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Rushdie a few days before the assassination: The danger? “Long ago”
Salman Rushdie (archive image) felt safe in New York a few days before the assassination
© Hannelore Foerster / Getty Images
Salman Rushdie received the just a few days before he was assassinated star in New York for an interview. Rushdie also spoke about his own threat. star-Correspondent Raphael Geiger on a man who felt safe.
Salman Rushdie came alone to his New York agent’s office when the star met him for an interview a few days ago. Risk of death? “It was a long time ago,” he said, for whose death the Iranian regime offered a reward in 1989. “It was serious for a few years,” Rushdie said. “But since I’ve been living in America, I haven’t had any more problems.”
We had scheduled the interview with him for the next issue. A conversation in which a lot was about fear. His own fear then, the fear of a new fascism today, of Donald Trump returning. Rushdie warned of Trump. He warned of the violence in the United States. “The bad thing is,” he says, “that death threats have become commonplace.” He warned, saying he didn’t want to sound too pessimistic. “I’m an optimist by nature,” said Salman Rushdie. “I’m looking forward.”
Salman Rushdie felt free in New York
He was calm during the conversation, he chatted, took his time. We talked for almost two hours. For a long time he raved about his walks through New York, a city full of immigrants. Like him. New York had given him a new freedom. Born in Mumbai, he emigrated to England at the age of 13 and began writing books, including the “Satanic Verses”, which bothered the mullahs. The regime in Tehran faxed the fatwa with the death sentence against him to mosques around the world. The bounty for anyone who would kill him was $3 million. Rushdie spent the ’90s in hiding, guarded by cops and in constant danger.
If social media had existed then, Rushdie said, it would have been “more dangerous, infinitely more dangerous,” for him. He brushed aside that he was still in danger today. Although Iran never reversed the death sentence, even though the bounty was still in place. “Long ago.” Rushdie said it over and over again. “I was 36 when I started The Satanic Verses. I’m 75 now.” He’s proud of himself, he said. “To my then self. But it’s been four decades.”
“My life is very normal again”
He sat on his agent’s sofa, on the 21st floor of a high-rise building in midtown Manhattan, like someone who has left his former life behind. The danger. It was over for him. Once and for all. “My life is very normal again,” he said. His books are no longer discussed in the political section, but in the feuilleton. Which he is happy about. And actually he is just a writer “who spends two or three years writing a book and who only dares to leave his room for a few interviews when it comes out.”
After that, Rushdie said, he’d like to retire right away. Into the lonely room. Write books, nothing else. He thought he was getting there slowly. At 75. We asked him how you do it: to face a danger so calmly? Not despairing when there’s a bounty on your head? What was Salman Rushdie’s advice to anyone dealing with fear about the world situation? “You have to take action,” Rushdie said. “Do what you can against the dangers.”
Fatwa meant danger of death and fame
A bit like him back then, who had no choice. The fatwa meant a mortal danger for him. And she made him world famous. He could no longer be the writer in the lonely room. And yet he made a decision: he would not be intimidated, would not remain silent, he would be a symbol of freedom of expression. If he spoke, concretely in fear of his death, then who in the world should not dare to speak?
On Friday morning, it was an American police officer who stood between Rushdie and the assassin in Chautauqua, New York. A few days earlier, in the Stern interview, Rushdie said a sentence that we chose as the headline for the interview. Rushdie said, “We need fighters.”
The full interview with Salman Rushdie will appear in the next issue of stern and stern Plus.