A year ago in Bombay, influenced by the spiritual heft of India, I rolled my office chair next to Danny's desk and asked him which value he considered most essential—in other words, what did he see as his personal religion? I didn't mean a religion inherited from a tradition, but the values he placed above all else. Danny, who was then working on an article about pharmaceutical products, told me he understood and promised he would think it over. A few minutes later, he rolled his matching chair next to mine. "Ethics," he declared with a triumphant air. "Ethics and truth."

Inside, Asra has prepared a true honeymooners' bedroom for us. There are flowers and pine-scented candles, a bottle of massage oil, another of bubble bath. To the left of our bed, a small window covered with wire looks out onto a room off the courtyard where a foldout cot occupies the place of honor next to a clothesline draped with children's clothes. This is the property of the house servants, Shabir and Nasrin, who could themselves be called the property of the house, because Asra hired them when she rented the place. I visited their room. They have nothing. They sleep on the floor, and their tiny daughter, Kashva, a doll-like girl with short hair, sleeps tucked between her parents. Nasrin is pregnant. I dare not say "like me," so different will our two children's destinies be.

As I awaken I struggle, I struggle for the right words to describe this place. It is the curse of all journalists, I suppose, to be writing a story even as you are living it. I am not sure I'll ever get to know Karachi. I have distrusted this city from the start, though we are partly here to find out if its bad reputation is deserved. Once relatively stable, even sleepy, Karachi became a nexus for drug and arms trafficking in the 1980s. Now the city is an intricate puzzle, decadent and beastly at the same time, metastasizing into a capital of blind hatred and violent militancy.

The Pakistani people are equally fractured. Those born in their own land hate the Muslim immigrants who arrived from India after the two countries were partitioned in 1947. The Sunni Muslims loathe the Shiite Muslims. Since 1998 more than seventy doctors have been assassinated in Karachi; most were Shiites mowed down by Sunni zealots. And the pro-Taliban fundamentalists, who have been sinking deep roots here, detest the rest of the world.

There are so many people in this city, but no one seems to know how to count them all. Are there ten million? Twelve? Fourteen? Most of Pakistan is landlocked, pressed between India and Afghanistan, with parts of its borders touching southwestern Iran and the farthermost reaches of China. But Karachi, on the brown coast of the Arabian Sea, is the country's major port and, as such, is a magnet for migrants who drift in from the Pakistani countryside and across the border from even poorer places—Afghan villages, Bangladesh, the rural outposts of India. By day you see the poor burn under the scorching sun, selling vegetables and newspapers at dusty crossroads. At night they disappear in the labyrinthine streets, lending the city an air of foreboding. To us, this third-world city may glow with a feeble light, but Karachi draws the desperately poor like a torch draws fireflies.

Daniel Pearl on his wedding day.

As Tariq Jameel whispers into the phone in Urdu, another official-looking man, in his mid-thirties, polite and smiling and dressed in a suit, summons me with a discreet gesture. He tells me he is from an acronym's police branch—like Asra, I've lost track of them—and he asks for a photo of Danny "for the needs of the inquiry." We happen to have made identity photographs recently and I riffle through Danny's computer bag for his. When I pull it out, Danny's sweet and slightly ironic glance crosses mine, and something suddenly starts screaming inside me. I experience an instant of pure panic. I feel a devastating urge to charge into the streets shouting his name, demanding that he be given back to me now.

I am Danny, I am our son, I am revolted.

The anger that rushes through me goes well beyond the hellish night I've just lived through. In a flash, I feel a terrible bond not only with the victims of September 11 but also with the kids brainwashed to become instruments of death in the name of an invented Islam. The terrible absurdity of it all overwhelms me.

Daniel Pearl making hand gestures while being photographed by his abductors.

The men guarding Danny spoke very limited English. He couldn't communicate with them or they with him. I suppose that's why they didn't notice what he was doing with his fingers when they took Polaroids of him—flashing a victory sign to us with one hand, shooting the bird to them with the other. And they couldn't control the spirit and defiance he showed in his face.

To the end, he fought back. In the video, my friends tell me, Danny says, "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish." Yes, I'm sure they made him say that, just as they made him denounce American foreign policy and even perhaps include the fact that his father comes from a family of Zionists. The family did, after all, move to Israel in 1924.

But here is how I know Danny was undefeated to the end: He says on the video, "In the town of Benei Beraq in Israel there's a street called Chaim Pearl Street, which is named after my great-grandfather, who was one of the founders of the town."

This was not a piece of information his captors could have known or forced Danny to utter before the cameras for their propaganda purposes. The choice of those words and the decision to say them was pure Danny Pearl, his own act of defiance, essentially saying, "If you are going to kill me for who I am, then do it—but you won't have me." Danny said this for me, and for our son, and for his parents. He said it so we'd know. So we would go on. His words about the past created a future.

On our last night I invite over all the men who helped me look for Danny. Randall snags beer and bad wine for the non-Muslim and the nonpregnant from the U.S. consulate commissary. Yussuf-le-cook makes canapés nobody eats. There's Captain, of course, and Dost. Jameel Yusuf and Randall Bennett. Tariq Jamil and John Bauman. FBI agent John M. and John Bussey, Asra and Steve. Zahoor. We all seem older, gray-complected with unerasable rings around our eyes, and rage and grief in our hearts. But everyone has dressed finely, as befits a ceremony.

We gather in a circle, and for a while we sit in silence. Nobody is bothered since we are sharing something none of us express. Dost presses his hands together as if in prayer, and it does feel like we're about to take an oath together. Our silence is thick with sorrow and love—and defiance.

Finally I find my voice. "You are the bravest men I have ever met. You went straight to hell, where darkness is the deepest, because you hate injustice, and racism, and tyranny. You did it for Danny and for me and for our child. But you also did it on behalf of the rest of the world. You are on the front lines of the fight against terrorism, and still, nobody knows you and how brave you are. Nobody sees how your willingness to fight the darkest threat for humanity actually makes each one of you shine as an individual."

Captain has stopped looking at me. I know he is struggling not to show his tears. I think he is proud of me. I want him to know—I want them all to know—how proud I am of them. "I have gathered you to say thank you for having shed tears with me and also to inform you that I am going to tell the world about you. First I will tell the presidents, and then I will tell all the people."

"People need to know the truth," I go on. "If we want to put an end to terrorism, terrorists will have to face opponents as determined as they are themselves. You all are. We all are."

I stare intently at their handsome faces, lined and puffy with fatigue and anguish, and I try to carve them into my memory for the rest of my life. "I have gathered you here," I say, "to let you know that without amazing people like you around me, I couldn't have any hope left by this point. And how can anyone live without hope?"

– from A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl

There is something I must do before the baby is born. I have to face what Danny faced. I have to confront the truth, because it is like an enemy: If you turn your face from it, then you are crushed by it.

On May 25, two days before the baby is due, I take the phone off the hook, lie down alone, and imagine everything that happened to Danny. That doesn't take a great act of imagination; by this point I have a lot of details. But I force myself to see it all—when they blindfolded him, when they took out the knife, how long they interviewed him before they started killing him. And I make myself think about what Danny thought, and to know when he was most afraid.

For two days I live through this. They are the craziest days of my life, but I have to do this, and I have to do it alone. When it is over, I know nothing can happen anymore that I don't have the courage to fight within.

"While you don't know us, we are deeply grieved by your loss and feel as if we have lost someone from our own family.

Take courage—for something good, however small, will always come out of such a tragedy—or so I believe.

With deep regret for your loss and prayers for Danny,
Zarina Mehta
Bombay
India

Dear Mrs. Pearl,
The enclosed money order was purchased with donations made by friends, family and customers of Deegan's liquor store in Woodhaven, N.Y. We were touched by you and your husband's story, and we hope this relatively small contribution can help out with some baby expenses.

Best wishes,
Elizabeth Deegan
Woodhaven, NY

Dear Mrs. Pearl and family,
I would like to offer my condolences on the untimely death of Mr. Pearl. May he rest in peace. As a Pakistani, I am ashamed of being one today. His unborn son will come into this world hating us, but is he not justified to hate us? I have no words to say how sorry I am for what happened to Danny. My heart goes out for your family. Danny died for a great cause and he is a martyr. I had hope for him all along and now console myself knowing he is happy up there with his creator and looking down and smiling and longing to see his beautiful unborn son. He will be your guardian angel. People like Danny make this world worth living in. May he rest in peace and God give you the strength you need.

Sultan, Sara, Ryaan and Raniya