Hatred was still in the air as well as love. The Muslim Institute’s loquacious garden gnome was still ranting, and was being given every opportunity to do so. Here he was on BBC Radio saying that Salman Rushdie “had been found guilty of a capital offense in the eyes of the highest legal authority in Islam and what is left is the application of that punishment.” In a Sunday newspaper Siddiqui clarified his thinking. “He should pay with his life.” There had been no executions in Britain for a quarter of a century but now the discussion of “legal” killing had been made acceptable again by the “rage of Islam.” Siddiqui’s views were echoed in Lebanon by the Hezbollah leader Hussein Musawi. He must die. Simon Lee, author of The Cost of Free Speech, suggested he should be sent to Northern Ireland for the rest of his days, because there was already so much security in place there. The Sun columnist Garry Bushell described him as a greater traitor to his country than George Blake. Blake, a Soviet double agent, had been sentenced to forty-two years in prison for espionage, but had escaped from jail and fled to the Soviet Union. Writing a novel could now be described with a straight face as a more heinous offense than high treason.
Two years of attacks by Muslim and non-Muslim adversaries had affected him more than he knew. He had never forgotten the day they brought him a copy of The Guardian and he saw that the novelist and critic John Berger was writing about him. He had met Berger and admired, in particular, his essay books Ways of Seeing and About Looking, and felt that they were on friendly terms. He turned eagerly to the op-ed page to read him. The shock of what he found, Berger’s bitter attack on his work and motives, was very great. They had many mutual friends, Anthony Barnett of Charter 88, for example, and over the months and years that followed Berger would be asked by these intermediaries why he had written so hostile a piece. He invariably refused to answer the question.
No woman’s love could easily assuage the pain of so many “black arrows.” There was probably not enough love in the world to heal him at that moment. His new book had been published and on the same day the British government had climbed back into bed with his would-be assassins. He was being praised on the book pages and reviled in the news. At night he heard I love you but the days were shouting Die.
Elizabeth received no police protection but, to ensure her safety, it was important to keep her out of the public eye. His friends never mentioned her name, or even her existence, outside the “charmed circle.” But inevitably the press found out. No photographs of her were available, and none were made available, but that didn’t stop the tabloids from speculating why a beautiful young woman might wish to be with a novelist fourteen years her senior with the mark of death on his brow. He saw a photograph of himself in the paper captioned RUSHDIE: UGLY. Inevitably it was assumed that she was there for low motives, for his money, perhaps, or, in the opinion of a “psychologist” who felt able to judge her without ever having met her, because a certain kind of young woman was turned on by the scent of danger.
Now that the secret was out the police grew more concerned for her safety, and for his. They became uneasy about her cycle route being followed and insisted that she meet them at prearranged locations and be “dry-cleaned.” They also issued a notice to the press, warning them off her, because to publicize her would increase the probability of a crime being committed. In all the years that followed the press helped to protect her. No photograph of her was ever taken or printed. Whenever he appeared in public she would be brought to the location separately and taken away afterward in a separate car. He would tell the press photographers that he was happy for them to take his picture and ask, in return, that they leave her alone; and, amazingly, they did. Everyone knew that the fatwa was a serious matter, and everyone took it seriously. Even five years later, when his novel The Moor’s Last Sigh was short-listed for the Booker and he went with Elizabeth to the ceremony, there were no pictures of her. The Booker dinner was live on BBC2 but the cameras were instructed not to look at her, and not a single image of her face was transmitted. As a result of this exceptional restraint she was able, throughout the fatwa years, to move around the city freely, as a private person, attracting no attention, friendly or unfriendly. She was intensely private by nature, and this suited her very well.
In mid-October he sat down with Mike Wallace at a hotel to the west of London to be interviewed for 60 Minutes, and near the top of the interview Wallace mentioned the end of his marriage to Marianne and then asked, “What do you do for companionship? Do you have to lead a celibate life?” He was caught off guard by the question, and could obviously not tell Wallace the truth about his newfound love; he floundered for a second and then as if by a miracle he found the right words. “It’s nice,” he said, “to have a break.” Mike Wallace looked so shocked by this answer that he had to add, “No, I’m not being serious.” Just kidding, Mike.
Marianne called. She was back from America again. He wanted to talk to her about lawyers and formalizing their divorce but she had something else to discuss. There was a lump in her breast that was thought to be “precancerous.” She was very angry with her GP, who should have diagnosed it “six months ago.” But there it was. She needed him, she said. She still loved him. Three days later she had worse news. The cancer was there: Burkitt’s lymphoma, one of the non-Hodgkin’s group of cancers. She was seeing a specialist at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, a Dr. Abdul-Ahad. In the weeks that followed she told him she was receiving radiotherapy. He didn’t know what to say to her.
Pauline Melville had won the Guardian Fiction Prize for Shape-shifter. He called her to congratulate her but she wanted to talk about Marianne. She, Pauline, had repeatedly offered to accompany Marianne to the hospital on treatment days. The offer had invariably been refused. She called back some days later and said, “I think you should call this Dr. Abdul-Ahad and speak to him yourself.”
The oncologist Dr. Abdul-Ahad had never heard of Marianne, nor, he said, would he treat a cancer such as the one in question. He was a specialist in quite different cancers, primarily in children. This was baffling. Were there other Dr. Abdul-Ahads? Was he talking to the wrong one?
It was the day Marianne had said she was to begin treatment at the Royal Marsden. There were two Royal Marsdens, one on Fulham Road and the other in Sutton. He called them both. They did not know who she was. More bafflement. Perhaps she was using an assumed name. Perhaps she had a Joseph Anton–like pseudonym, too. He had wanted to help, but he had run into a dead end.
He called her GP and asked if she would speak to him. He told her he knew about doctor-patient confidentiality but the oncologist he had spoken to had suggested they talk. “I’m glad you called,” the doctor said. “I’ve lost touch with Marianne—can you give me an address and phone number? I obviously need to speak to her.” He was surprised to hear that. The doctor had not seen Marianne for over a year, and added that Marianne had never discussed having cancer with her.
Marianne stopped returning his calls. He never knew if she had been contacted by the doctor or not, never knew if she had moved on to another GP, never knew anything about any of it. They hardly spoke again after that. She agreed to the divorce and made few financial demands, asking for a modest lump sum to help her restart her life. She left London, and moved to Washington, D.C. He never heard anything further about illness, or medical treatment. She continued to live, and to write. Her books were highly regarded and nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He had always thought her a fine writer of high quality and wished her well. Their lives went down separate paths, and did not touch again.
No: That wasn’t correct. They touched just once more. He was about to make himself vulnerable to attack, and she took the opportunity, and had her revenge.
He read a novel by the Chilean writer José Donoso about the demolition of the self, The Obscene Bird of Night. In his vulnerable state of mind it was probably not the best choice of reading. The title was taken from a letter written by Henry James, Sr., to his sons Henry
and William that served as the novel’s epigraph: “Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject’s roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.”
He lay awake watching Elizabeth sleeping and in his room the unsubdued forest grew and grew, like that other forest in Sendak’s great book, the forest beyond which lay the ocean beyond which lay the place where the wild things were, and here was a private boat for him to sail in, and waiting on the beach in the place where the wild things were was a dentist. Maybe the wisdom teeth had been an omen after all. Maybe there were omens and auguries and portents and prophecies, and all the things he didn’t believe in were more real than the things he knew. Maybe if there were bat-winged monsters and bug-eyed ghouls … maybe if there were demons and devils … there could also be a god. Yes, and maybe he was losing his mind. The crazy, stupid, and, finally, dead fish is the one that goes looking for the hook.
The fisherman who caught the crazy fish, the siren who led his private boat onto the rocks was the “holistic dentist” from Harley Street, Hesham el-Essawy. (Maybe he should have listened to the wisdom of the teeth.) Essawy was unlikely casting for the role in spite of his passing resemblance to a fleshier Peter Sellers, but the desperate fish, caught in its tank for two long years, its spirits low, its sense of self-worth badly battered, was hunting for a way out, any way out, and mistook the fisherman’s wriggling worm for the key.
He had another meeting with Duncan Slater in Knightsbridge and this time there was another man in the room, the Foreign Office highflier David Gore-Booth. Gore-Booth had been present at the conversations with the Iranians in New York and had agreed to debrief him personally. He was haughty, smart, tough and direct and gave the impression, like the Arabist he was, that his sympathies in this matter lay not with the writer but with his critics. Ever since Lawrence of Arabia the FCO had “tilted” toward the Muslim world (Gore-Booth would become an unpopular figure in Israel) and its grandees often exuded a genuine irritation at the difficulties in Britain’s relations with that world caused by, of all people, a novelist. However, Gore-Booth said that the assurances received from Iran were “real.” They would not seek to carry out the death order. What mattered now was to bring the temperature down at home. If the British Muslims could be persuaded to call off the dogs then things could revert to normal pretty swiftly. “That side of it,” he said, “is really up to you.”
Frances D’Souza was excitedly optimistic when he called to tell her about the Gore-Booth meeting. “I think we could have a deal!” she said. But the meeting had left him feeling very low because of Gore-Booth’s barely disguised contempt for what he had supposedly done. That side of it is really up to you. Principle was being recast as obstinacy. His attempt to hold the line, to insist that he was the victim, not the perpetrator, of a great wrong was being received as arrogance. So much was being done for him; why was he being so inflexible? He had started this: He needed to finish it, too.
The weight of such attitudes, which were becoming general, lay heavily upon him, making it progressively harder to believe that he was acting for the best. Some sort of dialogue with British Muslims was perhaps inescapable. Frances told him that Essawy had contacted Article 19 and offered to mediate. Essawy was not very intellectually impressive but he was, she believed, well-meaning, even kindly. This route seemed vital to her now. The defense campaign was short of funds. She needed to raise £6,000 urgently. It was becoming difficult to persuade Article 19 to continue to fund the campaigning work on this issue. They need to show that progress was being made.
He called Essawy. The dentist was courteous toward him, spoke gently, claiming to sympathize with the unpleasantness of his life. He could see that he was being coddled, almost baby-talked toward some sort of acquiescence, but he stayed on the line. Essawy claimed he wanted to help. He could arrange a conference of “very heavyweight” Muslim intellectuals and use that to start a campaign across the Arab world, and even in Iran. “I’m your best bet,” he said. “I want you to be a Ghazali figure and return to the faith.” Muhammad al-Ghazali, the conservative Muslim thinker, was the author of the celebrated Incoherence of the Philosophers, in which he denounced as unbelievers and traducers of the true faith both the great Greeks Aristotle and Socrates, and the Muslim scholars such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) who had sought to learn from them. Ghazali had been answered by Ibn Rushd (Averroës), the Aristotelian from whom Anis Rushdie had derived the family name, in the equally celebrated work The Incoherence of the Incoherence. He himself had always thought of himself as a member of the Ibn Rushd team, not the Ghazalians, but he understood that Essawy was not referring to Ghazali’s philosophy itself but to the moment when Ghazali suffered a personal crisis of belief that was overcome by “a light which God Most High cast into my breast.” He thought it improbable that his breast would be receiving the light of God Most High anytime soon, but Essawy pressed on. “I don’t believe in your god-shaped hole that you wrote about,” he said. “You’re an intelligent man.” As if intelligence and disbelief could not coexist in a single mind. The significance of this alleged god-shaped hole, he was being told, was not just that it was a cavity to be filled up by art and love, as he had written, but that it was in the shape of God. Now he should look not into the void, but at that framing shape.
In normal circumstances he would not have wasted his time on such a discussion, but the circumstances were far from normal. He talked to Sameen, who was suspicious. “You need to establish exactly what Essawy expects,” his sister said. Essawy had recently written an open letter to Rafsanjani in Iran in which he had referred to “this worthless writer.” (“You’ll forgive me for that, won’t you,” he wheedled disingenuously on the phone.) And he had made one demand that would be a major stumbling block: “You mustn’t defend the book.”
Every time he called Essawy he was aware of being lured further and further into a space from which he would find it hard to withdraw. Yet he continued to call, and Essawy allowed him to take his time, to find his way slowly, at his own speed, with many retreats and evasions, to where the hook waited for his willing mouth. His South Bank Show interview had been very helpful, the dentist said. His old stances on Kashmir and Palestine were useful too. They would show Muslims he was not their enemy. He should make a video reiterating his support for Kashmiri and Palestinian aspirations and that could be shown at the Islamic Cultural Center in London, to help change people’s minds about him. Maybe, he said. I’ll think about it.
He never learned very much about Essawy the man. The dentist said he was happily married and that, in fact, his wife was so attentively loving that she was cutting his toenails for him as he spoke on the phone. That became the image of the dentist that stuck in his mind: a man making phone calls while a woman knelt at his feet.
Margaret Drabble and Michael Holroyd invited him and Elizabeth down to Porlock Weir for the weekend, along with the playwright Julian Mitchell and his partner, Richard Rosen. They were a merry company but he was in agony, tying his mind in knots, trying to find a way to accommodate his opponents, looking for the words he could say—the words that would be possible for him to say—that might break the impasse. They went for a long walk along the lush green Doone Valley and as they walked he argued with himself. Maybe he could make a statement of belonging to the culture of Islam rather than the faith. There were nonreligious, secular Jews, after all; perhaps he could argue for a kind of secular membership of a Muslim community of tradition and knowledge.
He was after all from an Indian Muslim family. That was the truth. His parents might not have been religious but much of his family had been. He had obviously been profoundly affected by Muslim culture; after all, when he wanted to invent the
story of the birth of a fictional religion, he had turned to the story of Islam, because it was what he knew best. And yes, he had argued in essays and interviews for the rights of Kashmiri Muslims, and in Midnight’s Children he had placed a Muslim family, not a Hindu one, at the heart of the story of the birth of independent India. How could he be called an enemy of Islam when that was his record? He was not an enemy. He was a friend. A skeptical, even a dissident friend, but a friend nevertheless.
He spoke to Essawy from Maggie and Michael’s house. The fisherman felt the fish on the line and knew it was time to start reeling it in. “When you speak,” he said, “it must be clear. There cannot be equivocations.”
The police agreed that he could go to Bernardo Bertolucci’s private screening of his new film, The Sheltering Sky. After the screening he had no idea what to say to Bernardo. There wasn’t a single thing about the film he had enjoyed. “Ah! Salman!” Bertolucci said. “It is very important for me to know what you think of my picture.” At that moment the right words came into his head, just as other words had been given to him when Mike Wallace asked him about sex. He put his hand on his heart and said, “Bernardo … I can’t talk about it.” Bertolucci nodded understandingly. “A lot of people have this reaction,” he said.
On his way home he hoped for a third miracle, for the right words to come to him at the right moment for a third time, the words that would make British Muslim leaders nod wisely and understand.
He was finalizing his collection of essays, Imaginary Homelands, writing the introduction, correcting the proofs, when he was offered an interview on the BBC TV Late Show. The interviewer would be his friend Michael Ignatieff, the Russian-Canadian writer and broadcaster, so he was assured of a sympathetic hearing. In this interview he said what he thought everyone wanted to hear. I am talking with Muslim leaders to try to find common ground. Nobody wanted to hear about freedom anymore, or about the writer’s inalienable right to express his vision of the world as he saw fit, or about the immorality of book burning and death threats. Those arguments were used up. To restate them now would be obdurate and unhelpful. People wanted to hear him making peace so that the trouble could stop and he could just go away, off their televisions, out of their newspapers, into well-deserved obscurity, preferably to spend the rest of his life pondering on the evil he had wrought and finding ways to apologize for it and to make up for it. Nobody cared about him or his principles or his wretched book. They needed him to bring the damned thing to an end. There is a lot of common ground, he said, and the point is to try to make it more solid.
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