Who Killed Daniel Pearl Read Online Free Page B

the odors of jasmine mixed with those of the pestilent trench. A kind of outdoor bathtub that must have served as a water reservoir and is probably now used by the police when they pass.
    And as for the room itself, it’s the same cement floor blotched with wax and soot showing where candles and lanterns were placed. The same thick, cement-brick walls, a badly washed brown blood stain on one of them; a handful of hair; a transom facing the road and closed by a metal shutter that was then boarded over; a wooden door without keyhole or handle, barred with a beam slid through padlocked iron rings; construction material in a corner; fishing nets; clumps of straw mixed with mud; mattress stuffing with spider webs; old clay pots thrown in a corner under the transom; colonies of red ants; cockroaches; two discarded spoons and a plate; a candy-pink alarm clock with just one hand; crumpled cigarette packs; a cold brazier; a bed made of cords.
    This is Daniel Pearl’s prison.
    This is the scene of his martyrdom, his tomb.
    I remain there for an hour, letting the silence of the place slowly penetrate me, forever, in this terrible setting of the ordeal of the ten times sundered. And inside me, a feeling of friendship moves me to tears—for a man who was ordinary and exemplary, normal and admirable, who found here his last point of contact with life.

CHAPTER 3 A MYSTERIOUS SMILE
    In the photos of Pearl taken by his captors in the place where he was held hostage, which have been kept at the British consulate in Karachi, there is a very strange detail.
    I’m not referring to the photos everyone knows about, which went around the world when the kidnappers sent them by e-mail to the editors of various outlets of the international press.
    I’m not talking about the one, for instance, in which he’s sitting on an old car-seat, his head on his lap, his hair tousled, with a gun just inches from his temple.
    I’m not talking about the photo that is almost the same, where the gun has come even closer and the man holding it has grabbed Pearl’s hair with his other hand to push his head down even farther. In the foreground, his chained wrists, another chain on his ankles. His body is curled up into a ball. You can sense weariness, despair, fear.
    I’m not talking about the third one either, probably part of the same series, in which he has straightened up and, still against the same blue background, which is probably a sheet hung up to preclude identification of the wall and the house, he’s looking at the camera. His hair has been combed. He has pulled himself together, but his eyes are out of focus, the lower part of his face is swollen. He is pale with the pallor your skin gets in prison. He looks as if he’s been drugged, or beaten. (In my opinion these three pictures were taken the day he tried to escape; or maybe the next day when he tried again, during his walk; or maybe the day when a student from the madrasa next door came and knocked on the farm door, and Pearl started calling for help, screaming like a lunatic—not the kind of stuff, of course, his kidnappers appreciate . . . )
    No, I’m thinking about two other photos that as far as I know weren’t published in the international press, which were taken the next day—the day before his execution.
    In one, he is holding a copy of Dawn , the big Karachi daily, in order to date the photo and prove that the captive is still alive. He looks calm. His hair is tidy, freshly cut like a child’s. On his parted lips a faint smile lingers. His clear gaze faces the camera. His chains have been removed and he is holding the paper in both hands, steadily, just in the right spot so that neither photo nor headline is concealed. On that face, on that body—with control seemingly regained over his expression, the look in his eyes, and his posture—I can detect no trace of fear or anxiety.
    The other is even more surprising. The same