The year was 1989. It was only when Salman Rushdie took his seat at the memorial service that the lethality of his predicament sank in. The remembrance for the writer Bruce Chatwin on Valentine’s Day was held at a Greek Orthodox Church in Bayswater. The grand building filled with holy smoke, melodious clerical babble, and half of literary London. Rushdie sat next to Martin Amis.
“We’re worried about you,” said Amis. “I’m worried about me,” responded Rushdie. Sitting in the pew behind was Paul Theroux. “I suppose we’ll be here for you next week, Salman,” he chuckled.
Rushdie remembered the moment, funny in the queasy-hysterical way narrowly not being hit by a car is funny, in his 2012 memoir Joseph Anton. After Friday’s attack on the author, which may cost him an eye and possibly more, the book is charged with new meaning.
Paparazzi and journalists began to follow Rushdie into the church. Hours before, Ayatollah Khomeini had issued his fatwa: “I inform all zealous Muslims of the world that the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses… and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content are sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly.” Fleeing the press, Rushdie was spirited away by Alan Yentob in a BBC car.
Aged 40, Rushdie’s life was split into an unwanted second act. “How easy it was to erase a man’s past and to construct a new version of him,” he recalled, “an overwhelming version, against which it was impossible to fight.” Several builders collaborated to construct the new Rushdie. There was the Ayatollah, a man who had used children as mine-sweepers in the Iran-Iraq war, and who marked the tenth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution with his fatwa. There were the Muslims who rallied and rioted against Rushdie in France, America, Norway, Bangladesh, Thailand, Sweden, Pakistan, Australia, Turkey, and the Netherlands. And there were the governments who banned The Satanic Verses in two dozen countries. As he watched all this in hiding, the author “imagined the Great Pyramid of Giza turned upside down with the apex resting on his neck”.
The British builders were generally more subtle, though no less insidious. One of the very first calls Rushdie received after the fatwa was from Keith Vaz, the MP for Leicester East. Vaz described what was happening as “appalling, absolutely appalling”. He promised to support Rushdie. A few weeks later, Vaz was one of the main speakers at a demonstration against The Satanic Verses, describing the event as “one of the great days in the history of Islam and Great Britain”.
But MPs need votes more than they need writers to have artistic freedom. Joseph Anton is full of moments when they let Rushdie down. Max Madden, the Labour MP for Bradford West — Bradford, the city where copies of The Satanic Verses were crucified and set alight — suggested that Rushdie add an insert into his book allowing Muslims to explain why they found it offensive.
Offensive. That was the main charge against Rushdie in Britain. The five years it took to make a novel sing could be reduced to one slander. On the political Right, Rushdie had already caused offence. In the Eighties he had denounced “the Augean filth of imperialism” and described the British police as representatives of “the colonising army”. And, yes, Rushdie had praised the Iranian revolution: “We may not approve of Khomeini’s Iran. But the revolution there was a genuine mass movement.”
Writers at the Telegraph and Spectator, as well as members of Margaret Thatcher’s government, were patriotically scandalised that a foreign power could order the death of a British citizen and try to get his book banned. Not in this blessed plot; not in our England, mate. But it was still a cause for tickily spite that Rushdie, as Charles Moore would later reflect, “used to attacking whitey with impunity” was “suddenly seeking whitey’s help”.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe