MARIANE'S MIGHTY HEART
The Sunday Independent (Ireland) · November 16, 2003
By Joe Jackson
MARIANE Pearl has a beautiful smile. Part of its beauty stems from the factthat she once learned, in an unbelievably brutal fashion, that sometimes a smile can be the most defiant act in life.
Less than two years ago her husband, Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped by terrorists in Karachi who then sent Mariane a set of photographs to confirmhis identity. In one, Pearl's captors are holding a revolver perilously close to his skull. But in another he is seen smiling in defiance and giving a 'f**k these guys' one-finger signwhich, Mariane believes, was meant to convey to Daniel's loved ones the coded message: 'Even though these terrorists may kill me, they can't break my spirit.'
Tragically, not long afterwards Daniel Pearl's throat was cut and he was beheaded. His murderers also captured this heinous crime on a video that was broadcast, at least once,in the United States and made available on the Internet. Yet if you think the story can't get worse, think again. This nightmare took place when Mariane was five monthspregnant with their first child.
As such, one can easily understand why Mariane Pearl has never watched the video andwhy journalists are asked not to raise questions about the manner of that murder when talking with the woman about her new book, A Mighty Heart - which is subtitled 'The Brave Life and Death of my husband Danny Pearl'. Even so, having read this trulyinspirational book, I for one was just as interested in the brave and mighty heart of Mariane herself.
Indeed, the more one learns about this fascinating 35-year-old woman of French-Cuban descent, the more one wonders how the hell she can smile at all. After all, Mariane was only nine when her "brilliant mathematician" father killed himself.
"How that affected me was that I learned, very young, you can't take life for granted," she reflects, sipping a hot whiskey "for a cold" in the Shelbourne Hotel. "But, at the time, I wastold by my mother that my father had a heart attack.
"It wasn't until I was 17 that I learned the truth. I found a letter dad wrote to apsychologist, explaining why he felt he was right to commit suicide. He just couldn't takelife anymore. So that obliged me to seek a meaning in my own life. And, fortunately, that was around the time I started studying Buddhism, which really helped because it raisesall those questions about life and death. My Buddhist beliefs have helped, ever since."
Nevertheless it's a long way from birth to 17. And the first nine years are the mostimpressionable. So what are Mariane's lingering memories of her dad and why did her mother lie about his death?
"She was trying to protect us, which is the same reason she didn't tell us that her life withdad had been so difficult at times," Mariane responds. "But what I remember most is thatmy dad seemed to be out of rhythm all the time. He would go to bed at three in themorning and, in the last two years of his life, spent so much time in bed depressed. But Iknew he loved me. And he'd tell me I mustn't make the mistakes he made.
"He tried to escape from himself through politics, he wanted to be a Leftist revolutionary.But that couldn't work because the happiness he was seeking doesn't come from outside,it comes from within. I realised that, even before I studied Buddhism. I also knew that all the happiness I will get in this life I would have to seek from within."
Another part of the "legacy" left by the early death of Mariane's father was the fact that foryears she would "automatically have relationships with older men" and look to them "for protection", thinking she was falling in love when "really" what she felt was "admiration". But such tendencies were "long gone" by the time she was 30 and met Daniel Pearl. Yet the circumstances of their first meeting, in 1998, brings us back to the "totally life-asserting force" that was her mother.
You see, Mariane's mum adored "people and music and dance", so she would organiseweekend parties in Paris "to gather everyone under the banner of the Cuban music sheloved". At one of those parties Mariane was dancing with her mother and saw Danny for the first time. But was she worried by the fact that, after they had their first, fleeting chat,he left with a "tall, blond, blue-eyed, German model" who also was a "lingerie designer"? No way!
"I was sorry to see he was accompanied but that didn't deter me at all!" she recalls, laughing mischievously. "Yet Danny looked strange to me at the start, very conservative,in his blue suit and standing there as if he was studying humankind! So, although I was interested in him after that first conversation, he was like a comic-book character at first, I didn't take him seriously.
"Nor did I even after we exchanged letters. But when he gave me that book, Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski, about the last shah of Iran and the events leading up tothe 1977 Islamic revolution, I read it and was entranced by the idea that he loved thebook and thought I would love it too. That made me realise we did have something in common."
At the time Mariane was living "as a roommate" with her ex-boyfriend and Danny, she insists, "wasn't seriously involved with" his lingerie-designing lover. Either way, the next time Mariane and Danny met she finally identified what it was about the guy that attractedher. "He gave his all to everything he did," she says.
Soon both were giving their all to a love affair in war zones all over the world. Which they went to, incidentally, not just because Danny worked for the Wall Street Journal butbecause Mariane is a broadcaster for French radio. Obviously, they had a lot more incommon than she realised at first. And nothing more so, it seems, than their core romanticism. One night in 1999 they drew up a wedding contract that - following Danny's death - now reads as poignant, and surely emphasises the fact that you really can't take life for granted.
'We promise to grow old together, while keeping each other young, maintaining our sense of humour, sharing love and secrets' was the first vow. Other vows included: 'We promiseto discover new things, places and people together, to view our life together as a work ofliterature' and 'We promise to treasure the other's happiness at least as much as our own, to support each other's creativity, and always keep faith in the strength of eachother's love.'
"I still relate to that wedding contract, that's one of the things that has kept me alive," saysMariane. "And I won't deny any of the values we articulated in that contract. It still strikesme as so valid today."
However if Mariane and Danny thought their marriage ceremony itself would be asromantic as that contract, they were wrong. Two weeks after they started living together, Mariane's mother was diagnosed with cancer and would die a month after the wedding.
"So one of the first things we confronted together as husband and wife was death," Mariane ponders. "In fact, my mother was dying when Danny and I decided to getmarried. So I knew what I was going to leave behind when she died. I was getting readyto start a new life.
"But my mother also was terrified of dying. So, because I wanted to help her as much aspossible, I worked very hard to overcome my own fear of her death and to be calm andreassuring for her. And I was there when my mother gave out one long, last sigh - almost like an expression of relief. I felt my own energy rise upwards with her. I even smiled, kissed my mother's lips, said good-bye. Whereas a year before I would not havebeen able to deal with her death so well. And all that, of course, gave me added strength when it came to Danny's death."
Another invaluable lesson which Mariane learned from the death of her mother was that sometimes you have to "evacuate" your own feelings - "which I still do today, in terms of Danny" - in order to survive.
"A lot of time when we say we 'love' someone it is more in relation to ourselves because,say, you are attracted to the image of that person" she suggests. "But when you reallylove it is not selfish in any way. In that sense, you love in a completely generous way.
"For example, at first I didn't want my mother to die because I didn't want to suffer. But then I realised I had to be there for her to the end, without thinking of how it would either hurt me or help me. That is like giving someone the gift of death, just like you give the giftof life when you have a baby.
"But after my mother died I did repossess my feelings and I did feel all the pain - whichwas eased because I knew Danny was there, he loved me, I loved him and he remindedme that I had done everything I could for my mother. Yet I was helped, too, by the fact that her last words to me were, 'I know you are going to do something great with your life.' That helped in terms of everything that followed. And, as I said earlier, my Buddhistfaith helped me make sense of it all."
What did follow probably began on the morning of January 23, 2002, when Mariane and Danny Pearl were curled together in bed in the "spooning" position that Mariane, as withmost truly intimate lovers, treasured so dearly. She certainly remembers loving thatposition even more so in war zones like Beirut, Croatia and Bombay because of the "sweet moments of oblivion and peace" it brought to her and Danny.
But how could Mariane have known, on that particular morning in Karachi, that she wouldnever sleep with her husband again? Hours later he went to interview Islamicfundamentalist Sheik Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani and never returned.
Actually, Danny did return, fleetingly, around 4pm and Mariane "as usual" ran into his arms and buried her face in his neck, "wanting to get drunk on his smell, wanting to feel some of his sweat" she writes in her book, before adding, again, poignantly: "I do not like to be separated from him." But minutes later Danny squeezed his wife tightly with one hand while, with the other hand, he caressed her face and said: "My wife, my life." Thenhe kissed her on the cheek, climbed into a cab and was gone. Forever. At least, physically.
"And we were so much in love that when I heard Danny was dead I really wanted to be with him," Mariane remembers. "That's why I did say, 'It's like Romeo and Juliet, you can't separate them. Nothing frightens me anymore. I am not afraid to die.' And I said that socalmly.
"Yet, at the same time, I could hear Danny saying in my ear two things. He would alwayssay, 'Never lose your smile', so I heard those words again. And I heard him saying, 'Don'tkill yourself.' That's when I realised whatever victory Danny had over his captors would be negated if I did kill myself. I also know Danny well enough to say that never, even at thelast moment, did he deny himself. On the contrary, he did, I really believe, send out the message, 'You might kill me but you'll never have my spirit' and that defiance was what I felt even when I was being told what was in that video.
"I also feel that the violence with which they treated Danny's body was a reflection of theirfrustration at the fact that they never did break him. Their goal was to get Danny to say 'I'm sorry' as, maybe, a representative of America. But he said, 'My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish and I am Jewish' and then gave a detail of his biography - mentioninga street in the town of Benei Beraq, in Israel, called Chaim Pearl Street, which is named after his great-grandfather - because he knew they would not think of cutting that from the video. So he was saying, 'I am going to die but I won't deny myself or my people.'"
Now, of course, there also is a book "named after" Danny Pearl, meaning Mariane hasfulfilled the wedding contract promise that she and her husband would view their life as awork of literature. Soon that book will be a movie starring Jennifer Aston and Brad Pitt(though Mariane has put in "stringent restrictions" in terms of how her husband's death will be depicted). But the purest legacy Daniel Pearl has left Mariane is their son Adam, who despite all this trauma, was born a "totally healthy" child - a miracle child, perhaps.
"To me he was," Mariane agrees, smiling. "And the point about all this is that I wasalways concentrated on the idea that Danny, Adam and I were one entity, even before the baby was born. Adam would not exist independent of us. So I even trusted the foetus.He was the manifestation of Danny's resistance and my resistance. So I knew he wouldbe born safe. And when Adam was born, I said, 'We made it' - meaning himself, Danny and I."
Adam Pearl - a picture of whom Mariane sweetly gave this interviewer as a "memento"of our meeting - also is to his mother "a manifestation" of the "two essential things those terrorists thought they took away" by killing Danny.
"The best way to fight terrorism, of any kind, is to confront those people with whatever they thought they took away from you, like, in my case, hope and a smile," she suggests."And it is such a courageous act to keep smiling after something like this happens to you.But you must not let terrorists have a victory over your faith in life, you must not let them kill that. I also know that if I lose my sense of humour, because of what happened to Danny, I die a little bit myself. And I won't let that happen."
This leaves only one question: could Mariane find it in her heart to forgive the men who killed Daniel Pearl?
"I'm not interested in forgiveness," she responds, unhesitatingly. "Yet I am interested inbeing triumphant, despite those terrorists. In fact, I've won already. But I also know that when I die I am going to have a smile on my face and I will be able to say, 'Just f**k off, you didn't get me in the end.' That will be my final victory."
