In a grim documentary, widow offers ray of hope

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Oct. 8, 2006 12:00 AM

Near the end of The Journalist and the Jihadi: The Murder of Daniel Pearl, Pearl's widow stands defiant.

"I see happiness as an act of resistance," says Mariane Pearl, her words playing over video of her pushing her son - the son her husband never saw - in a swing. "My resistance to bitterness is my resistance to terrorism."

She's a better person than most, then.

It's impossible to watch the HBO documentary, about the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and brutally murdered in Pakistan in 2002, without working up a sense of outrage. It's a tale not only of loss, but of waste - a life, so much promise, simply wasted, thrown away. And that's not just true of Pearl.

The jihadi of the title is Omar Sheikh, British-born and educated at the London School of Economics. He studied applied mathematics and economics and grew to embrace radical Islam. He orchestrated Pearl's kidnapping, was arrested in Pakistan, convicted and sentenced to hang. (His appeal has been delayed 33 times.)

Part of the film's intent is to show how similar the two men's early lives were, how they diverged and how, tragically, they came together. It's not entirely successful on that front.

We learn that Sheikh was inspired by the fatwa imposed on Salmon Rushdie and the war in Bosnia - in fact, he traveled to Bosnia and was encouraged to move on to Afghanistan and Pakistan, to be trained as a warrior.

There's footage of Sheikh in school, where he nursed a liking for chess and arm wrestling - one observer notes that it's the perfect mental-physical combination for a control freak. You can't help looking in the videos for clues to what he would become, but besides an obvious intensity, nothing is evident.

What's lacking is something that's not really fair to expect. If only we could hear in Sheikh's words how he became so radicalized, so vehement in his beliefs. (There is brief footage of him being interviewed in a hospital bed after being wounded in India in 1994, but he merely declines to express any remorse for his actions.)

How does someone with so much promise go so horribly wrong? What goes into making someone think that the murder of innocent people is a justifiable method for spreading his beliefs? The question may be impossible to answer, but it's the key to trying to understand so much of what is going on in the world.

Pearl, who moved with his wife to Pakistan the day after Sept. 11 to begin covering the story behind those attacks, had long been seeking an interview with an Islamic spiritual leader for a story on the financing of al-Qaida. Finally, a contact named Bashir said he could get him in touch. Through a series of friendly e-mails, Pearl grew to trust Bashir - who was in reality Sheikh. Pearl disappeared on Jan. 23, 2002. His kidnappers sent photos of him being held at gunpoint.

The search for Pearl and his captors is gripping, playing like a true-crime drama - only with obviously more-tragic consequences. Piece by piece, investigators struggled to find clues before time ran out.

The sense of frustration over his kidnapping is still vivid. So is the outrage when the kidnappers released a video of Pearl being beheaded, a savage death for a man who by all accounts was peaceful. It's heartbreaking to hear Pearl's father recall his conversation with officials who informed him of his son's death. Are you sure he is dead, he asked? Yes, he was told. But how? Please don't make us tell you.

But he guessed the truth.

Pearl's body, mutilated and placed in plastic bags, wouldn't be found until May 2002.

There should be some comfort, I suppose, in Mariane Pearl's relentless optimism, and in Dan Pearl's good work and unflagging dedication to it. Knowing him better naturally leads to an increased anger and sadness at his death - but also, by gaining a sense of his joy in life and seeing his family's refusal to knuckle under to an unimaginable tragedy, maybe to a glimmer of hope, as well.