Living to tell

published June 12, 2008

Today I will talk about two men: Daniel Pearl and Alan Johnston.

They were journalists. Pearl was a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal while Johnston worked for the British Broadcasting Co. They were both kidnapped in the foreign country they were stationed in—Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan, and Johnston in Gaza. Their captors released videos enumerating demands on their respective governments and threatening to kill them if these demands were not met.

They made good on their threat to Pearl.

The story of Pearl’s kidnapping was the subject of the movie “A Mighty Heart” that was an entry to last year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film starred Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl, Daniel’s French wife, likewise a journalist, and who was six months pregnant at the time of her husband’s disappearance. The movie showed Mariane remaining stable all throughout the ordeal and managing to keep a level-headed attitude towards all the senseless killings around her. She recognized that her husband was only one of many—Pakistanis themselves included—whose lives were sacrificed in the hands of terrorists.

Pearl’s death was a shame. He was only 38, awaiting the birth of his first child. His abduction was owned up to by the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistan Sovereignty who accused him of being a spy for the United States government and who demanded the immediate release of prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

He had been investigating the case of Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber” and alleged links between Al Qaida and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. He was on his way to an interview for this story when he was kidnapped. The pursuit of material for his stories, the more prominent of which are archived in the Wall Street Journal’s Web site, had taken Daniel to many parts of the world. He had written a feature on the resurfacing of a Stradivarius violin made in Italy in 1732. He had published a story on songs that allegedly made pearl divers in Qatar go blind, on an enormous carpet as well as pop music in Iran, on the non-performing loans in Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, and on the war in Kosovo that, while savage, was not quite a case of genocide. Indeed, as his posthumous book was called, Daniel was “at home in the world.” According to Wikipedia, Pearl had “extraordinary skill as a writer” and “an eye for quirky stories.”

He would have turned in a good piece on his investigation, He would also have written a moving account of his captivity. But he had not been given the opportunity to do that. In early February 2002, Pearl’s throat was slit, his head chopped off and his body dismembered into 10 pieces. All this was in a video released by his captors.

In contrast, Johnston lived to tell about his experience. While driving on the streets of Gaza last year, his car was stopped and he was taken by gunpoint by militants. This happened 16 days before the end of his assignment in the area. Johnston spent 114 days in captivity, appeared in a video with explosives strapped to his body, and was even reported dead.

Eventually he was turned over to Hamas forces and set free. But in those four months, there were too many instances when he felt like he was at the lowest moment of his life and that death may be around the corner.

***

All this for a story, or a series of such. It is sad to hear that yet another journalist, along with her crew, is, as I write, held captive, her fate decided by strangers who don’t know her outside the image she projects on television and what she—and her network—stand for. I can imagine the frustration. Journalists are not known for allowing other people to run the course of their lives for them.

Some are quick to lay blame on reporters who stumble into harm. But they are entitled to their opinion. They would have probably stayed on the safe zone themselves. Some say the rush for an exclusive coverage, to the consequent advantage of the media organization and the career boost for the journalist, prompts him or her to tolerate a little more risk than usual. But believe it or not, it can also be possible for a journalist to believe a story is simply worth telling.

Whatever the motivations are, the fact is that there are people out there held against their will. There are organized groups that are figuring out how best to milk the situation to their benefit. And no, it’s not pretty at all. If it were only possible to be soberly outraged!

I would like to end by quoting the Johnston essay called My Kidnap Ordeal (www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7048652.stm). I hope it gives inspiration to whomever it’s due.

“...the kidnap’s legacy is not all bad.

With its locks and chains, its solitary confinement and moments of terror, it was a kind of dark education.

I lived through things which before I would have struggled to imagine and maybe, in the end, I will be stronger for that.

I have gained too a deeper sense of the value of freedom.

Perhaps only if you have ever been some kind of prisoner can you truly understand its worth.

Even now, more than three months after I was freed, it can still seem faintly magical to do the simplest things, like walk down a street in the sunshine, or sit in a cafe with a newspaper.

And in my captivity in Gaza, I learnt again that oldest of lessons. That in life, all that really, really matters are the people you love.”

May everybody who’s ever had a dark education live to tell about it.