Disir
Platinum Member
- Sep 30, 2011
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When Salman Rushdie turned seventy-five, last summer, he had every reason to believe that he had outlasted the threat of assassination. A long time ago, on Valentineās Day, 1989, Iranās Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared Rushdieās novel āThe Satanic Versesā blasphemous and issued a fatwa ordering the execution of its author and āall those involved in its publication.ā Rushdie, a resident of London, spent the next decade in a fugitive existence, under constant police protection. But after settling in New York, in 2000, he lived freely, insistently unguarded. He refused to be terrorized.
There were times, though, when the lingering threat made itself apparent, and not merely on the lunatic reaches of the Internet. In 2012, during the annual autumn gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, I joined a small meeting of reporters with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, and I asked him if the multimillion-dollar bounty that an Iranian foundation had placed on Rushdieās head had been rescinded. Ahmadinejad smiled with a glint of malice. āSalman Rushdie, where is he now?ā he said. āThere is no news of him. Is he in the United States? If he is in the U.S., you shouldnāt broadcast that, for his own safety.ā
www.newyorker.com
I remember when this came out and the world went insane. I read it a couple of years later and it was actually a pretty good. I don't remember much of it because it was so long ago. It's absolutely insane that this man was attacked rather recently.
There were times, though, when the lingering threat made itself apparent, and not merely on the lunatic reaches of the Internet. In 2012, during the annual autumn gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, I joined a small meeting of reporters with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, and I asked him if the multimillion-dollar bounty that an Iranian foundation had placed on Rushdieās head had been rescinded. Ahmadinejad smiled with a glint of malice. āSalman Rushdie, where is he now?ā he said. āThere is no news of him. Is he in the United States? If he is in the U.S., you shouldnāt broadcast that, for his own safety.ā
The Defiance of Salman Rushdie
After a near-fatal stabbingāand decades of threatsāthe novelist speaks about writing as a death-defying act.
I remember when this came out and the world went insane. I read it a couple of years later and it was actually a pretty good. I don't remember much of it because it was so long ago. It's absolutely insane that this man was attacked rather recently.
