Who Killed Daniel Pearl by Bernard-Henri Lévy Read Free Book Online

Talmud, the executioner’s axe.
    And the gaze of this man, he thinks, looking at the Yemeni with the knife. For a fraction of a second their eyes meet, and he realizes, at that instant, that this man is going to slit his throat.
    He would like to say something.
    He feels he must tell them, one last time, that he is a journalist, a real one, and not a spy. He wants to shout—“Would a spy have trusted Omar Sheikh? Would a spy have come here so confidently, without any cover?”
    But it must be the drug, having its final effect.
    Or else it’s the rope cutting into his wrists and hurting him.
    The words won’t come.
    Talking becomes difficult, like breathing under water.
    He tries to turn his head, to beseech Karim with his eyes one last time. The cigarette, remember the cigarette you offered me last night? Don’t you remember everything I told you about the way we American journalists helped the Afghan mujahideen during the jihad against the Russians? Don’t you remember, you were so moved by it, you put your hands on my shoulders, your brusque and brotherly embrace? But Karim holds him with an iron hand so that he can’t move an inch.
    And then, like static jamming his mind, thoughts seem to slither in lazily from obscure corners: His bar mitzvah, in Jerusalem. His first ice cream, in a café on Dizengoff, in Tel Aviv with his father. George, the Bulgarian shoe salesman he met in the tube in London. His friend, the Belgian bass player. The Irish fiddler he had played with last year in a Soho bar. The soft, whiney sounds of the shelling by the liberation army of the Tiger, that last night at Asmara. His wedding to Mariane, in a chateau near Paris. And Hemingway’s matador, leading with his left shoulder, the sword that strikes the bone and refuses to go further. Yet it takes only a third of the blade, if it comes from high enough, and if the matador’s aim is true, to reach the aorta of the bull, if he is not too massive. His father, again, carrying him on his shoulders coming home from a walk. His mother’s laugh. A round loaf of French bread, the deep, tasty crevices of its crust.
    As the Yemeni killer grabs the collar of his shirt and rips it open, he thinks for a moment of other hands. Caresses. Games of his childhood. Nadour, the Egyptian friend at Stanford he used to spar with, between classes, for fun—whatever became of him? He thinks of Mariane, that last night, so beautiful, so desirable—women want what, in the end? Passion? Eternity? She was so proud, Mariane, when he got his Gilani scoop! And he misses her so! Had he really been reckless, should he have been more wary of this Omar? But how could you know? How could you suspect? He thinks of the dying Kosovar refugee who clutched his hand. He thinks of the sheep he saw suffocate, last year, in Teheran. He thinks he prefers Bombay and the Secret Book of the Brahmin to Karachi and the Koran . His memories are like horses on a carousel whirling round in his head.
    He feels the hot, slightly rank breath of the panting Yemeni.
    From the courtyard, he smells a sweetish odor that, until now, he hadn’t noticed and that, absurdly, bothers him: Funny, he thinks, when you haven’t bathed for eight days . . . you can easily get used to your own stench. . . but that of others . . .
    He hears strange noises that come from far away and sound like the echo you hear when you put a conch shell to your ear. He even thinks, for an instant, are those footsteps? Voices? Someone coming to save me?
    It’s funny, up until this morning he would have thought the courtyard was silent, you couldn’t hear anything. But now, he hears everything. You can hear a rustling, a furious murmur of sounds, all blending together. An avalanche of unsuspected sounds. Never before had he listened so closely to the background sounds of silence, the sounds he wishes would block out the breathing of the Yemeni.
    A moment of dizziness.
    His