Mariane Pearl: You can't break a strong spirit

Barrington Courier-Review · March 20, 2008

By JOANNA BRODER

Murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl found a way to communicate his spirit even in the midst of the most dire circumstances, his widow Mariane Pearl told a group gathered in Chicago on March 13.
In the days immediately preceding Daniel's brutal murder by Islamic militants in 2002, he made a V-for-victory sign in one photograph taken by his captors and gave the finger in another, Mariane told about 1,700 people gathered to attend the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center's annual humanitarian awards dinner held at Chicago's Hyatt Regency hotel.

"That's when I knew that no matter what you do to somebody, you can't get hold of a strong spirit," said Pearl, a French-born freelance journalist who was the evening's keynote speaker.

"And the most valuable and the strongest weapon we have against terrorism and all kind of oppressors is resilience."

Jewish people are no stranger to resilience, Pearl said. "No other people in the world have shown such resilience, such ability to raise up again."

She noted her father, who ultimately committed suicide, was a Holocaust survivor.

Mariane Pearl, who authored the book A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Daniel Pearl which later became a major motion picture starring Angelina Jolie, proceeded to share how she used her own wisdom to confront "my own personal Holocaust."

Jewish 'not a limit'

Mariane first met Daniel Pearl at a party in Paris while he was stationed at the Wall Street Journal's London bureau. She recalled marveling at how at ease he felt traveling the world. Then Daniel told her he was Jewish.

Mariane is a Buddhist.

"It was so refreshing to see that for him being Jewish was not a limit," Pearl said. "It was the opposite."

But what inspired her most about Daniel was his ability not to be cynical about the world. Her father had once told her that cynicism is a weapon of the weak.

Daniel was the first journalist she had met who had the courage not to be cynical, she said.

As the Wall Street Journal's Southeast Asia bureau chief, Daniel was working in Karachi, Pakistan, on Jan. 23, 2002, when he was kidnapped.

Immediately after Daniel disappeared, Pearl said, she knew who was responsible.

After the terrorists brutally murdered Daniel (he was beheaded), she figured out their goal: they wanted her to be afraid.

"It's an act of terror meaning whoever was going to die in their hands is not going to be the target. The target is everybody else," she said.

Mariane thought about why terrorism was so efficient and why perpetuating fear was such an effective strategy. She made a list of the qualities terrorists had: courage ("even though it's courage borne out of despair"), self-control and determination.

Then Pearl thought about what qualities she had that the terrorists lacked.

"The one thing I knew for sure that they didn't have is hope," Pearl said.

Hope became, in her words, her weapon.

"It was the most efficient tool for me to resolve what was going on," Pearl said.

Hope is not just a nice thing to have. Hope is vital, Pearl said. And true hope is borne out of hardship, she added.

She wrote herself a note.

Since the terrorists wanted to kill her trust, she resolved to reach out to others. Since they wanted to kill her joy, she promised to laugh again. Since they wanted to paralyze her, she decided to take action.

During the five weeks that Pearl didn't know Daniel's fate, she tried to keep hope alive as an act of resistance.

Wisdom to confront evil

When Pearl discovered that Daniel had been killed, her first reaction was to go outside and grab a gun. (Many guards were stationed around the house where she was staying and there were a lot of weapons, she said). As Pearl held the gun, it dawned on her that it isn't that hard to kill someone. At the same time she realized that it would take courage to put down the gun and strive to uphold the values that she and Daniel had together embodied. It was difficult to put the gun down, but she did it.

"Without education we cannot confront our own evil," Pearl told the group. But she added that knowledge alone was not enough and could even be dangerous. Omar Sheikh, the man responsible for kidnapping Daniel, had graduated from the London School of Economics, she told the group.

So it's important to use knowledge to develop one's own sense of wisdom, Pearl said.

"Because a man or woman that has nurtured their own wisdom won't kill somebody."