Step Across This Line Part 9

Vijay throws a farewell party for me. His wife, Rani, an expert on prison systems and penal reform, has returned from a conference in Vienna just in time. And there's a surprise: my two actress aunts, Uzra b.u.t.t and her sister Zohra Segal, are there, with my cousin Kiran Segal, Zohra's daughter and one of the country's foremost exponents and teachers of the Odissi school of Indian cla.s.sical dancing. This is the zany wing of the family, sharp of tongue and mischievous of eye. Uzra and Zohra are the grand old ladies of the Indian theater, and we were all in love with Kiran at one time or another. Zohra and Kiran lived in an apartment in Hampstead for a time in the 1960s, and when I was at boarding-school at Rugby, I sometimes spent vacations in their spare bedroom, next to Kiran's bedroom door, on which there was a large, admonitory skull and crossbones sign. I now discover that Vijay Shankarda.s.s and Roshan Seth both stayed in the same spare room in the same period. All three of us would look wistfully at the skull and crossbones, and none of us ever got past it.

"I haven't seen you dance for years," I say to Kiran.

"Come back soon," she says. "Then I'll dance."

June 2000

PART II.

Messages from the Plague Years

This is a selection made from the large number of pieces I published during the long campaign against the Satanic Verses Satanic Verses fatwa. fatwa.

[First, from a speech to the International Conference on Freedom of Expression, Washington, D.C., April 1992]

I'd like to thank all those who helped make this trip possible. It wasn't a simple matter, and how odd that is! For a writer interested in freedom of expression to attend a conference on the subject should be a simple matter. It should not be necessary for his travel plans to be shrouded in secrecy. The security forces should not need to pay me any special attention. It feels a little like being inside one of those science-fiction yarns in which the present has been altered, so that the Inquisition appears in Piccadilly Circus, and there are witch-burnings on the Potomac.

The fatwa of Imam Khomeini bent the world out of shape. Ancient blood-l.u.s.ts were unleashed, armed with state-of-the-art modern technology. Battles that we thought no longer needed to be fought-battles against such concepts as "blasphemy" and "heresy," which throughout human history have been the storm troopers of bigotry-were re-enacted in our streets. Many people who should have known better defended the real and threatened violence and blamed its victims. Even now, in Britain, there is a powerful lobby that regularly denigrates my character. It is hard for me to be my own advocate in this matter, hard for me to insist on my own value. When I do, I am accused of arrogance and ingrat.i.tude. But when I don't fight my corner, my case is swiftly forgotten. Quite a double-bind.

As we used to say in the sixties, there is a fault in reality. Do not adjust your minds. What has been done to The Satanic Verses, The Satanic Verses, its author, publishers, translators, and booksellers, is a crime against freedom. The novel is not the crime; the author is not the criminal. its author, publishers, translators, and booksellers, is a crime against freedom. The novel is not the crime; the author is not the criminal.

Of course I know I'm not the only writer under attack. I have tried hard during the past three years to point out that those words, "blasphemy" and "heresy," have been launched against writer after writer, especially in the Muslim world. I have tried repeatedly to remind people that we are witnessing a war against independence of mind, a war for power.

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation-[robbing] those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. [For] if the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.

Those words are from John Stuart Mill's great essay "On Liberty." It is extraordinary how much of Mill's essay applies directly to the case of The Satanic Verses. The Satanic Verses. The demand for the banning of this novel and indeed the eradication of its author is precisely what Mill called the "a.s.sumption of infallibility." Those who make such demands do so, just as Mill antic.i.p.ated, because they find the book and its author "immoral and impious." The demand for the banning of this novel and indeed the eradication of its author is precisely what Mill called the "a.s.sumption of infallibility." Those who make such demands do so, just as Mill antic.i.p.ated, because they find the book and its author "immoral and impious."

"But," he writes, "this is the case in which [the a.s.sumption of infallibility] is most fatal. These are exactly the occasions on which the men of one generation commit those dreadful mistakes which excite the astonishment and horror of posterity." Mill gives two examples of such occasions: the cases of Socrates and of Jesus Christ. To these can be added a third case, that of Galileo. All three men were accused of blasphemy and heresy. All three were attacked by the storm troopers of bigotry. And yet they are, as is plain to anyone, the founders of the philosophical, moral, and scientific traditions of the West. We can say, therefore, that blasphemy and heresy, far from being the greatest evils, are the methods by which human thought has made its most vital advances. The writers of the European Enlightenment, who all came up against the storm troopers at one time or another, knew this. It was because of his nervousness of the power of the Church, not of the State, that Voltaire suggested it was advisable for writers to live in close proximity to a frontier, so that, if necessary, they could hop across it into safety. Frontiers will not defend a writer now, not if this new form of terrorism, terrorism by edict and bounty, is allowed to have its day.

Many people say that the Rushdie case is a one-off, that it will never be repeated. This complacency, too, is an enemy to be defeated. I return to John Stuart Mill. "The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries. . . . Persecution has always succeeded, save where the heretics were too strong a party to be effectually persecuted." There it is in a nutsh.e.l.l. Religious persecution is never a matter of morality, always a question of power. To defeat the modern-day witch-burners, it is necessary to show them that our power, too, is great-that our numbers are greater than theirs, and our resolve, too. This is a battle of wills.

Free societies are societies in motion, and with motion comes friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence. Totalitarian societies seek to replace the many truths of freedom by the one truth of power, be it secular or religious; to halt the motion of society, to snuff out its spark. Unfreedom's primary purpose is invariably to shackle the mind.

The creative process is rather like the processes of a free society. Many att.i.tudes, many views of the world, jostle and conflict within the artist, and from these frictions the spark, the work of art, is born. This inner multiplicity is frequently very difficult for the artist to bear, let alone explain. Denis Diderot, the great novelist-philosopher of the French Enlightenment, spoke of the dispute within him between atheistic, materialistic rationalism and a profound need for spiritual and moral depth. "It infuriates me," he said, "to be enmeshed in a devilish philosophy which my mind is forced to accept but my heart to disown." An even greater writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, also agonized about the coexistence in his heart of absolute faith and absolute unbelief. And before him, William Blake said approvingly that Milton, that devout genius, was, as a poet, naturally, of the devil's party. Within every artist-within, perhaps, every human imagination-there exists, to paraphrase Blake, a marriage between Heaven and h.e.l.l.

[An open letter published in j.a.pan in July 1992, on the anniversary of the murder of Hitoshi Igarashi, the j.a.panese translator of The Satanic Verses] The Satanic Verses]

One year has pa.s.sed since the vicious murder of Professor Igarashi, but I have still not become accustomed to the fact. It still feels as appalling, as enraging, as evil as it did when I first heard the news. The celebratory response of some j.a.panese-based Muslims also remains in the memory as a sour, unpleasant taste.

I have come to understand that what is important is precisely not to become accustomed to the intolerable. In our modern world, with its rapid shifts of focus and its short attention span, it is all too easy to lose interest in a particular case, no matter how vivid the story once was. But to do so in this case would be an insult to Professor Igarashi's memory. It simply can never be acceptable to murder a man in the name of any G.o.d or ideology. In such a case, morality is never on the side of the murderers.

I did not know Professor Igarashi, but he knew me, because he translated my work. Translation is a kind of intimacy, a kind of friendship, and so I mourn his death as I would that of a friend. I do not believe that the people of j.a.pan will find his murder acceptable.

I have read that there is now evidence linking the murder to Middle Eastern terrorists. I would say this: whoever the murderers were (and we know that many Middle Eastern terrorists have their paymasters in Tehran), it was Khomeini's fatwa that was the real murderer.

For this reason, and to do honor to the name of the fallen man, a distinguished scholar and my translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, I call upon the people and government of j.a.pan to demand an end to this terrorist threat. A j.a.panese citizen has been the first to lose his life to the fatwa. j.a.pan can help ensure that he is also the last.

[First published on February 7, 1993, under the t.i.tle "The Last Hostage"]

Four years. It's been four years and I'm still here. Strange how that feels simultaneously like a victory and a defeat.

Why a victory? Because when, on February 14, 1989, I heard the news from Tehran, my instant reaction was: I'm a dead man. I remembered a poem by my friend Raymond Carver about being told by his doctor he had lung cancer.

He said are you a religious man do you kneel downin forest groves and let yourself ask for help . . .I said not yet but I intend to start today But I'm not a religious man. I didn't kneel down. I went to do a TV interview and said I wished I'd written a more critical book. Why? Because when the leader of a terrorist state has just announced his intention to murder you in the name of G.o.d you can either bl.u.s.ter or gibber. I did not want to gibber. And because when murder is ordered in the name of G.o.d you begin to think less well of the name of G.o.d.

Afterward I thought: if there is a G.o.d I don't think he's very bothered by The Satanic Verses, The Satanic Verses, because he wouldn't be much of a G.o.d if he could be rocked on his throne by a book. Then again, if there isn't a G.o.d, he certainly isn't bothered. So this quarrel's not between me and G.o.d but between me and those who think-as Bob Dylan once reminded us-they can do any d.a.m.n thing because they have G.o.d on their side. because he wouldn't be much of a G.o.d if he could be rocked on his throne by a book. Then again, if there isn't a G.o.d, he certainly isn't bothered. So this quarrel's not between me and G.o.d but between me and those who think-as Bob Dylan once reminded us-they can do any d.a.m.n thing because they have G.o.d on their side.

The police came to see me and said, stay put, don't go anywhere, plans are being made. Police officers on short patrol watched over me that night. I lay unsleeping and listened out for the angel of death. One of my favorite films was and is Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel. The Exterminating Angel. It is a film about people who cannot get out of a room. It is a film about people who cannot get out of a room.

The next afternoon-when the television was roaring with hatred and blood-l.u.s.t-I was offered Special Branch protection. The officers who came said I should go somewhere for a few days while the politicians sorted things out. Do you remember? Four years ago we all thought this crisis would be solved in a matter of days. That in the late twentieth century a man should be threatened with murder for writing a book, that the leader of a religious-fascist state should threaten the free citizen of a free country far away from his own, was too crazy. It would be stopped. The police thought so. I thought so too.

So off we went, not to any deep-secret safe house, but to a hotel in the countryside. In the room next door to mine was a reporter from the Daily Mirror Daily Mirror who had checked in with a lady who was not his wife. I kept out of his way, not wishing to intrude. And that night, when every journalist in the country was trying to find out where I'd gone, this gentleman-how shall I put this?-missed his scoop. who had checked in with a lady who was not his wife. I kept out of his way, not wishing to intrude. And that night, when every journalist in the country was trying to find out where I'd gone, this gentleman-how shall I put this?-missed his scoop.

It was going to be over in a few days, but four years later, it's still going on. And I am told the level of threat against my life has not diminished at all. I am told there is n.o.body protected by the Special Branch whose life is in more danger than mine. So, a victory and a defeat: a victory because I'm alive, in spite of being described by a "friend" as a dead man on leave. A defeat because I'm still in this prison. It goes where I go. It has no walls, no roof, no manacles, but I haven't found a way out in four years.

I was under political pressure. I do not think it is generally known how heavy this pressure was. The issue of the British hostages kept cropping up. I was asked to make an apologetic statement: otherwise something might happen to a British hostage and that, it was hinted, would be my fault. The statement that I agreed to make was not even written by me, but by the late John Lyttle, the Archbishop of Canterbury's man on the hostage case, and by other worthies and eminences. I changed two words, and even that alteration required a bit of a fight. It did no good to anyone. It was done to help the hostages but was portrayed as my first failure to save my wretched neck. Khomeini restated his fatwa. Multi-million-dollar bounties were offered.

Now there was official pressure on me simply to disappear. The argument was that I'd made enough trouble already. I should not speak up on the issue, I should not defend myself. There was a big enough public-order problem, and since the authorities were doing so much to protect me I should not make life harder for them. Go nowhere, see n.o.body, say nothing. Be an un-person and be grateful to be alive. Listen to the vilifications, the misrepresentations, the murderous speeches, the appeas.e.m.e.nts, and shut up.

For almost a year and a half I had no contact with any member of the British government or any civil servant, in either the Home Office or the Foreign Office. I was in limbo. I have been told that the Home Office vetoed any meeting with me, because this would allegedly be bad for race relations. In the end I telephoned William Waldegrave, at that time a Foreign Office minister, and asked if it might not be a good idea for us to meet. He was not able-not permitted, I think-to meet me. But I did at last have a meeting with a Foreign Office diplomat, and on one occasion with the foreign secretary Douglas Hurd himself. These meetings were held on the basis that they must be kept entirely secret, "so that the hostages should not suffer."

Incidentally, I do not recall Tehran or the hostage-holders in Lebanon ever making this linkage. But maybe I am mistaken about this. If I reveal these details now, it is because it is safe to do so. Until the day Terry Waite was released, I was a sort of hostage to the hostages. I accepted that their cases had to be resolved first; that, to an extent, my rights had to be set aside for the sake of theirs. I hoped only that, once they were free, it would be my turn; that the British government and the world community would seek the end of this crisis, too.

I had a long wait, with many bizarre moments during it. A Pakistani film portraying me as a torturer, murderer, and drunkard wearing an appalling variety of Technicolor safari suits was refused a certificate in Britain. I saw a video of the film; it was awful. It ended with my "execution" by the power of G.o.d. The ugliness of those images stayed with me for a while. However, I wrote to the British Board of Film Cla.s.sification promising them that I would not take legal action against them or the film, and asking them to license it. I told them I did not want the dubious protection of censorship. The film was un-banned and promptly vanished from sight. An attempt to screen it in Bradford was greeted by rows of empty seats. It was a perfect ill.u.s.tration of the argument for free speech: people really can make up their own minds. Still, it was weird to be pleased at the release of a film whose subject was my death.

Sometimes I stayed in comfortable houses. Sometimes I had no more than a small room in which I could not approach the window lest I be seen from below. Sometimes I was able to get out a bit. At other times I had trouble doing so.

I tried to visit the USA and France, and the governments of those countries made it impossible for me to enter.

Once I had to go into the hospital to have my wisdom teeth extracted. I learned afterward that the police had made emergency plans to have me removed. I would have been anesthetized and carried out in a body bag, in a hea.r.s.e.

I became friendly with my protection teams and learned a good deal about the internal workings of the Branch. I learned how to find out if you're being followed on a motorway and I grew accustomed to the hardware that was always lying around and I learned the slang of the police force-drivers, for example, are known as OFDs, which stands for Only f.u.c.king Drivers. *17 *17 Motorway police are Black Rats. My own name was never used. I learned to answer to other names. I was "the Princ.i.p.al." Motorway police are Black Rats. My own name was never used. I learned to answer to other names. I was "the Princ.i.p.al."

I have become familiar with much that was unthinkably strange four years ago, but I have never become used to it. I knew from the start that habituation would be a surrender. What has happened to my life is a grotesque thing. It is a crime. I will never agree that it has become my normal condition.

"What's blond, has big t.i.ts, and lives in Tasmania? Salman Rushdie." I got letters, sometimes I still get letters, saying, give up, change your name, have an operation, start a new life. This is the one option I have never considered. It would be worse than death. I don't want some other person's life. I want my own.

The protection officers have shown great understanding and helped me get through the worst times. I will always be grateful to them. These are brave men. They are putting their lives on the line for me. n.o.body ever did that for me before.

Here is a thing that needs saying. I suspect that because I have not been killed, many people think there is n.o.body trying to kill me. Many people probably think it's all a bit theoretical. It isn't. In the early months an Arab terrorist blew himself up in a Paddington hotel. Afterward I was told by a journalist who had visited the Hizbollah redoubts in the Beka'a Valley in Lebanon that she had seen this man's photograph on an office "wall of martyrs," with a caption stating that his target had been me. And, at the time of the Gulf War, I heard that the Iranian government had paid out money for a contract killing. After months of extreme caution I was told that the killers had been-to use the euphemistic language of the intelligence services-"frustrated." I thought it best not to inquire into the causes of their frustration.

And in 1992 three Iranians were expelled from Britain. Two of them worked at the Iranian mission in London, the third was a "student." I was told by the Foreign Office that these were spies and they were undoubtedly in Britain on matters related to the fulfillment of the fatwa.

And the Italian translator of The Satanic Verses The Satanic Verses was nearly killed, and the j.a.panese translator was nearly killed, and the j.a.panese translator was was killed. In 1992 the j.a.panese police announced the results of their twelve-month investigation. In their view the killers were professional Middle Eastern terrorists who had entered from China. Meanwhile, an Iranian hit-squad a.s.sa.s.sinated former prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar in Paris. They cut his head off. Another squad killed a dissident Iranian singer in Germany. They chopped him up and put the bits in a bag. killed. In 1992 the j.a.panese police announced the results of their twelve-month investigation. In their view the killers were professional Middle Eastern terrorists who had entered from China. Meanwhile, an Iranian hit-squad a.s.sa.s.sinated former prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar in Paris. They cut his head off. Another squad killed a dissident Iranian singer in Germany. They chopped him up and put the bits in a bag.

Nothing very theoretical about that.

England is a small country and it is full of people and many of these people are naturally inquisitive. It is not an easy country in which to disappear. Once I was in a building that I needed to leave, but there was a burst central heating pipe just off the hallway, and a plumber had been called in. A police officer had to distract the plumber's attention so that I could slip past him while his head was turned away. Once I was in a kitchen when a neighbor turned up unexpectedly. I had to dive down behind a kitchen cabinet and remain there, crouching, until he left. Once I was in a traffic jam outside the Regent's Park mosque just as the faithful were emerging from Eid prayers. I sat in the back of an armored Jaguar with my nose deep in The Daily Telegraph. The Daily Telegraph. My protectors joked that it was the first time they had seen me so interested in the My protectors joked that it was the first time they had seen me so interested in the Telegraph. Telegraph.

To live like this is to feel demeaned every day, to feel little twists of humiliation acc.u.mulating around your heart. To live like this is to allow people-including your ex-wife-to call you a coward on the front page of the newspapers. Such people would no doubt be prepared to speak well of me at my funeral. But to live, to avoid a.s.sa.s.sination, is a greater victory than to be murdered. Only fanatics go looking for martyrdom.

I am forty-five years old, and I can't leave my places of residence without permission. I do not carry keys. Sometimes there are "bad patches." During one "bad patch" I slept in thirteen different beds in twenty nights. At such times a great wild jangle fills your body. At such times you begin to come unstuck from your self.

I have learned to let things go: the anger, the bitterness. They will come back later, I know. When things are better. I'll deal with them then. Right now my victory lies in not being broken, in not losing my self. It lies in continuing to work. There are no hostages anymore. For the first time in years, I am able to fight my corner without being accused of damaging anyone else's interests. I have been fighting as hard as I can.

Like everyone else I rejoiced at the end of the Lebanon hostages' terrible ordeal. But the people most active in my defense campaign, Frances D'Souza and Carmel Bedford at Article 19, knew that the huge relief we all felt at the closing of that awful chapter was also a danger. Maybe people wouldn't want to pay attention to someone saying, excuse me, there's still one more problem. Maybe I'd be seen as a sort of party-p.o.o.per. On the other hand there were persistent rumors that the British government was on the verge of normalizing relations with Iran and forgetting the "Rushdie case" entirely. What to do? Shut up and go on relying on "silent diplomacy," or speak out?

In my view there was no choice. The hostages' release had set my tongue free at last. And it would be absurd to fight a war for freedom of speech by remaining silent. We agreed to make the campaign as noisy as possible, to demonstrate to the British government that it couldn't afford to ignore the case, and to try and rekindle the kind of international support that would demonstrate to the Iranian terror-state that the fatwa was damaging their self-interests as well as mine.

In December 1991, a few days after the release of the last American hostage, Terry Anderson, I was finally permitted to enter the United States to speak at Columbia University's celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the Bill of Rights. The plans for the trip were a nightmare. I did not know until twenty-four hours before I left that I would be allowed to go. I was given leave to travel in a military aircraft, a great favor for which I was immensely grateful. (This would have remained entirely secret except that a British tabloid saw fit to publish the fact and then blame me for endangering the RAF.) The moment of departure was overwhelming. It was my first time out of Britain in almost three years. For a moment, the cage seemed a little bigger. Then, in New York, I was met by an eleven-vehicle motorcade, complete with motorcycle outriders. I was placed in an armored white limo and rushed through Manhattan at high speed. "It's what we'd do for Arafat," explained the operation's leader, known for the day as Hudson Commander. I inquired timidly, "How about the president?" For the president they would close down a lot more side streets, Hudson Commander explained, "but in your case we thought that might be a little too conspicuous." This entirely without irony. The New York Police Department is very thorough, but it doesn't make many jokes.

I spent that day in a fourteenth-floor suite with at least twenty armed men. The windows were blocked by bullet-proof mattresses. Outside the door were more armed men with Schwarzenegger-sized muscles and weaponry. In this suite I had a series of meetings that must remain secret, except, perhaps, for one. I was able to meet with the poet Allen Ginsberg for twenty minutes. The moment he arrived, he pulled cushions off the sofas and set them on the floor. "Take off your shoes and sit down," he said. "I'm going to teach you some simple meditation exercises. They should help you handle your terrible situation." Our mutual literary agent, Andrew Wylie, was there, and I made him do it, too, which, squawking somewhat, he did. While we did our breathing and chanting, I thought how extraordinary it was for an Indian by birth to be taught Buddhism by an American poet sitting cross-legged in a room full of men armed to the gills. There's nothing like life; you can't make this stuff up.

That night the huge motorcade took me to Columbia and I was able to make my contribution. Free speech is life itself, I remember saying. The next day the American press was sympathetic and positive. It was clear that Americans saw the issue, as I did, as one in which an old, taken-for-granted freedom had become a life-and-death affair. Back home it was a different matter. I got back to Britain to be faced by such headlines as RUSHDIE INFLAMES MUSLIM ANGER AGAIN (because I had asked for the publication of a paperback edition of The Satanic Verses The Satanic Verses).

During the next year, as I visited more and more countries, this dichotomy became ever more apparent. In the rest of the free world, the "Rushdie case" is about freedom of expression and state terrorism. In Britain, it seems to be about a man who has to be saved from the consequences of his own actions. Elsewhere, people know that the outrage has been committed not by me but against me. In certain quarters of my own country, people take a contrary view.

The paperback was published in the spring of 1992, not by Penguin, who refused to do so, but by a consortium. I was able to be in Washington for its launch, and at a free-speech conference I produced the first copy. As I did so my emotions a.s.saulted me without warning. It was all I could do to keep back the tears. (I should mention here that the paperback publication of The Satanic Verses The Satanic Verses pa.s.sed off without incident, in spite of many people's forebodings and some people's chickenings-out. I was reminded, as I have often been reminded, of Roosevelt's famous saw about fear itself being the thing most to be feared.) pa.s.sed off without incident, in spite of many people's forebodings and some people's chickenings-out. I was reminded, as I have often been reminded, of Roosevelt's famous saw about fear itself being the thing most to be feared.) I had come to Washington mainly to address members of both houses of Congress. On the evening before the meeting, however, I was told that Secretary of State James Baker had personally rung the leaders of both houses to say he did not wish the meeting to take place. The Bush administration made dismissive remarks about my presence. Marlin Fitzwater, explaining the administration's refusal to meet me, said, "He's just an author on a book tour." *18 *18 In spite of the Bush people's best efforts, I did manage to meet a group of U.S. senators-led by New York's Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Vermont's Patrick Leahy-who invited me to lunch at the Capitol and, to my amazement, brought along copies of my books for me to sign. After lunch, at a press conference, Moynihan and others spoke pa.s.sionately on my behalf. This was a crucial moment. It now became possible to approach parliamentarians and governments all over Europe and the Americas. I was even invited to the British House of Commons to address an all-party group, after which Iran's Majlis (parliament) instantly demanded that the fatwa be carried out.

In the summer of 1992 it was made possible for me to go to Denmark as the guest of Danish PEN. Once again, the security was very heavy. There was even a small gunboat in Copenhagen harbor that I was told was "ours." This resulted in many jokes about the need to guard against an attack by the Iranian fleet in the Baltic, or perhaps by fundamentalist frogmen.

During the time in Denmark the government kept away from me (though by enabling my visit and providing protection, they had clearly shown a certain level of support). The risk to Denmark's feta cheese exports to Iran was cited as one reason for the government's reticence. However, I was given enthusiastic support by politicians of all other parties, notably Anker Jorgensen, the Labor once-and-probably-future prime minister, with whom I gave a joint press conference aboard a boat in the harbor. Jorgensen promised to hold discussions with the ruling party to develop a policy of all-party support for my case. It was less than I'd hoped for, but it was a step on the road.

I made a brief visit to Spain. (I am glossing over the immense difficulties of organization, but believe me, none of these trips was easy.) There I was made an offer of mediation by Gustavo Villapalos, the rector of Madrid's Complutense University, a man very close to the Spanish government and also extremely well connected in Iran. Soon he reported to me that he had received encouraging signals from persons high in the Iranian regime: it was an excellent time to resolve this matter, he had been told. Iran knew that this case was the biggest single obstacle to its economic strategies. All sorts of distinguished people were letting it be known that they wanted a solution: the names of Khomeini's widow and surviving elder brother were mentioned. A few weeks later, however, European newspapers quoted Villapalos as having said that I had agreed to rewrite parts of The Satanic Verses. The Satanic Verses. I had said no such thing. Villapalos told me he had been misquoted and asked for a meeting in London. I agreed. Since then I have not heard from him. I had said no such thing. Villapalos told me he had been misquoted and asked for a meeting in London. I agreed. Since then I have not heard from him.

A breakthrough came in late summer, in Norway. Once again my hosts were the international writers' organization, PEN, and my courageous publishers, Aschehoug. Once again, the media and people of the country showed me fantastic warmth and support. And this time I had meetings with the ministers for culture and education, received a message of friendship from the prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, and elicited firm promises of government support at the United Nations and in other international forums as well as in bilateral contacts between Norway and Iran.

The Nordic countries, with their traditionally strong concern for human-rights issues, were beginning to come aboard. In October I was invited to address a Nordic Council conference in Helsinki: an opportunity to push for a joint Nordic initiative. And indeed the Nordic Council did make a strong resolution of support, and many delegates to the conference undertook to bring the matter back to their own parliaments and governments.

There was one snag, however. The British amba.s.sador, invited by the Nordic Council to the session I was to address, refused to come. I was told by the organizers that they had been shocked by the rudeness of his refusal.

Back home, I was abruptly informed by a chief superintendent who was clearly very embarra.s.sed by what she was saying that my protection would shortly end, even though there was no reason to believe that things were any safer. "Many people live in danger of their lives in Britain," I was told, "and some of them die, you know." However, soon after Article 19 took the matter up with Number 10, this policy was reversed, and the defense campaign received a letter from the prime minister's office a.s.suring us unequivocally that the protection would continue as long as the threat did.

I am-to say it once again-very grateful for the protection. But I also know that it will take a bigger push to force Iran to change its policy, and the purpose of my visits abroad was to try and create the force for that push.

On October 25, 1992, I went to the German capital, Bonn. Germany is Iran's number-one trading partner. I had been led to believe I would get nowhere. What happened in Germany felt, therefore, like a small miracle.

My visit was arranged by a small miracle of a woman, an SPD member of the Bundestag called Thea Bock. Her English was as rotten as my German, and even though we often had to speak in sign language we got along famously. By a mixture of cajoling, strong-arm tactics, and sheer trickery, and with the help of other members, notably Norbert Gansel, she managed to arrange meetings for me with most of the people at the heart of the German state-the very powerful and popular speaker of the Bundestag, Rita Suss.m.u.th; high-ranking officials in the Foreign Ministry; the leading members of the foreign affairs committee; and the leader of the SPD himself, Bjorn Engholm, who astonished me by standing next to me on TV and calling me his "brother in spirit." He committed the SPD to total support for my cause and since then has worked hard on my behalf. In short, I was promised support from Germany by people at the very highest levels of the State. Since then that support has been made concrete. "We will protect Mr. Rushdie," the German government has announced. The Bundestag has pa.s.sed an all-party resolution stating that Germany will hold Iran legally responsible for my safety and that, should any injury befall me, Iran will face economic and political consequences. (The Swedish and Canadian parliaments are presently considering similar resolutions.) Also, the enormous German-Iranian cultural agreement has been put on hold, and Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel has stated that it will not be taken off the shelf until the cancellation of the fatwa.

Germany's willingness to use economic and cultural leverage on my behalf rattled Iran into its latest restatement of the fatwa and renewal of bounty offers. This was foolish; it only strengthened the resolve of a growing number of sympathetic governments to take up the case. After Germany came Sweden, where the government and Swedish PEN jointly awarded me the Kurt Tucholsky Prize, traditionally given to writers suffering human-rights abuses. Sweden's deputy prime minister Bengt Westerberg made a pa.s.sionate speech to the press promising the government's complete and vigorous support. The leader of Sweden's Social Democratic Party, Ingvar Carlsson, promised to work with other European socialist parties on my behalf. I know that he has now taken up this case with the British Labour Party, urging it to do more. At the moment of writing, neither I nor Article 19 has been contacted by the Labour Party leadership to tell us of their position and intentions. I invite John Smith or Jack Cunningham to rectify this as soon as possible.

A diplomat more experienced in the ways of the Middle East than most *19 *19 said to me: "The secret of diplomacy is to be standing in the station when the train arrives. If you aren't in the station, don't complain if you miss the train. The trouble, of course, is that the train can arrive at many stations, so make sure you're standing at all of them." said to me: "The secret of diplomacy is to be standing in the station when the train arrives. If you aren't in the station, don't complain if you miss the train. The trouble, of course, is that the train can arrive at many stations, so make sure you're standing at all of them."

In November, Iran's prosecutor general, Morteza Moqtadaei, said that all Muslims were obliged to kill me, thus revealing the falsehood of Iran's claim that the fatwa had nothing to do with the Iranian government. Ayatollah Sanei, the man behind the bounty, said that volunteer hit-squads were to be dispatched. Then, at the beginning of December, I made it across the Atlantic again: to Canada, as the guest of Canadian PEN. (Was any writer ever given more help by his colleagues? If I ever get out of this, it will be my life's work to try and give back just a little of the aid, and pa.s.sion, and affection I've been given.) At a PEN benefit night in Toronto, so many writers spoke on my behalf that somebody whispered to me, "This is one h.e.l.l of a bar mitzvah you're getting"; and it was. The premier of Ontario, Bob Rae, bounded onstage and embraced me. He thus became the first head of any government to stand with me in public. (Backstage, before the event, he actually kissed me for a photographer. Naturally, I kissed him back.) The next day in Ottawa I met, among others, Canada's secretary of state for external affairs, Barbara MacDougall, and the leader of the opposition, Jean Chretien. I also gave testimony to the parliamentary sub-committee on human rights. The effect of all this was electrifying. Within forty-eight hours, resolutions demanding that the Canadian government take this issue to the United Nations and pursue it in many other places such as the International Court of Justice had been rushed through the Canadian parliament with all-party support and the government had agreed to act upon them.

Another train in another station. Since then I've had a series of very friendly meetings in Dublin, with the new foreign minister, d.i.c.k Spring, and two other cabinet members, and, at her invitation, with President Mary Robinson at Phoenix Park. Next stop, perhaps, President Clinton?

I always knew this would be a long struggle; but at least, now, there's movement. In Norway, a projected oil deal with Iran is being blocked by politicians sympathetic to the campaign against the fatwa; in Canada, a $1 billion line of credit that Iran had been promised has also been blocked.

I say wherever I go that the struggle isn't just about me. It isn't even primarily about me. The great issues here are freedom of expression, and national sovereignty too. Also, the case of The Satanic Verses The Satanic Verses is just the best-known of all the cases of writers, intellectuals, progressives, and dissidents being jailed, banned, and murdered throughout the Muslim world. Iran's artists and intellectuals know this, which is why they have so courageously made statements giving me unqualified support. Leading Muslim intellectuals-the poet Adonis, the novelist Tahar Ben Jalloun, and scores of others-have called for the end of Iran's threats, not only because they care about me but because they know that this is their fight, too. To win this fight is to win one skirmish in a much greater war. To lose would have unpleasant consequences for me, but it would also be a defeat in that larger conflict. is just the best-known of all the cases of writers, intellectuals, progressives, and dissidents being jailed, banned, and murdered throughout the Muslim world. Iran's artists and intellectuals know this, which is why they have so courageously made statements giving me unqualified support. Leading Muslim intellectuals-the poet Adonis, the novelist Tahar Ben Jalloun, and scores of others-have called for the end of Iran's threats, not only because they care about me but because they know that this is their fight, too. To win this fight is to win one skirmish in a much greater war. To lose would have unpleasant consequences for me, but it would also be a defeat in that larger conflict.

As this goes to press there is news that Ya.s.ser Arafat has denounced the fatwa as being against Islam; while, here in Britain, even the infamous demagogue Dr. Kalim Siddiqui believes it is time for "both sides to forgive and forget." After four years of intimidation and violence, there is certainly plenty to forgive. Still, I welcome even this most improbable of olive branches.

[From an address delivered in King's College Chapel, Cambridge, on the morning of Sunday, February 14, 1993]

To stand in this house is to be reminded of what is most beautiful about religious faith: its ability to give solace and to inspire, its aspiration to these great and lovely heights, in which strength and delicacy are so perfectly conjoined. In addition, to be asked to speak here on this day, the fourth anniversary of the notorious fatwa of the late Imam Khomeini, is a particular honor. When I was an undergraduate at this college, between 1965 and 1968, the years of flower-power and student power, I would have found the notion of delivering an address in King's Chapel pretty far-out, as we used to say; and yet, such are the journeys of one's life that here I stand. I am grateful to the chapel and the college for extending this invitation, which I take as a gesture of solidarity and support, support not merely for one individual but, much more importantly, for the high moral principles of human rights and human freedoms that the Khomeini edict seeks so brutally to attack. For just as King's Chapel may be taken as a symbol of what is best about religion, so the fatwa has become a symbol of what is worst.

It feels all the more appropriate to be speaking here because it was while in my final year of reading history at Cambridge that I came across the story of the so-called satanic verses or temptation of the Prophet Muhammad, and of his rejection of that temptation. That year, I had chosen as one of my special subjects a paper on Muhammad, the rise of Islam, and the caliphate. So few students chose this option that the lectures were canceled. The other students switched to different special subjects. However, I was anxious to continue, and Arthur Hibbert, one of the King's history dons, agreed to supervise me. So as it happened I was, I think, the only student in Cambridge who took the paper. The next year, I'm told, it was not offered again. This is the kind of thing that almost leads one to believe in the workings of a hidden hand.

The story of the "satanic verses" can be found, among other places, in the canonical writings of the cla.s.sical writer al-Tabari. He tells us that on one occasion the Prophet was given verses which seemed to accept the divinity of the three most popular pagan G.o.ddesses of Mecca, thus compromising Islam's rigid monotheism. Later he rejected these verses as being a trick of the devil-saying that Satan had appeared to him in the guise of the Archangel Gabriel and spoken "satanic verses."

Historians have long speculated about this incident, wondering if perhaps the nascent religion had been offered a sort of deal by the pagan authorities of the city, which was flirted with and then refused. I felt the story humanized the Prophet, and therefore made him more accessible, more easily comprehensible to a modern reader, for whom the presence of doubt in a human mind, and human imperfections in a great man's personality, can only make that mind, that personality, more attractive. Indeed, according to the traditions of the Prophet, even the Archangel Gabriel was understanding about the incident, a.s.suring him that such things had befallen all the prophets, and that he need not worry about what had happened. It seems that the Archangel Gabriel, and the G.o.d in whose name he spoke, was rather more tolerant than some of those who presently affect to speak in the name of G.o.d.

Khomeini's fatwa itself may be seen as a set of modern satanic verses. In the fatwa, once again, evil takes on the guise of virtue; and the faithful are deceived.

It's important to remember what the fatwa is. One cannot properly call it a sentence, since it far exceeds its author's jurisdiction; since it contravenes fundamental principles of Islamic law; and since it was issued without the faintest pretense of any legal process. (Even Stalin thought it necessary to hold show trials!) It is, in fact, a straightforward terrorist threat, and in the West it has already had very harmful effects. There is much evidence that writers and publishers have become nervous of publishing any material about Islam except of the most reverential and anodyne sort. There are instances of contracts for books being canceled, of texts being rewritten. Even so independent an artist as the filmmaker Spike Lee felt the need to submit to Islamic authorities the script of his film about Malcolm X, who was for a time a member of the Nation of Islam and performed the hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca. And to this day, almost one year after the paperback of The Satanic Verses The Satanic Verses was published (by a specially const.i.tuted consortium) in the United States, and imported into Britain, no British publisher has had the nerve to take on distribution of the softcover edition, even though it has been in the bookstores for months without causing the tiniest frisson. was published (by a specially const.i.tuted consortium) in the United States, and imported into Britain, no British publisher has had the nerve to take on distribution of the softcover edition, even though it has been in the bookstores for months without causing the tiniest frisson.

In the East, however, the fatwa's implications are far more sinister. "You must defend Rushdie," an Iranian writer told a British scholar recently. "In defending Rushdie you are defending us." In January, in Turkey, an Iranian-trained hit-squad a.s.sa.s.sinated the secular journalist Ugur Mumcu. Last year, in Egypt, fundamentalist a.s.sa.s.sins killed Farag Fouda, one of the country's leading secular thinkers. Today, in Iran, many of the brave writers and intellectuals who defended me are being threatened with death-squads.

Last summer, I was able to partic.i.p.ate in a literary seminar staged in a Cambridge college and attended by scholars and writers from all over the world, including many Muslims. I was touched by the friendship and enthusiasm with which the Muslim delegates greeted me. A distinguished Saudi journalist took my arm and said, "I want to embrace you because you, Mr. Rushdie, are a free man." He was fully aware of the ironies of what he was saying. He meant that freedom of speech, freedom of the imagination, is that freedom which gives meaning to all the others. He could walk the streets, get his work published, lead an ordinary life, and did not feel free, because there was so much he could not say, so much he hardly dared to think. I was protected by the Special Branch; he had to watch out for the Thought Police.

Today, as Professor Fred Halliday says in this week's New Statesman & Society, New Statesman & Society, "the battle for freedom of expression, and for political and gender rights, is being fought out not in the senior common rooms and dinner tables of Europe, but in the Islamic world." In his essay, he gives some instances of the way in which the case of "the battle for freedom of expression, and for political and gender rights, is being fought out not in the senior common rooms and dinner tables of Europe, but in the Islamic world." In his essay, he gives some instances of the way in which the case of The Satanic Verses The Satanic Verses is being used as a symbol by the oppressed voices of the Muslim world. One of the many Iranian exile radio stations, he tells us, has even named itself Voice of the Satanic Verses. is being used as a symbol by the oppressed voices of the Muslim world. One of the many Iranian exile radio stations, he tells us, has even named itself Voice of the Satanic Verses.

The Satanic Verses is a committedly secular text that deals in part with the material of religious faith. For the religious fundamentalist, especially, at present, the Islamic fundamentalist, the adjective "secular" is the dirtiest of dirty words. But here's a strange paradox: in my country of origin, India, it was the secular ideal of Nehru and Gandhi that protected the nation's large Muslim minority, and it is the decay of that ideal that leads directly to the b.l.o.o.d.y sectarian confrontations which the subcontinent is now witnessing, confrontations that were long foretold and could have been avoided had not so many politicians chosen to fan the flames of religious hatred. Indian Muslims have always known the importance of secularism; it is from that experience that my own secularism springs. In the past four years, my commitment to that ideal, and to the ancillary principles of pluralism, skepticism, and tolerance, has been doubled and redoubled. is a committedly secular text that deals in part with the material of religious faith. For the religious fundamentalist, especially, at present, the Islamic fundamentalist, the adjective "secular" is the dirtiest of dirty words. But here's a strange paradox: in my country of origin, India, it was the secular ideal of Nehru and Gandhi that protected the nation's large Muslim minority, and it is the decay of that ideal that leads directly to the b.l.o.o.d.y sectarian confrontations which the subcontinent is now witnessing, confrontations that were long foretold and could have been avoided had not so many politicians chosen to fan the flames of religious hatred. Indian Muslims have always known the importance of secularism; it is from that experience that my own secularism springs. In the past four years, my commitment to that ideal, and to the ancillary principles of pluralism, skepticism, and tolerance, has been doubled and redoubled.

I have had to understand not just what I am fighting against-in this situation, that's not very hard-but also what I am fighting for, what is worth fighting for with one's life. Religious fanaticism's scorn for secularism and for unbelief led me to my answer. It is that values and morals are independent of religious faith, that good and evil come before religion: that-if I may be permitted to say this in the house of G.o.d-it is perfectly possible, and for many of us even necessary, to construct our ideas of the good without taking refuge in faith. That is where our freedom lies, and it is that freedom, among many others, which the fatwa threatens, and which it cannot be allowed to destroy.

[From an article that was not, in the end, offered for publication, April 1993]

On Monday, February 22, the prime minister's office announced that Mr. Major had agreed in principle to a meeting with me, as a demonstration of the government's determination to stand up for freedom of expression and for the right of its citizens not to be murdered by thugs in the pay of a foreign power. More recently a date was set for that meeting. Immediately a vociferous Tory backbench campaign sought to have the meeting canceled, because of its interference with Britain's "partnership" with the murderous mullahs of Tehran. The date-which I had been a.s.sured was "as firm as can be"-has today been postponed without explanation. By a curious coincidence, a proposed British trade delegation to Iran in early May can now take place without embarra.s.sment. Iran is hailing this visit-the first such mission in the fourteen years since the Khomeini revolution-as a "breakthrough" in relations. Its news agency states that the British have promised that lines of credit will be made available.

It is becoming harder to retain confidence in the Foreign Office's decision to launch a new "high-profile" international initiative against the notorious fatwa. For not only are we scurrying off to do business with the tyrannical regime that the U.S. administration calls an "international outlaw" and brands as the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, but we also propose to lend that regime the money with which to do business with us. Meanwhile, I gather I am to be offered a new date for my little meeting. But n.o.body from Number 10 Downing Street has spoken or written to me.

The Tory "anti-Rushdie" pressure group-its very description demonstrates its members' desire to turn this into an issue of personality rather than principle-includes Sir Edward Heath and Emma Nicholson, as well as that well-known apologist for Iranian interests Peter Temple-Morris. *20 *20 Emma Nicholson tells us that she has grown to "respect and like" the Iranian regime (whose record of killing, maiming, and torturing its own people has recently been condemned by the United Nations as being among the worst in the world), while Sir Edward, still protected by Special Branch because, twenty years ago, the British people suffered under his disastrous premiership, criticizes the decision to offer similar protection to a fellow Briton who is presently in greater danger than himself. Emma Nicholson tells us that she has grown to "respect and like" the Iranian regime (whose record of killing, maiming, and torturing its own people has recently been condemned by the United Nations as being among the worst in the world), while Sir Edward, still protected by Special Branch because, twenty years ago, the British people suffered under his disastrous premiership, criticizes the decision to offer similar protection to a fellow Briton who is presently in greater danger than himself.

All these persons agree on one point: the crisis is my fault. Never mind that over two hundred of the most prominent Iranians in exile have signed a statement of absolute support for me. That writers, thinkers, journalists, and academics throughout the Muslim world-where the attack upon dissenting, progressive, and above all secularist ideas is daily gathering force-have told the British media that "to defend Rushdie is to defend us." That The Satanic Verses, The Satanic Verses, a legitimate work of the free imagination, has many defenders (and where there are at least two views, why should the book-burners have the last word?), or that its opponents have felt no need to understand it. a legitimate work of the free imagination, has many defenders (and where there are at least two views, why should the book-burners have the last word?), or that its opponents have felt no need to understand it.

Iranian officials have admitted that Khomeini never so much as saw a copy of the novel. Islamic jurisprudents have stated that the fatwa contradicts Islamic law, never mind international law. Meanwhile, the Iranian press has awarded a prize of sixteen gold pieces and a pilgrimage to Mecca for a cartoon "proving" that The Satanic Verses The Satanic Verses is not a novel at all but a carefully engineered Western conspiracy against Islam. Does this whole affair not feel, at times, like the blackest of black comedy-a circus sideshow enacted by murderous clowns? is not a novel at all but a carefully engineered Western conspiracy against Islam. Does this whole affair not feel, at times, like the blackest of black comedy-a circus sideshow enacted by murderous clowns?

In the last four years I have been slandered by many people. I do not intend to keep turning the other cheek. If it was proper to attack those on the Left who were the fellow-travelers of Communism, and those on the Right who sought to appease the n.a.z.is, then the friends of revolutionary Iran-businessmen, politicians, or British fundamentalists-deserve to be treated with equal contempt.