From Yvette
Like most pieces of bad news, this one came from out of the blue. A friend called one April morning and woke me up. "Matt," she said, "I thought you should know -- Yvette died." I was shaken. Yvette Pierpaoli was a woman who changed my life, a courageous person whose work took her to troubled, often dangerous places.A year earlier, in 1998, I was writing a script for a film called City of Ghosts, about a young man in search of his fugitive father in Cambodia in the early '90s. It was the first movie I was going to direct, and I felt strongly that it could only be made in Cambodia, a place that had fascinated me since my first trip in 1993. However, the country was unstable. There was no infrastructure for filmmaking, and I had so many questions that needed to be answered if my film was to ring true.
I soon attended a New York benefit for Refugees International (RI), an aid organization that has a strong presence in Southeast Asia working with refugees, street children, war widows and land-mine victims. There I met Yvette, RI's European representative, a Frenchwoman of Italian descent. She, too, shared my fascination with Cambodia. She had lived there for 10 years during the Vietnam War and had returned many times over the next decades. She spoke Khmer and said she would be happy to advise me on the subtleties of Cambodian culture.
As our friendship grew, I discovered that Yvette, a small woman with big, smiling eyes, was a legend among the worldwide community of volunteers who work with refugees. Then in her late 50s but possessing the strength and enthusiasm of a much younger person, Yvette was often one of the first Westerners to show up when a refugee crisis developed. She would live with families in their homes, gathering intelligence about their needs, arranging relief supplies. It was dangerous work, and sometimes she had to do it undercover. She would arrive with treats for delighted children, offer comfort to the bereaved, and dispense hope.
As I wrote my script, Yvette answered questions I had about Cambodian customs. She told me that a Cambodian's word was everything. "Matt, when you're there making your film," she said, "you must be careful about negative emotional outbursts. 'Face' is an important part of the culture. To show anger in an explosive way would be a loss of face for both of you." I'm a pretty passionate person, and would need to learn to keep my emotions in check, to work with patience and a positive attitude.
Too Busy Giving to Receive
When Yvette was 10, her teacher pointed out the French colonies on a map. She saw Cambodia and felt a connection even she could not explain. From that moment on, she knew she had to go there and, at age 25, finally saved enough money to buy a one-way ticket. With her five-year-old daughter, Emanuel, in tow, Yvette started a successful import-export business in Phnom Penh, and used a large percentage of her profits to buy food, medicine and shelter for the country's poorest people.Yvette's son, Oliver, began life as one of those. At age three, he had been found under a pile of dead bodies in a bombed Cambodian village. The only survivor, he was antisocial and hoarded food. Yvette, director of the orphanage where he was placed, devoted attention to him, and one day he put his arms around her neck and said, "Mama." From that moment on, the child clung to her everywhere she went.
Then came the day in April 1975 that American troops withdrew, and Yvette was forced to flee Cambodia as the Khmer Rouge -- the brutal Maoist guerrilla forces led by the murderous Pol Pot -- overran Phnom Penh. In a split-second decision, Yvette organized exit papers for Oliver and took him with her on the plane back to France. She later legally adopted the child who had in a sense first adopted her.
Returning to her home in the city of Avignon, Yvette continued to work tirelessly on behalf of refugees. She started several relief programs, traveling the globe to wherever wars had created refugees. Novelist John le Carré, a friend of hers, has described Yvette's personality as "sparky," and that fits. She had a reputation for doing whatever it took to get funding, using her wiles and flattery with politicians and wealthy donors.
One of the last times I saw Yvette, she talked animatedly about her work in Kosovo. Refugees from the war there were pouring into Albania, a lawless, dangerous country. When Yvette arrived in Albania, a local family took her in, putting her up in their bed as they slept in the kitchen. The first night, there was chaos in the streets and guns being fired. Suddenly, she heard the sound of the front door being forced in, then screaming in the kitchen. Seconds later, a man kicked open the bedroom door and fired two shots into the ceiling. Yvette said she remembered thinking, "This is it!" But then the man yelled, "Albania 2, Yugoslavia 1!" He was only celebrating Albania's victory over Yugoslavia in a soccer match. Still, when Yvette said she had other assignments in Albania, I feared for her.
Six months later, in April 1999, Yvette was in Albania helping to secure radio satellite receivers that would provide news and music to the Kosovo refugees and enable them to talk with relatives back home. It was raining heavily when the jeep in which she was riding careened off a muddy mountain road and plunged hundreds of feet, killing her and two American RI officials, David and Penny McCall.
I was still in the midst of filming City of Ghosts when I heard the news, but I dedicated the film to her. Yvette didn't just inspire me on one of the most significant undertakings of my life -- she taught me how we should all live. If I could have her back for just two minutes, I would thank her. And I'd say, "We need more people like you." But chances are she wouldn't hear it. Yvette was always too busy giving to receive.