Who Killed Daniel Pearl (5 page)

Karim, the caretaker of the farm who has been keeping a close watch over him for the past week, comes to wake him up.

He gets along well with Karim. He has gotten used to their long conversations in the evening, after the lamps have been put out and the others have gone to bed. In his poor English, the Pakistani tells him about his five children, his little house in Rahim Yar Khan, his problems. And he, in turn, asks over and over the same questions: What do you have against us? Why do you hate us so? What crime has America committed that deserves such terrible reprobation, and what can we do, or be, to earn back the trust of your people, of all poor people?

But this time, something is wrong.

Even groggy with sleep, he senses this is not the same Karim. He is stony, closed. He can tell from the way Karim tears off the covers and orders him to get dressed that he is no longer the companion of yesterday who gave him his daily lesson of Urdu. And then, when he fumbles at his shoe laces with stiff, clumsy fingers, the Pakistani speaks with a tone he's never used before and it sends a chill through his body.

“Don't bother with that. Where you're going, you won't need laces,” he says, tight-lipped, without looking at him.

And with that, with these words, and especially with the way he says them, he understands that something has transpired during the night, that they have made a decision, and the decision is not to set him free.

Suddenly, he feels fear.

He feels a glacial rush flow through his body—and for the first time since he has been here, he feels fear.

And yet, at the same time, he cannot believe it.

No, again, he does not believe it—he cannot believe that, in the space of one night, the situation could have deteriorated to this extent.

To begin with, he is their ally. Their a-l-l-y. A hundred times over the past eight days he has told them that if there were but one American and one Jew left in the world to extend a hand to Muslims in general and those of Pakistan in particular, to reject the absurd theme of the clash of civilizations, and to believe in peace with Islam, he would be that man. Daniel Pearl, Jew, liberal, hostile—as his entire career has demonstrated— to everything stupid and arrogant about America, friend of the neglected, of the downtrodden, of the disinherited.

And he is lucky. He has always been one of those people protected by an uncanny kind of luck. His father is telling the press the same thing at this very moment, and it's what he himself has always said, throughout his fifteen years as a journalist. Danny has a lucky star. Danny has an angel on his shoulder. It would be a fine thing if his luck deserted him now, in Pakistan, on the eve of the day he is due to leave for America! What an ironic turn of events that would be, if his luck turned just as he and Mariane learned they were going to have a son!

To think you could find a Muslim gynecologist in Karachi willing to do a sonogram and tell them the sex of their unborn child, and then not be able to convince these Islamists that they've got the wrong man, that he is not the Zionist Jewish spy denounced in the press. No, it is too absurd! And since all that is absurd is, to the inveterate rationalist, stupid, impossible, unreal, he decides this will never happen and that, ultimately, he'll make his jailers listen to reason.

The door leading to the second room, where the others are, is open. Karim, still obstinate, still evasive, motions to him to move forward. Forget about the shoes. He follows without too much apprehension, breathing in the sweet scent of the nearby bougainvillea and mango trees.

When he reaches the room, he understands.

He still cannot believe it, but he understands.

First of all, their faces.

Their careful air this morning.

This communion of terror he senses in their body language and in the way they watch him enter.

He knew, from talking with them, that Bukhari, the commando, had the blood of at least a dozen Shiites on his hands. He knew that Amjad Hussain Farooqi, or Lahori, the head of Lashkar i-Janghvi, had ties with al-Qaida. But he knew it without knowing it. They may have told him, Bukhari may have retorted, the other night, with a childlike laugh; “You, you may have an angel, but I've got a devil!” —they looked too nice to be killers.

But suddenly, that's it.

Silent, hands crossed behind their backs, their sinister expressions revealed by the unsteady light of the oil lamps, they show their other faces, the ones they wore when they plunged the children of Shiite families who lived near to the Binori Town mosque, in Karachi, into quick lime. He had read an article about it one day. And all at once, he knows.

And, there are three men in the corner of the room, near the door, who weren't here yesterday. Sitting on their heels, with empty soda cans at their feet, they seem distracted, as though their thoughts are elsewhere or they are praying. They wear the red and white scarf of Palestinian fighters
,
but from the long white tunics pulled up on their calves, their bare feet, and, at their waist, the curved dagger with the handle of horn, the
jambiya
as they call it in Sanaa, he can tell they are Yemenis.

“Lie down!” Bukhari orders in a dull, hollow voice, as though he were talking to himself.

The ground is bare. It's cold. He doesn't see where he is supposed to lie down.

“Lie down!” Bukhari repeats impatiently, a little louder.

And, to his great surprise, Bukhari walks over and gives him a kick in the shins that makes him fall to his knees as the others jump on him, two of them tying his hands with a piece of green rope, a third whipping an enormous syringe out of the folds of his robe and swiftly pulling up his shirt to give him a shot in the stomach.

He struggles. “Are you crazy? What are you doing? I'm your friend.”

But now they're hitting him, and Bukhari is yelling “Shut up!” as they kick him in the stomach, in the head. He goes silent, panting. He tries to protect his face. He is stunned with astonishment and terror. And then, when he is in too much pain to get up by himself, they lift him by the arms and pull him to his feet.

He feels strange now. His mind is fuzzy, his ears are buzzing. He feels like he's being sucked into a vortex of sand. But at the same time, mixed with the fear, the pain, the tears and the torpor, he is flooded with euphoria— as though his mind were a bright flame that has escaped his body and is floating next to him.

“They've drugged me,” he says to himself. “The syringe. Those bastards, they've drugged me.”

He doesn't really know if the idea is reassuring or makes him even more fearful.

“You're going to repeat after me,” Bukhari tells him, taking a piece of paper out of his pocket and motioning to one of the Yemenis who has a camcorder that, blinded by tears and the sweat dripping into his eyes, he initially takes for a gun about to kill him point blank: “My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish-American from Encino, California, USA.”

Pearl repeats it. It's hard, he's out of breath, but he repeats it.

“You are going to say, ‘I come from, on my father's side of the family is Zionists. My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.'”

Pearl would like to tell the Yemeni that he is too close, that's not the way to film, that the result will be an amateur cameraman's image of a face with “fish eyes.” But, despite the strange state they have inflicted upon him, this bizarre mixture of euphoria and pain racking his body and mind, he is lucid enough to realize this is no time to give advice. And so he repeats the phrase again.

“Articulate,” says Bukhari. “Speak more slowly and distinctly: ‘My family follows Judaism. We have made numerous family visits to Israel. In the town of B'nei Brak, in Israel, there is a street called Chaim Pearl Street which is named after my great-grandfather who was one of the founders of the town.'”

How do they know that, Pearl wonders? Where did they go to dig up that information? B'nei Brak is a small town. And the fame of poor Chaim Pearl, his forebear, has never gone beyond the close circle of his parents and his two sisters. So he's not going to repeat that, he says to himself. He can't let these barbarians put their dirty hands on this little family secret. But Farooqi is already walking over to him, and he sees the huge shoe that hurt him just a moment ago, and so, with a tentative half-smile he hopes will be perceptible on film, he thinks better of it and repeats, “My family follows Judaism. We have made numerous family visits to Israel . . . ”

Bukhari seems content. He clears his throat. He spits on the ground. He congratulates the Yemeni, seeming not to realize that this incompetent is too close—but no matter. And he gestures to Pearl, a sign of encouragement, as if to say “You see! You can do it!” and it gives him a moment's hope.

“Repeat again,” he says, after peering at length at his paper. “Repeat this: ‘Not knowing anything about my situation, not being able to communicate with anybody, only now realizing that some of the people in Guantanamo Bay must be in a similar situation.'”

That's all right. That's what he really feels. He can agree with condemning the conditions of detention of the prisoners at Guantanamo. The only problem is he's out of breath, and his delivery is too jerky. The Yemeni makes a face. They'll have to re-shoot it.

“Again,” Bukhari continues: “I've come to realize that this is the sort of problems that Americans are going to have anywhere in the world now. We can't be secure, we can't walk around free, as long as our government policies are continuing and we allow them to continue.”

It's not because he is unwilling. No, he can say this too, if necessary. But the drug must be taking effect, and his head hurts. His legs are like a rag doll's and he's having increasing difficulty concentrating. Can Bukhari understand that? Can he give him some shorter sentences to say now?

Bukhari, suddenly understanding, almost human, chin in hand as though the whole scene deserved contemplation, dictates this sentence: “We Americans cannot continue to bear the consequences of our government's actions . . . ”

And then the rest, one after another, patiently, as though dealing with a child:

“Such as the unconditional support given to the state of Israel . . . Twenty-four abuses of the veto power to justify the massacre of children . . . And the support for the dictatorial regimes in the Arab and Muslim world . . . And also the continued American military presence in Afghanistan.”

There. It's done. The Yemeni turns off the camera. Are they going to let him sit down now, give him a little water? He feels so terrible.

And then, an extraordinary thing happens.

Bukhari goes and turns up the oil lamps to provide a much brighter light.

He barks an order to Fazal, who has been sitting curled up, as if he were cold, in the corner with the Yemenis ever since they came into the room. He hurriedly jumps up and crosses the room, eyes wide and staring, and steps just behind Pearl.

At a sign from Bukhari, without a word, the other Pakistanis get up and leave. Before they shut the door quickly behind them, he glimpses the dirty light of dawn, the clouds moving in the sky, a flock of birds scattering. Just for an instant, he can feel the beneficent coolness of the early morning breeze on his swollen face.

The only ones left in the room besides Fazal Karim and the out-of-breath cameraman, fussing with his camcorder, are the other two Yemenis, who get up and unsheathe their daggers. One of them comes and stands behind him, next to Fazal Karim, the other stands close at his left, practically pressed against him, the dagger in his right hand.

And then, all of a sudden he sees him.

He couldn't see him until now, because he was in the shadows, and anyway, without his glasses, he can't see more than six feet in front of him.

He sees his eyes, bright, feverish, too deeply set, and strangely pleading—for half a second, he wonders if he too has been drugged.

He sees the weak chin, the barely perceptible trembling of the lips, the outsized ears and bony nose, and the straight, tar-black hair.

He sees his hand, large, hairy, with its gnarled joints and its dirty fingernails, and a long, grainy scar that runs from thumb to wrist and seems to cut it in two.

Then finally, he sees the knife. He has never seen a knife so close up, he says to himself. The handle of cow horn, the leather. A chip near the handle, a bit of rust. And then, there's another thing. The Yemeni sniffles. He blinks and sniffles simultaneously, as if he were keeping time. He can't seem to stop sniffling. Does he have a cold? No. It's a tic. He thinks: That's funny, this is the first time I've ever seen a Muslim with a tic. And then he says to himself: The executioners, in the past . . . it was a good idea to put a hood over their heads, to hide their faces . . . It's hot. His head hurts. He wants desperately to sleep.

The green light on the camera flashes on.

Fazal faces him and ties his wrists together and then, stepping behind him, grabs him by the hair.

The nape of the neck, he thinks, shaking his head and trying to free himself—the center of voluptuousness, the weight of the world, the hidden eye of the Talmud, the executioner's axe.