The baby who brings her hope
Good Housekeeping · November 1, 2003
By Brigid O'Shaughnessy
Late on the night of February 21, 2002, Mariane Pearl watched in fear as a group of American and Pakistani officials trooped through her door. It had been five wrenching weeks since her husband, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped by Islamic militants while on assignment in Pakistan. Mariane, six months pregnant with the couple's first child, had waited, holding on to hope. But that night, she knew by the haunted look in the men's eyes that it was over. "Mariane, I'm sorry," said the chief Pakistani investigator. "I didn't bring your Danny home." For a long frozen moment, Mariane laid her head on his shoulder. Then she turned and retreated to her bed room, slamming the door and crying out.
"I have never screamed like that before," she recalls in her new book, A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl. Her husband's remains were found months later in a shallow grave on the outskirts of Karachi and were eventually returned to America. Mariane briefly joined the Pearl family in Encino, California, for a memorial service, before returning to her native Paris to await the baby's birth. Today, in her sunny New York City apartment, Mariane, 37, is still coming to terms with her husband's death at 38. Writing the book, she explains, was "courageous therapy." While it was painful to immerse herself in the memories, the project was also very important to her.
"I wanted to be able to tell who Danny was," she says in her husky French accent, her voice surprisingly deep for such a petite woman.
Mariane and Danny met in 1998 at a party in Paris, where she was working for a small television station. (Danny was based in London at the time.) For their first date, he arrived at her apartment wearing a Freddy's Pizza T-shirt-part of his large collection of goofy shirts, she later learned--armed with eggs, herbs, and sun-dried tomatoes, which he promptly whipped into steaming omelets (trashing her kitchen in the process). "I burst out laughing," Mariane recalls. "I realized then that when Danny does something, he gives it his all."
The couple married in 1999, writing their own marriage contract, which included, among other things, the promise "to grow old together ... to discover new things ... to share our happiness with friends and relatives." At the time of Danny's kidnapping, he and Mariane were living in Pakistan, where Danny was investigating a connection between so-called shoe bomber Richard Reid and Al Qaeda.
When she first got the news, Mariane says, as she fingers Danny's gold wedding band, she didn't want to go on living. But she soon realized that she had to survive--for their unborn son and to see something positive emerge from her husband's murder. Mariane, in fact, wrote a letter to her baby, promising him that she would do everything possible to ensure his happiness and to help him "grow into a man of value."
Curly-haired Adam D Pearl was born on May 28, 2002. Baby Adam-Danny chose the name "as if we were creating the first man," says Mariane--was calm and confident right from the start. "He is a very happy boy," she reports with a smile. Indeed, when the toddler wakes up from his nap and joins his mother's interview, he beams with curiosity, flashing a beguiling, make-you-melt grin. He is busy trying to walk, sidling along the couch, then standing between Mariane's legs. Her devotion is obvious.
Already Mariane is grappling with how she will tell Adam about his father. "It's a very difficult question," she acknowledges. "But I really have no choice. I'll have to tell him the truth. If I don't, he will read it or find out some other way."
Adam will also be able to see the scores of letters that people have sent to him, telling stories about Danny and sharing memories. "He'll know how very down-to-earth his father was," says Mariane. Danny, she recalls in her book, didn't dream of winning a Pulitzer Prize, but rather of writing a hit song--"one of those tunes people just can't stop singing when they're happy." He "also kept a list on his laptop-called "Things I Love About Mariane"--which he told her was material for a song that he intended to write.
Mariane's home reflects Danny's passion for music: his beloved mandolins and violins stacked in their travel-worn cases beside the stereo, the bongo drums he bought for Mariane's birthday. She hopes to raise Adam in New York and Paris, with plenty of visits to his grandparents in California.
As for her own future, at this point Mariane finds the thought of being with another man "unnatural." But she has also begun to accept that she can't remain "dead" in that part of her life forever. "One day I told Danny that if anything ever happened to me, I wanted him to be with somebody else," she recalls. "He just said, 'Nah, nab, nah.' But I know that when you really love someone, you want the other person to cry and miss you, but you ultimately want them to have happiness."
Although she wrote her book with a collaborator, "I was completely with Danny and didn't look outside," Mariane says. "The really painful part of writing was finishing it. The ending was a farewell, saying goodbye to Danny." She hesitates, her deep brown eyes very still. "It is difficult," she adds. "But I know there is a long life ahead."
