What really happened to Daniel Pearl?

AL FRESCO

It is astonishing how short public memories are and how swiftly public perceptions change. In a prolonged season of Hindi-Paki bhai bhai, is about to appear a small book, already widely reviewed in the West, that might dampen the spurt of goodwill currently washing over two hostile neighbours.

Mariane Pearl, wife of the American Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl, held hostage and murdered by Islamic militants in Karachi two years ago, has recently published her harrowing memoir.

If you are a gung-ho optimist rather than a healthy sceptic it might be safer not to read A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Daniel Pearl (Virago; Pages: 278).

But if you are curious about the sort of place Pakistan is, what was "" and despite reported purges, still is "" the interlinked network of jehad-waging groups that a military dictatorship is grappling with, how the ISI operates, and the risks journalists covering the beat are vulnerable to, then get a copy fast.

John le Carre, who understands a thing or two about the murky underworld of criminals, killings and spies, has called it "a heart-wrenching and extraordinary book".

The desperate edge to this thriller is provided by the fact that every event was lived and that every person named is real. In the days between Danny's kidnapping and murder the portrait Mariane Pearl draws of "a country as tense and paranoid as Pakistan" can only be true.

Herself a journalist and mother-to-be of their first child, she weaves in their short-lived love story in brief flashbacks, up to the day when Danny's body, cut in pieces, was found in a grave outside Karachi.

The book has the narrative grittiness of a film-noir, in which close observation of the characters' feelings points to the unfolding horror of the denouement.

Mariane Pearl, of Cuban-Dutch descent, was a journalist with French radio in Paris, when she met Danny at a party. Their transcontinental love affair blossomed, they married, and Pearl was transferred as Journal's correspondent to South Asia.

From the outset they forged a partnership that was both deeply personal and professional. Immediately in the wake of 9/11 he was instructed to move to Pakistan to follow the story of jehadi groups. Editors urged him to get into Afghanistan.

Jewish by birth but entirely liberal in outlook, a meticulous journalist (he took copious notes in an indecipherable shorthand) and a seasoned war correspondent (he was in Bosnia), Pearl was not foolhardy. He resisted being bulldozed into Afghanistan, warning his editors that it would be irresponsible to proceed without proper training.

But he plunged into the underground network of militant outfits proliferating in Karachi in search of how the jehadi operation functioned. He left one afternoon for an appointment made through intermediaries ("fixers" in journalistic parlance) and never returned.

This is a story as much of the militant groups as of the official forces that insidiously encouraged their growth and after 9/11 were hard put to restrain them "" the world of Pakistani politicians, police and intelligence; of American intelligence operations in the subcontinent; and of the competitive newspaper world where ruthless editors wage daily battles over topping one another's Page 1 stories.

When Danny Pearl disappeared, all hell broke loose in these interlinked worlds. Mariane Pearl tells it with brutal honesty, particularly the risk it exposed her closest allies to.

When Danny and she moved to Karachi, instead of living indefinitely in hotels, they moved in with a feisty Indian-born but American-educated friend, a woman journalist named Asra Nomani who lived on her own in Karachi.

When Danny disappeared the two women "" suddenly engulfed by an all-male world of police, politicians, intelligence operatives and editors "" became accomplices, simultaneously fighting officialdom and spearheading the search and investigation.

Personal stress was intensified by regular rumour and innuendo in the press. Just as the Pakistani establishment speculated over Danny's Jewish antecedents or suggested that Indian intelligence had masterminded his kidnapping to discredit Pakistan, so Asra Nomani's was vilified for Indian birth, her loyalties and her independent lifestyle.

One of the most gripping aspects of Mariane Pearl's ordeal is the story of two women, one pregnant, caught in an escalating crisis dominated entirely by men.

Two truths are contained in A Mighty Heart. One is the old adage of reality being stranger than fiction. The other is E M Forster's dictum that when it comes to a choice between betraying your friend and betraying your country, it is better to betray your country.