intended to stay, and that, you see-let's not tell any tales-is no longer journalism! That is why he is suspected of having worked for a foreign power."
And then, as to Omar, "As for Sheikh, you who are a writer, don't you find him strange, Omar? Look at the photos of him when he left prison in India. He seems to be in good health, he doesn't look like someone who just got out of prison. And that's why sometimes I have the feeling this whole thing could have been fabricated, from beginning to end, by the Indian secret services. Did you know that this Sheikh made at least 24 calls to India on his mobile phone? And did you know that at least two of them were to close aides of a minister?"
Nothing happened there either. He took note, he promised, he gave me all the numbers, including his mobile phone number, where I could reach him "at any time." But that request, like the official requests I made to return to the place where Pearl was held so I could take photos, or to interview the famous Gilani he thought he was going to see the day of his kidnapping, remained a dead letter.
I couldn't see Omar.
Everything seemed to be organized so I would never have any contact with him.
To give some substance to my imagination of what he was like physically, I had to settle for a fleeting glimpse of him in May, as he was being transferred from the Hyderabad prison. As in Karachi, the police had had the courtroom evacuated, with the exception, for reasons unknown, of two foreign journalists. All of us, Pakistanis and foreigners, were stuck a hundred yards beyond, at the entrance to the street, behind metal barriers and sandbags guarded by teams of over-equipped commandos. Sharpshooters kept an eye out for any signs of disorder from the rooftops of a nearby hotel and some apartment buildings. Immediately surrounding the prison, troop transports and tanks appeared ready to move every time one of the protagonists of the trial or the judge or the prosecuting attorney appeared, escorted by his own armored car. There were incredibly nervous men in uniform everywhere, eyeing each other as much as they were watching for any potential assailant. Had the police gotten word that Omar had devised a plan to escape, with the help of the secret service, during his transfer? Were intelligence services persuaded, on the contrary, that the police had put together this scenario, to saddle them with the responsibility? In this state-of-siege atmosphere, behind the bullet-proof window of a paddy wagon with its escort of armed vehicles, I saw the figure of Omar Sheikh, caged like a wild beast. The lower half of his face was hidden by a scarf. And then, as he was crossing the barrier that blocked our entry to the other side, the commanding officer of the detachment threw a white blanket over his head. But I just had the time to see a tall figure in a traditional white shalwar kameez flash by. His hands were tied in front of him, his face was a bit thick, and in his eyes was an expression of triumph.
And then, like a painter, I had to work at length with photos of him. In London and Karachi, I had to multiply the images, collect all the portraits of him I could find, unpublished or in the press, like the two prints from The Guardian and Dawn that had struck me so the first day. I had to thoroughly and intently examine his features on paper to try to pierce the mystery, or the glimmer of the mystery that transformed the model Englishman into such a murderer.
There is first of all the black-and-white photo everyone is familiar with, probably a school photo, where he looks like a nice, chunky boy, kind, affable and well-behaved. A pouting mouth, chubby cheeks, soft features, normal for his young age. There is, just barely, something troubling in the eyes, a sort of a cold vibration that is frightening. Then again, that may be just the quality of the photo, or something I'm reading in to it myself.
There's another photo, perhaps taken a little later, when he was at the London School of Economics. Dark suit. Black tie. Thick forelock primly combed down over the forehead. A greediness about the mouth, a new firmness of the chin. The photo is fuzzy, especially around the eyes, that seem to have been gobbled up by the light. Except, it's bizarre-the eyes are nonetheless the most expressive part of his face, with their strange stare, pitiless and sad, the pupils bottomless pools that suddenly make him look older.
Grenville Lloyd, known as "the Panther," a referee of the arm wrestling matches Omar loved to fight in during his last London period, gave me two astonishing, unpublished photos taken at about that time. Decor of a pub, with a television suspended from the wall on a moveable arm, a blackboard with "Today's Special" written on it in the background. A referee in a white T-shirt and a navy blue baseball cap and a gold badge, wearing an intense expression, almost frightened, as though he were going to yell. And standing in the foreground, separated by a table that comes up to their waists where plastic-covered foam cushions have been placed to break the fall of the arm on the wood, two very young men locked in a struggle. Omar is the bigger of the two, wearing a sweat-soaked, light-colored undershirt and navy blue wool pants with a brown leather belt. You can tell he has a hairy chest. His arm, also hairy, is swollen with the effort of making his adversary give. The other hand, closed around a wooden post, is holding on so tightly not just his knuckles but his entire phalanxes are white, the small, mobile bones seeming ready to pierce the skin. But what is the most striking is his expression-his eyes lowered, features tense and deformed with effort, the nose pinched, as though he were compelled to stop breathing, and something at once childish and concentrated, wild, pitiless, in the lower part of the face . . . Omar Sheikh isn't playing, he hates.
There is an extraordinary document dating from the same time that Leecent Thomas, known as "The Force," his Jamaican buddy and sporting partner from arm wrestling days, brought me one evening at my hotel in London. Not a photo, but a video-and what a video! Several hours, continuously filmed, on June 18, 1992, in a London pub, where we see, all at once alive, full of strength and action, the very young Omar Sheikh, contending for a championship. Omar appears eleven times. With eleven different opponents. But it's always the same situation. The pub, the crowd yelling and applauding. Young people with close-cropped hair and tattoos, muscle-bound torsos, sitting on the floor with pints of beer. Bad music in the background, smoke. An atmosphere at once rough and good-humored, very 1960s Teddy Boys. A referee. And Omar who, each time, walks into the frame, positions himself at the table and confronts a new adversary.
The video is of poor quality. The color is off. Depending on the light, Omar's pants, filmed the same day, look either green or brown. The sound, especially, is non-existent-a hubbub, with bits and pieces of indistinct voices, the television braying in the background, almost covering the sound of the music. But what stands out is the little number he does, the game of his character.
The way he walks into the scene, for example: without a glance towards the camera, nor towards his opponent; the others look at him, exchange looks among themselves, wink at the public, mess around. He is completely serious, concentrating, barely blinking. He's chewing gum.
His rapport with the referee: The referee is a constant presence. He corrects positions, gives final advice, encourages, rectifies-"sit up straight, elbow right on the table . . . not like that, the grip, like that, the wrist . . . relax . . . " But while the others listen, sometimes talk or joke with him, and the last-minute tips always produce a certain familiarity, a nod of the head, a complicity, Omar never once glances at the damned referee. Tight-lipped still, he does what he's told, of course, but his attention is always elsewhere. Cut the crap-are you done with the useless advice now?
His very strange way of warming up, too: He stamps, taps his foot and nods his head as though he were searching for the beat. He takes his opponent's hand, does it again several times to get the right grip, and when he has, he paws it, shakes it, still chewing his gum, and always rhythmically, as though he were jacking him off, shakes it gently. Finally he presses up against the table, rubs against it. With his chest projected, his stomach glued to the wood of the table, nostrils flaring, fixed stare, he's the one who looks like he's having a wank now. Once, the situation is so obscene the referee intervenes-I can't hear what he's saying, but he shoves Omar a little and unglues his pelvis from the table.
His tricks-for he is really the craftiest of all. Against a colossus with a shaved head, for example-the double of Gregorious, the wrestler in Jules Dassin's Forbans de la Nuit-a mountain of muscle and fat, with arms like thighs, hands like shovels, twice the weight of Omar and almost twice his size. And we see Omar, tiny and thin, his hand drowned in the huge paw of the other, flexing his muscles, mobilizing his entire body to resist, but then weakening, bending his arm a little . . . that's it, he can't take any more, he's obviously lost . . . except that, when the colossus is sure of it and, thinking he's won, eases up on the pressure, Omar suddenly marshals his muscles, reverses the movement and, with one thrust, just one, plasters the wrestler's arm on the table to the cheers of the crowd.
His air of indescribable pride, finally, as when he wins the point against Gregorious-head thrown back, a slight smile, the only time he brightens up, that expresses either pride, or regret, or even, bitterness, I can't tell which. It's all there, on this video, beneath the mask-his secret face of a brute.
And then, dating from the same period, a last unpublished photo found at Frank Pittal's, the Jewish friend of the family, organizer of the arm wrestling tournaments, the man who paraded his Omar through all the pubs of England, like a circus owner showing off his bearded lady. It's a group photo that resembles a class picture. But no. It's in Geneva. And it's much more important than a school picture-it's the family photo of the English arm wrestling team at the December, 1992, World Championship. Omar is not in the front row with the two kneeling heavyweights, nor in the second or third row, both standing. He is, bizarrely, between the two back rows, the only one who is out of line, with a big smile on his face. Of the nineteen boys and two girls his smile is the broadest. Because he has won? Because he's just glad to be there, when his actual record, his official victories, his own merit, wouldn't have been sufficient in itself? (I heard repeatedly that the federation was poor and couldn't reimburse travel expenses, so they needed champions who could also pay their own airfare.) He looks happy, yes. Carefree. No longer the slightest trace, suddenly, of either rancor or hatred. This is just weeks before his departure for Bosnia. A few months before his conversion. And he looks like a happy child again.
There are more recent photos, after the crime, after the crimes-ten years have passed, the conversion has taken place. He has gone to Bosnia, and from Bosnia to Afghanistan, and from Afghanistan to India where he organized his first kidnappings before serving his first prison term. Young Omar Sheikh has become, before as well as after the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, one of the most prominent jihadists of Pakistan. The former student of the London School of Economics, the arm wrestling champ, the nice teenager whose old friends all praise his kindness, his politeness-is one of the most hunted terrorists on earth.
There is the famous photo, taken around 20002001 in Lahore, where he is dressed entirely in white and wears red flowers, the color of jam, around his neck. He is an adult now. He is arrogant. Flamboyant. He has massive shoulders and a sculpted torso. He wears the medium-long beard of the Taliban and a large, white turban, wound around his head several times. I suppose the photo must have been taken at about the time he returned from India, at one of those receptions he wouldn't miss for the world, where he rubbed elbows, it is said, with the Punjabi elite of the city-"May I introduce Omar, a man of principles and convictions . . . our hero, our star, the man who expresses our feelings and wears our colors . . . the Indians tortured him, he withstood it." He looks happy. There is something peaceful, fulfilled, in his expression. It's a three-quarter view, but you can see his man-eating smile, and behind his tinted glasses, the look of a watchful wildcat. To me, this photo gives him a false resemblance- less a few pounds-to Masood Azhar, his mentor and guru, the man who has impressed him more than anyone in the world and with whom he is now in competition.
There is a picture of him, taken two years later in front of the prisonat Hyderabad, during his trial, maybe on the day he received the death sentence. His head is bare this time. He wears a shirt. His beard is shorter. He is surrounded by a crowd of policemen in their navy blue caps and Rangers in black berets. In the foreground is a raised hand, but it's impossible to tell if it is there to strike someone, or to stop someone or something. One can guess that, beyond the frame, there was a good deal of agitation, probably the reason for this strong military presence. In fact, everyone seems nervous. Everyone is anticipating an incident, perhaps even a riot. But he, Omar, is calm. His eyes are lowered. He is facing the camera, his torso leaning slightly backward, as though the pressures of the crowd, the cameras, the police, disgusted him a bit or irritated him. And in this slight movement of recoil, the refusal to look directly into the camera while everyone is swarming around him, is the black insolence that reminds me of the days of his arm wrestling tournaments in London.
There's another photo taken then, but more cropped, framing only his face which he has raised to the light now. His head is thrown back as if he were listening to a distant sound or taking a deep breath of the cool air. The face is pale and stony, with a slightly mocking expression, like the remains of a smile. (Did the photographer catch him at the end of one of those diabolical laughs that made the blood of his friends in London and that of his hostages in New Delhi turn to ice?) This time we see his eyes. And in those eyes we feel an utter contempt for everything that has just happened-the sorrow of Pearl's loved ones, the Court's severity, its legalism, hearing himself condemned to death by hanging and knowing, or feigning to know, that no one believes it and it's all a vast sham, and now all this fuss around him and for him . . . The truth is, one senses in this photo that he doesn't believe what is happening to him. He seems to be saying to himself, "What does it matter, after all? Why are all these people getting so excited? I know that within a year, maybe two, I'll be out of this grotesque hell. And in the meantime, I will have become a great, a very great, jihadist, the equal of Masood Azhar, my old patron, may the Devil take him. Now I'm the one who will be the symbol of the movement . . . "
And another shot from the same day, in fact, the same situation, the same Rangers surrounding him, his hands bound across his stomach- except that now, it's all over. He is ready to get into the blue armored vehicle waiting for him. He seems sober. Perhaps the crowd around him has dispersed. Perhaps he has realized the enormity of his situation. And in his face, there is suddenly, curiously, something lost and defeated. The eyes seem dazzled. The smile is prudent, a little silly. He must be trembling a bit, shivering. I even get the impression I can see a drop of sweat standing out on his forehead. The arrogant man, the hero, the successor of Masood Azhar who envisioned himself entering the pantheon of combatants in his lifetime, has become again a sort of a debutant-with something of the weakness, the softness, the childish indecisiveness in his features that was there in the very first photos dating from the time when he was only a child looking for his identity and destiny.
The mobility of his face, the malleability of his expressions, this incredible capacity, in photos taken in the same period and even, as here, almost at the same instant, to change expressions and become, suddenly, another person-they said the same of Carlos the Jackal, it has been said of bin Laden. Do they all have this diabolical aptitude to be, truly, several people-this name, and these faces that are legion?
The photos missing are those of the interim period: Bosnia, the Afghan and Pakistani training camps, India, the hostage takings, prison. Do they exist? Are there images of that Omar, and if so, where?
Actually, I do have one extraordinary photo, one that is, I think, unpublished. He is lying bare-chested on a hospital bed, no doubt at the hospital in Ghaziabad, in India, where he was cared for in 1994 after the assault of the police to liberate the hostages. An I.V. feed is visible at his left. His right arm is bent and his hand is touching his forehead. He is very pale. His beard is very black. His features are emaciated. He looks almost as if he were posing in imitation of the famous photo by Freddy Alborta of the dead Che Guevara. The annoying thing is that it's the only such photo. And it's taken from too far away to say much more about it. So, for that period, I had to rely almost entirely on the oral testimony of Peter Gee, the Englishman who was Omar's cellmate in New Delhi for over a year and who is thus one of the people in the world who knows him best.
The shady Gee, who was in prison for trafficking in cannabis, was released in March 2000, three months after Omar. He did not stay in England. He went to live in Spain, in Centenera, a secluded village in the heart of the mountains, between Huesca and Barbastro, without electricity, without phone, a general delivery address, and the e-mail address of a friend he checks in with once or twice a month. A real treasure hunt to track him down. I met him for dinner in a hotel in San Sebastian where I went for something else entirely (to preside over a meeting of solidarity with the victims of E.T.A. Basque terrorism with Fernando Savater and his friends of "Ya Basta").
He looks a worn-out thirty, short, blond hair, with a touch of the burned-out hippie who lives on music, hash, yoga, and never sees the papers or the television, who takes his doses of the world with an eyedropper. An old Dutch companion, even further gone than he, drove him here and views him much as one views stars or great men because of his time in India and his ties to a celebrated terrorist. Why did Gee come? Why did he accept, not just to talk to me, but to drive all this way? Friendship, he says, Omar was a friend. He liked his honesty, his idealism, his gaiety. And just because Omar's in deep shit he's not going to change his opinion. If he popped up here, at the next table, he'd just say to him, "Hey, man, how you doing? Sit down, let's talk!" Other reasons for talking to me? I don't know, nor am I looking to know. I'm too happy for the windfall of his appearance to waste my time in conjectures and not take advantage of this miraculous opportunity to raise some questions I've been dying to ask.
The Omar he remembers is a pious man, truly pious, who believes in the immortality of the soul and the existence of paradise "like he believes an egg is an egg and two plus two make four."
He's a fundamentalist, without a doubt. For a whole year, Gee can't remember having seen him read anything other than the Koran, or commentaries on the Koran. "I tried Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe on him, or Dostoyevski, but he couldn't understand how they could be of any use to him."
That said, he was open. He wasn't the kind to think there were only Muslims in this world. Once, for example, two non-Muslim Nigerians had been punished because tobacco was found in their cell. In such cases, the practice was to attach them to a bar and have their fellow inmates come by and whip them with a bamboo switch. Well, Omar refused to do it and started a hunger strike in solidarity with the Nigerians. OK, so it didn't work. People reported sick so they could go to the infirmary and eat. But it gives you an idea of the state of mind of Omar, of his humanism.
Gee remembers his charisma as well. The power he had over others. Was it his voice? His unblinking, unwavering stare? His high intelligence? The fact that he had been to Bosnia, Afghanistan? His exploits? In any case, he reigned. He bewitched people. He lived-he was-like a sort of Don, the godfather of all the Pakistanis and Bengalis in the prison. Sometimes it even bothered him. He didn't approve of behaving like a mafia chief. He'd say, out loud, "Beware the intoxication of power! The important thing is ideas, not power! Ideas!"
Was he violent? Does Gee remember conversations, scenes, where he sensed this taste for violence that led Omar to assassinate Pearl or, before that, to threaten his previous hostages-Nuss, Croston, Partridge and Rideout-with decapitation? Peter Gee hesitates. He realizes that his friend's skin could be at stake in his answers. On the one hand, he admits, there were signs. The fact that Omar struck the director of the prison at Meerut, in Uttar Pradesh, where he served the first part of his sentence. Or the day in the Tihar jail, where he had organised a boycott of the Jai Hind-the Indian patriotic prayer all the inmates, Muslims included, were obliged to recite every morning-when, faced with the administration's reprisals, he spoke of killing one of the head guards. But on the other hand no, signs are just signs, not acts, and he thinks deep down, Omar was basically good and pacifistic. He can't believe he could have killed Daniel Pearl. And as for the other affair, the threats towards the hostages in New Delhi, he has only one thing to tell me: "At the time when we thought I was getting out of prison before him, he gave me the address of those people and asked me to go see them, to tell them for him that he regretted his duplicity, that he was sorry he had lied to trap them. Isn't that proof of his goodness?"
Women. This is a mystery to me, Omar and women-does Gee have any ideas? Hypotheses? Did they ever talk about women, during their long conversations in the cell? It's simple, Gee said. It's his obsession with purity. He puts them up too high on a pedestal. And so he didn't dare. He was twenty-five at the time, and deep down, Gee's not certain Omar had ever made love with a woman, or even seen a woman nude.
"I remember a conversation," he says. "We were in the prison refectory and we were talking about what it is to be courageous. His theory was that real courage isn't necessarily risking death, because all you need is to be a believer like him, and then it no longer holds any fear and there's no merit in facing it. Facing a woman, on the other hand-now that's true courage. To walk up to the girl he found attractive at the London School and, rather than talking through go-betweens, ask her out for a coffee- it's something he had never done, and he suddenly regretted it."
Islamism and women, this depth of panic and terror, this fear and, sometimes, this dizziness in front of the feminine sex I've always thought was the real foundation of the fundamentalist urge. Is Omar proof?
Omar's secret, Gee tells me, is lack of belonging or, the same thing, the fervent desire to belong. A double culture. Pakistan in England. England in Pakistan. It was Omar's idea to leave the Forest School in 1998 and go to Lahore. What? No, you say? You found out that it was his parents' decision, and it's when Crystal Chemical Factories Ltd. stopped that they returned to London? All right, maybe. After all, you're the one who's done the investigating. All I know is that, it didn't work that way either. He realized that not belonging works both ways and that he wasn't any more at home at Aitchison than he was at the Forest School. So, in your opinion, when you get to that point, when you're split this way, what do you do? What solution is left you? The loony Dutch friend, who has been drawing circles and saying nothing since the beginning of our talk, suddenly and vigorously agrees. More than ever, he admires his friend Peter Gee.
I remember what one of the New Delhi hostages, Rhys Patridge, said a few weeks ago. He recalled Omar's terrible outbursts of verbal violence against the Jews. He remembered a thorough and radical hatred for England. Was this a recent hatred, or an old one? Dating from his terrorist period, or before? The happy student, the polite child, was he keeping it a secret, waiting for his time to come?
"I have a theory," Patridge told me. "I thought about these famous arm wrestling tournaments, and I have a theory. Deep down inside, he hated them. He had only contempt for those fat Englishmen bursting with beer, tattooed, obscene, propping up the bar. Just that-he learned to know them and to hate them. He was like a double agent in contact with the enemy. That's what arm wrestling did for him."
A phallic challenge then-yes. Homoerotic jousting in an atmosphere seeking annihilation of the other-who, of the two of us, has the biggest arm? Partridge vs. Gee-the thesis of the grand phallic merry-go-round, homosexual and mimetic, as opposed to the thesis of the outsider.
Who is Omar, really?
Are there two Omars? A wolf and a lamb in the same cage? The perfect Englishman and the ultimate enemy?
Are there more than two-protagonists of even more contradictory scenarios? A truly diabolical Omar?
Or is there only one Omar; but one who must have always been cheating and who, already in London, acted like a good boy but nonetheless had a sinister double, a shadow, that was about to swallow him?
I reflect, one last time, upon all the bizarre things his friends have told me about him-I think about his phobia about pigeons, or of the period that went on for months when he told his friends, "I smell like a dead rat! Stay away from me, I smell like a dead rat! Once a rat died in my room, and he stank it up and I've never been able to get rid of the smell."
I think about his terrible laugh, more menacing than joyous, enraged, that everyone mentioned-his friends, the schoolteacher in Sarajevo, Rhys Partridge.
It's the eternal enigma of this kind of individual and of his visible metamorphosis.
It's the great question we always come up against, and that, once again, stops me cold.
Either he's the character from the theory of two-lives-in-one, of discord, of heartbreak, and, basically, of conversion-someone who "changed their souls," as it is said of great converts, the elected, the chosen, who wake up one morning and see the veil lifted and turn from their errant ways. Why shouldn't what applies to those who are called to turn from errant ways also apply to those who are not? Why not the same law for saints as well as great criminals, the damned, the monsters, the counter-converted?
Or, he's like the character in Roger Vailland's Un Jeune Homme Seul who says, in essence, that there are no "dissonances" in a man's life. "I operate on the principle that apparent clashes are the intermittent fragments of a counterpoint that I've missed or that is hidden from me." So, "I play," he says, to whomever he has before him, "I grope," and "when I've found the counterpoint that makes sense of all the dissonances, I know all I want to know about the past and the present" of this person. He can even "predict his future." All he needs to do is to "continue to play in the same key . . . "
I don't know.
CHAPTER 6 RECONSTITUTION OF A CRIME.
I have a clearer idea, though, of how Omar Sheikh spent his time in the days and weeks leading up to the crime.
I saw one of his close friends.
I read some of the Sindh police reports.
I walked in his footsteps and followed his tracks, whenever I could, as I would soon do for Daniel Pearl.