Chekhov's Mistress
I am not Terrorized
While the world in Pakistan seemed to be splintering ever more into violence with Benazir Bhutto’s assasination, my wife and I watched A Mighty Heart (this bit of parental luxury took two nights to accomplish). The movie (based upon Mariane Pearl’s memoir of a similar name, where “A Mighty Heart” refers to Daniel’s) was well done, I suspect (hope) that is because the director Michael Winterbottom stayed the course of the real story and treated what he had with impeccable timing.
There was a quiet theme running through the movie and that theme is also what the Daniel Pearl Foundation espouses – cross-cultural understanding. The path to finding Daniel Pearl required cooperation of a French woman, an Indian woman, an American woman, an American man and a Pakistani man, among a host of others, all carrying the baggage of their respective bureaucracies (national security services, large newspapers, federal government) yet for these few weeks they managed to work together and despite the frenetic pace of the chase each found time to honor their respective religions, fading from Mariane’s Buddhist rituals to muslim prayers with poetic ease punctuating the tension between them and the outside world.
The line that got me was toward the end where Mariane Pearl thanked those who worked with her. She said in response to those who felt defeated that she was not. In short, she said that the murderers wanted to inflict terror and therefore they did not win: “I am not terrorized” she said. Coming from a woman who lost her husband to brutal murderers, coming at a time when many many people in the world act out of fear (a fear that often turns into racism), that’s a beautiful statement.
comments
It is indeed a beautiful statement. I’m not sure about its accuracy, though. Speaking as someone who also has a little bit of background in the region, I’m not so sure they were trying to instill fear in Marianne when they killed Daniel.
I just think they were trying to kill Daniel.
“Terrorists” is a misnomer. They don’t want to scare you. They don’t care if you’re comfortable or if you’re terrorized. They don’t care even if you’re a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, or a Buddhist (or whatever). If you’re American, they want you dead. It’s as simple as that. And the intrepid Daniel Pearl, all the cross-cultural understanding in the world aside, was American.
I asked a mujihadeen (it is “mujihadeen”, by the way, not the more common but incorrect “mujahideen” [comes from the word “jihad"]) about the end of jihad, if there was some date for the end of holy war against America. He said no, but the holy war would end when all Americans are dead. So I asked him, “What about the ones who convert to Islam?”
“Then they will die Muslim,” he said. “But they will die.”
I submit this comment because it concerns me that we’re so open to multiculturalism that we’re refusing to see the plain truth: All the understanding in the world isn’t going to be the solution in places like Pakistan. It will certainly be part of the equation, though.
– scruffysmileyface (01/30 at 09:06 AM)
Thanks for your comment scruffysmileyface, and I think I agree with you to the extent that my own understanding allows.
Early in Graham Allison’s (author of the seminal “Essence of Decision") book “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe” he says that there is, based on interviews he conducted, a definite number of American deaths set - amazingly - at around 3 million. I say amazingly because the number was rather specific, but it was tied to particular events (that escape me at the moment with three hours sleep).
I think too, that while I nor Mariane Pearl can speak to the motivations of terrorists, the mindset that she overcomes is distinctly American (and perhaps European, but then again maybe less so). The reason I brought it up is that I feel as though our fear leads us to racism and to keep from one we have to overcome the other
See the doc-film “State of Fear” about how this happened on a large scale in Peru, and it’s clear that we’ve moved in that direction here in this country.
So that’s one perspective and you’re right about the other, but the two aren’t, in my view, mutually exclusive.
– Bud Parr (01/30 at 10:52 AM)
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