A Mighty Heart

Last night I watched the movie A Mighty Heart starring Angelina Jolie and Dan Futterman. It’s about the terrorist kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, and American journalist in Karachi, Pakistan in 2002. The acting was very good and the movie well done. Angelina Jolie is simply brilliant in the scene where she - a pregnant Mariane Pearl - just finds out that her husband has died – a scene that in other similar movies can get tacky or ostentatious. Dan Futterman is equally great. It’s a very touching movie, an important story and a relevant caption.

The images from Karachi reminded us a lot of Cairo (only Karachi seemed much cleaner!); the concrete buildings, the people in the streets, the galabeyas, the big trays of bread and the odd means of transportation, the chaotic traffic, the constant noise, the minarets and mosques, and the calls for prayer. At times, I wasn’t sure if the call for prayer was coming from the movie or from outside our window! All this made us think about places in the world we would like to see, and whether all of those places would be safe or not. There are several countries Courtney couldn’t go to because of his sole citizenship, but although the boys & I could go anywhere, there are places we would think twice about visiting, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and perhaps even Israel. Actually going to Israel would not be difficult, but then we wouldn’t be allowed back in Egypt afterwards, and that would be a problem.

The movie also made me realize something else; because of the Muslim culture that was very well presented, parts of the movie - that probably seem foreign and even scary to a lot of people - had an air of familiarity and even gave us a sense of feeling at home. We have grown comfortable living in a Muslim society, and though there may not be anything particular about it; the chaotic traffic, the galabeya and burkhas, the noise and the calls for prayer are not something out of a movie to us anymore, but part of what now is our home.