“Anyone can have excellent and noble values.
But what really matters is human behavior.
What kind of man are you? What kind of woman are you?“
Mariane Pearl
Mariane Pearl was born in France in 1967, the daughter of a Dane with a Cuban. When she was nine years old, her father committed suicide because of his disillusionment with politics, with which he believed he could save the world. Her last words to Mariane were: “Do not be cynical, cynicism is the weapon of the weak.”
She grew up in Paris, where she met Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in 1998. They got married a year later in Normandy and moved to Mumbai because Daniel was responsible for the branch office in South Asia. Also in 1999, Mariane´s mother passed away.
She was five months pregnant when she and her husband traveled to Pakistan following an investigation by Daniel into an alleged link between the al-Qa’ida terrorist network and Richard Reid, an Englishman known as “the shoe bomber”.
On January 23, 2002, Daniel was kidnapped in Karachi. Four days later, his hijackers, belonging to the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, sent an e-mail to the media accusing Daniel of espionage in the service of the CIA and demanding better conditions for the detainees in Guantánamo, Cuba, among others political demands.
On January 30, a second e-mail threatened to assassinate Daniel and other American journalists within 24 hours if they did not leave Pakistan. Mariane even made an appeal for her husband’s life during the broadcast of the American network CNN, but without success.
Despite all efforts, on February 21, a three-and-a-half-minute video was dropped off at the US Consulate in Karachi, proving the cruel and brutal murder of Daniel.
After the tragedy, the French journalist transformed the horror of loss and the fear of impotence into a commitment to honor two principles: Ethics and Truth. Mariane was convinced that if her husband’s killers wanted to show the horrible side of humanity, her real revenge would be to expose the integrity, beauty and stamina of life.
She wrote “A Mighty Heart,” a memoir to celebrate the values of humanism, hope and dignity, through the report of the investigation conducted to try to rescue Daniel in Pakistan. The work was translated into 15 languages and inspired the film released in 2007, starring Angelina Jolie in the role of Mariane.
Driven by the idea that there is hope, the question is where to find it, Mariane wrote her second book, “In Search of Hope”, which brings together the profiles she wrote for her column in Glamour magazine about extraordinary women from different countries around the world who dedicate their lives to the fight against injustice. Women from Cambodia, Cuba, Liberia, Mexico, Turkey, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Uganda, Senegal, Italy, etc. who have become inspiring examples as they use their own lives to change the world around them.
Mariane chose to focus only on women’s stories because she classify them as the most courageous, resilient, and determined agents of change in the world. For the journalist, women are the basis of all families and communities, so when a woman rises to fight for what she believes, she carries with her entire families and communities.
The women profiled in the book fought against doubts and fears, converted anger in indignation and this in action, and so they revived the hope, as Mariane herself did. Real women who cried, sweated and bled to defend with courage and faith issues that ultimately affect all of us.
Currently, Mariane is the lead editor of Chime for Change, a global movement to promote education, health and justice for all girls and women in the world. The campaign was founded by the Italian Gucci brand to raise funds and raise awareness of the importance of women’s empowerment. Convinced that women offer more hope for the future, Mariane gathers inspiring stories of girls and women around the world.
Mariane is also part of the honorary council of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, created by Daniel’s parents to promote internationally tolerance and understanding through journalism, music and dialogue.
Among the many awards she has received are: Internews Media Leadership Awards, El Mundo Award for Excellence in Journalism and Glamour Woman of the Year Award.
Introduction of the book “In search of hope”:
When confronted with seemingly endless headlines about everything that’s going on in the world, most of us take it all in on automatic pilot, struggling to resist the claws of helplessness—that feeling that makes the heart crack open the same way droughts split the thirsty earth. Those cracks in our hearts are where fear settles, distorting our perception of the world and our relationships with others. That fear allows the values that are essential to our integrity—justice and dignity, empathy and price—to remain hostage to empty rhetoric. But that’s not the world. Not necessarily.
Sources: Oprah, Independent, Mariane Pearl
