Slain reporter's widow isn't trying for sympathy; Her book takes tough look at geopolitics
International Herald Tribune · October 7, 2003
By Julie Salamon
If it hadn't taken place in the middle of a living nightmare, Connie Chung's sudden appearance in Karachi, Pakistan, might have amused Mariane Pearl.
Pearl was about to make her first public appearance after the murder of her husband, Daniel Pearl, the reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was kidnapped in Pakistan on Jan. 23, 2002. She had agreed to be interviewed by Chris Burns, the CNN reporter who had covered Pearl's kidnapping for the cable television network. As she got out of the elevator in the hotel where the interview was to take place, she said, she found herself in the grip of Chung, the high-profile television journalist, who introduced herself by throwing her arms around Pearl and hugging her.
Chung's jarring familiarity crystallized for Pearl the sometimes surreal role of journalists in the ephemeral war on terrorism and how American television's preference for sentimentality over substance skews coverage.
"Even before Danny died people were trying to reach me every which way, and they were already doing the weeping widow thing," said Pearl, who is from France and is determinedly unsentimental. "My sole purpose in getting to the media was to try and reach Danny's captors in Pakistan. People were trying to coach me to look even more pregnant and weepy. It was bizarre."
Pearl was far more upset with CBS's decision to broadcast portions of a propaganda videotape of her husband (though not the part that showed his execution), even after she begged Andrew Hayward, president of CBS News, not to do so. "They did exactly what the terrorists wanted," Pearl said.
Connie Chung never got her interview, but Pearl is back in front of the cameras, this time to promote her new book, "A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl." Last week the telegenic Pearl, who is 36, appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," looking fragile, along with her 16-month-old son, Adam, as well as on ABC's "Good Morning America." Annie Leibovitz went to Pearl's Greenwich Village apartment to photograph her for an article in Vogue.
"I know the pressure to 'feed the beast,"' she writes in her book. "I have felt it. I think about how easy it is to reduce this story to a simple tale: handsome hostage husband, pregnant despairing wife. There is no way for any of these shows to reflect the complexity of what is going on here, and while simplification of complex events may seem harmless, it isn't."
Grief certainly runs through her book, as does a strong sense of the idealism and love that bound her and Daniel Pearl. But her purpose is not romantic. The book is styled as a tough-minded thriller; Pearl's search for her husband's kidnappers and killers becomes a window into the murky world of today's geopolitics at ground level, including the people who cover it.
Sarah Crichton, Pearl's collaborator, said that was what interested her. "A whole genre has built up of the grieving widow book," said Crichton, a former Newsweek editor and, until recently, the publisher of Little, Brown. "But I'm interested in global politics and international stories. To be crass, this was a perfect vehicle to talk about those things for an American audience."
Crichton and Pearl were interviewed in Pearl's apartment. Though most of the things Pearl collected with her husband are in storage, her apartment contains reminders of the nomadic life they lived during their almost four years together: a framed piece of fabric from India, a mask from Zaire, a coffee table from Delhi.
They were joined by Asra Nomani, a colleague of Daniel Pearl's at The Journal, who is a crucial part of the story. Nomani is exotic, like Pearl, who in her book describes her father as "the illegitimate son of a Dutch Jewish diamond merchant, an unpleasant homosexual who made love only once to a woman and managed to get her pregnant."
Her mother was a Cuban of many racial lineages. Nomani was born to Muslim parents in India but raised in Morgantown, West Virginia. She began working at The Wall Street Journal in 1988 but took a leave to write a book about Tantra, popularly viewed as the way to sexual ecstasy through an ancient form of yoga. After Sept. 11, 2001, she had traveled to Pakistan to write about the situation. Daniel and Mariane Pearl he had been stationed in Bombay were staying at her house when Daniel Pearl was kidnapped.
Nomani, who was also pregnant (and now has a year-old son), helped Mariane Pearl pursue her own investigation when Daniel Pearl disappeared. Their meticulous note-taking proved crucial to writing the book, Crichton said, especially Nomani's tendency to mark not just the day but the exact time of every note. Nomani said she began doing this in junior high school and is fairly certain the practice was influenced by the "Nancy Drew" mystery series.
These notes, 200 pages of them, typed and single-spaced, became the backbone for the book. Pearl planned to write it by herself but said she called in Crichton last November when the project became overwhelming.
Crichton, who describes herself as "a highly skeptical New Yorker," said she was intrigued but wary. She delayed saying yes until she met Adam Pearl, who was then almost 6 months old. "If there was this neurotic, withdrawn, miserable little thing, I would know emotionally it was too much to handle," Crichton said. When the baby tossed her a smile, Crichton was in. "The message of this book is that you have to embrace life again," she said.
It is easy to see why people including the largely female audience at the "Oprah" taping seem to be so affected by Pearl. She addresses her own tragedy without self-pity and with remarkable naturalness, considering how practiced she has become at what she calls "the media waltz." She appears to be unspoiled by the outpouring of affection from innumerable ordinary people as well as from national leaders, including George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin.
Pearl has a gentle aura, but she can be tough. In conversation and in her book she spoke angrily about Kamran Khan, special correspondent for The Washington Post in Pakistan, who also was a reporter for the English-language Pakistani paper The News. She said it was Khan who first revealed in print, in the Pakistani paper, that Daniel Pearl was Jewish. "That's like a death sentence in that part of the world," Pearl said. "I have never heard anything from The Washington Post."
She may have been better prepared than most people would have been for the horrific turn in her life that made her an international cause celebre. Her father, a mathematician, killed himself when she was 9.
She had been unaware, however, that his death was a suicide until she was 17 and found a letter he had written weighing the reasons for life and for death. "His conclusion was that it's not worth it," she said. "When I read that letter, I had to know for myself if life is worth it or not." That's when she began practicing Buddhism.
Pearl and Nomani said they were determined to continue their own investigation, until they uncover at the highest levels who was responsible.
