Joseph Anton: A Memoir

  He bit into the juicy worm and when he felt the point of the hook he did not stop.

  There was a flurry of responses, as if he had been walking through fallen autumn leaves and kicked them up in the air. Sameen heard on the radio that “moderate Muslim leaders” were asking Iran to annul the fatwa. However, British Muslim “leaders” to whom he had not spoken denied that they were negotiating with him. The garden gnome hopped on a flight to Tehran to urge the leadership of that country not to relent, and six days later the minister of Islamic culture and guidance, Mohammad Khatami—the future President Khatami, the great liberal hope of Iran—declared that the fatwa was irreversible. When he heard that he called Duncan Slater. “I thought you said that the Iranians were going to let this fade away,” he said. “We’ll get back to you,” Slater replied.

  He went on Melvyn Bragg’s Monday morning radio show Start the Week and named Essawy as the “major Muslim figure” who had opened up a dialogue with him. He spoke to Ted Koppel on Nightline and expressed the hope that things would improve. In Iran the offer of bounty money was raised again: still $1 million for Iranians, but now $3 million if a non-Iranian did the deed. He spoke to Slater. The New York agreement was plainly phony. The British government must act. Slater agreed to pass the message along. The government did not act. He said, on American television, that he was beginning to be “a little disturbed by the lack of reaction on the part of the British government” to these new menaces.

  The fisherman began to bring the fish to the net. “There must be a meeting,” Essawy said, “and you must be embraced by Muslims once again.”

  He consulted nobody, asked for no one’s advice or guidance. That alone should have told him he was not in his perfect mind. Normally he would have talked through any important decision with Sameen, Pauline, Gillon, Andrew, Bill, Frances. He made no calls. He didn’t even discuss it with Elizabeth, not really. “I’m trying to solve this,” he told her. But he didn’t ask her what she thought.

  There was no help coming from any other quarter. It was up to him. He had fought for his book and he would not surrender that. His good name had been destroyed anyway. It didn’t matter what people thought of him. They already thought the worst. “Yes,” he said to the ever more glutinous dentist, “set up the meeting. I’ll come.”

  Paddington Green station was the most secure police facility in the United Kingdom. Aboveground it was an ordinary cop shop in an ugly office block but the real action was underground. This was where members of the IRA were held and interrogated. And on Christmas Eve, 1990, this was where he was brought to meet Essawy’s people. He had been told that no other location could be approved; that was how nervous everyone was. When he entered Paddington Green with its bombproof doors and endless security locks and checks he began to feel nervous himself. Then he walked into the meeting room and stopped dead. He had expected a roundtable discussion, or for everyone to be informally seated in armchairs, perhaps with tea or coffee. That was how naïve he had been. He now saw that there was to be no informality, and not even a pretense of a discussion. They had not come together as equals to talk through a problem and reach a civilized agreement. He was not to be treated as an equal. He was to be put on trial.

  The room had been set up by the Muslim worthies as a courtroom. They sat like six tribunal judges in a straight line behind a long table and facing them was a single upright chair. He stopped in the doorway like a horse balking at the first fence and Essawy approached him whispering urgently, telling him he must come in, these were important gentlemen, they had made time in their schedules, they must not be kept waiting. He should please sit. Everyone was waiting.

  He should have turned his back then and gone home, away from degradation, back toward self-respect. Every step forward was a mistake. But he was Essawy’s zombie now. The dentist’s hand gentle on his elbow guided him to the empty chair.

  Everyone was introduced to him but he barely registered their names. There were beards and turbans and curious, piercing eyes. He recognized Zaki Badawi, the Egyptian president of the Muslim College in London and a “liberal” who had condemned The Satanic Verses but had said that he would shelter its author in his own home. He was introduced to a Mr. Mahgoub, the Egyptian minister of awqaf (religious endowments), and to Sheikh Gamal Manna Ali Solaiman of the golden-domed London Central Mosque in Regent’s Park and to Sheikh Gamal’s associate Sheikh Hamed Khalifa. Essawy was of Egyptian origin and he had brought other Egyptians into this room.

  They had him now, so they laughed and joked with him at first. They made rude comments about Kalim Siddiqui, the malevolent garden gnome and Iranian lapdog. They promised to launch a worldwide campaign to lay the fatwa issue to rest. He tried to explain the origins of his novel and they agreed that the controversy was based on a “tragic misunderstanding.” He was not an enemy of Islam. They wanted to acknowledge him as a member of the Muslim intelligentsia. That was their most earnest desire. We want to reclaim you for ourselves. He needed only to make certain gestures of goodwill.

  He should distance himself, they said, from the statements made by characters in his novel who attacked or insulted the Prophet or his religion. He said he had frequently pointed out that it was impossible to portray the persecution of a new faith without showing the persecutors doing some persecuting, and it was an obvious injustice to equate his own views with theirs. Well, then, they rejoined, this will be easy for you to say.

  He should suspend publication of the paperback edition, they said. He told them that for them to insist on this would be a mistake; they would look like censors. They said a period of time was needed for their reconciliation efforts to work. He needed to create that space. Once the misunderstandings had been cleared up the book would no longer concern anyone and new editions would cease to be a problem.

  Finally, he needed to prove his sincerity. He knew what the shahadah was, did he not. He had grown up in India calling it the qalmah but that was the same thing. There is no God but God and Muhammad is his Prophet. That was a statement he needed to make today. That was what would allow them to extend the hand of friendship, forgiveness and understanding.

  He said he was willing to express a secular Muslim identity, to say he had grown up in that tradition. They reacted badly to the word “secular.” “Secular” was the devil. That word should not have been used. He needed to speak clearly in the time-honored words. That was the only gesture that Muslims would understand.

  They had prepared a document for him to sign. Essawy handed it to him. It was ungrammatical and crude. He could not sign it. “Revise, revise,” they urged him. “You are the great writer and we are not.” In a corner of the room there was a table and another chair. He took the piece of paper there and sat down to study it. “Take your time,” they cried. “You should be happy with what you sign.”

  He was not happy. He was trembling with misery. Now he wished he had asked his friends’ advice. What would they have said? What would his father have advised? He saw himself swaying on the edge of a great abyss. But he was also hearing the seductive murmur of hope. If they did what they said … if the quarrel came to an end … if, if, if.

  He signed the corrected document and handed it to Essawy. The six “judges” signed it too. There were embraces and congratulations. It was over. He was lost inside a whirlwind, dizzy, blinded by what he had done, and had no idea where the tornado was taking him. He heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing. The police guided him out of the room and he heard the doors open and shut along the underground corridor. Then a car door, open, shut. He was being driven away. When he got back to Wimbledon Elizabeth was waiting, offering him her love. His insides were churning. He went to the bathroom and was violently sick. His body knew what his mind had done and was expressing its opinion.

  In the afternoon he was taken to a press conference and tried to sound positive. There were interviews for radio and television, with Essawy and without him. He did not remember what he said. He knew what he was sa
ying to himself. You are a liar, he was saying. You are a liar and a coward and a fool. Sameen called him. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” she shouted at him. “What do you think you are doing?” Yes, you have taken leave of your senses, said his inner voice. And you have no idea what you have done, or are doing, or can now do. He had survived this long because he could put his hand on his heart and defend every word he had written or said. He had written seriously and with integrity and everything he had said about that had been the truth. Now he had torn his tongue out of his own mouth, had denied himself the ability to use the language and ideas that were natural to him. Until this moment he had been accused of a crime against the beliefs of others. Now he accused himself, and found himself guilty, of having committed a crime against himself.

  Then it was Christmas Day.

  He was taken to Pauline’s basement apartment in Highbury Hill and Zafar was brought there so that they could spend Christmas morning together. After a couple of hours Zafar went back to his mother’s and he and Elizabeth were driven to Graham Swift and Candice Rodd’s house in Wandsworth. It was their second Christmas together. They were as friendly as ever and tiptoed around the subject of what had just happened so as not to spoil the Christmas mood, but he could see the worry in their eyes just as they, he was certain, could see the confusion in his. The next day was spent at Bill Buford’s little house in Cambridge and Bill had cooked a feast. These moments were islands in the storm. After that his days were busy with journalists and his ears were deafened by the news. He spoke to the British, American and Indian press, and to the BBC World Service’s Persian section, and did phone-ins on British Muslim radio stations. He loathed every word he said. He was twisting on the hook he had so willingly swallowed and he made himself sick. He knew the truth: He was no more religious than he had been a few days earlier. The rest was pure expediency. And it wasn’t even working.

  At first it seemed it just might. The grand sheikh of al-Azhar came out in support and “forgave him his sins” and Sibghat Qadri, QC, asked to meet the attorney general to discuss prosecuting Kalim Siddiqui. But Iran remained intransigent. Khamenei said the fatwa would remain in place even “if Rushdie became the most pious man of all time” and a hard-line Tehran newspaper advised him to “prepare for death.” Siddiqui duly parroted these statements. And then the Paddington Green Six began to back away from their agreement. Sheikh Gamal demanded the total withdrawal of The Satanic Verses, which he and his colleagues had agreed not to do. Gamal and his colleague Sheikh Hamed Khalifa had been strongly criticized by the congregation at the Regent’s Park Mosque and under the pressure of that criticism were abandoning their positions. The Saudis and Iranians expressed their “anger” at the Egyptian government’s involvement in the peace effort and Mahgoub, in danger of losing his job, also reneged on what he had agreed.

  And on January 9, 1991, Elizabeth’s thirtieth birthday, he was visited at noon by Mr. Greenup, who told him grimly, “We believe that the danger to you has now increased. Credible intelligence has been received about a specific threat. We are analyzing this and will let you know in due course.”

  He had fallen into the trap of wanting to be loved, had made himself foolish and weak, and now he was paying the price.

  V

  “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me”

  IT WAS ELIZABETH’S BIRTHDAY AND HE WAS COOKING AN INDIAN MEAL for her. Gillon, Bill, Pauline and Jane Wellesley were coming to Wimbledon for this little celebration dinner. He wanted it to be a special evening for her. She was giving him so much and he could give her very little but at least he could cook this meal. He told nobody about what Greenup had said. There would be time for that another day. This day, January 9, was for the woman he loved. They had been together for five months.

  After her birthday he fell ill. He ran a high fever for several days and was confined to bed. As he lay there hot and shivering the news, both private and public, seemed to be an aspect of his sickness. Andrew’s assistant Susan had spoken to Marianne, who said she was well, and no doubt she was, but he couldn’t pay attention to that now. The police were telling him that because of the “specific threat” his activities would have to be restricted even further. He had been asked to go on various TV programs, Wogan, Question Time, but that would not be allowed. He had been asked to speak to a House of Commons group but they didn’t want to take him to the Palace of Westminster. A few private evenings at the homes of friends might be permitted but that was all. He knew he would refuse to accept this but he was too unwell just then to argue. Late at night as he lay fevered in bed the TV brought him news of the start of the Gulf War, the huge aerial attack on Iraq. Then Iraq attacked Israel with Scud missiles, which miraculously killed nobody and, fortunately, were not armed with chemical warheads. He spent the days in a half delirium of sleep, fever and images of precision bombing. There were phone calls, some answered, some not, many bad dreams, and above all his continuing anguish about his declaration that he had “become a Muslim.” Sameen was finding that very hard to take and some of the calls were hers. For two years he had been heading down a road toward the heart of darkness and now he was there, in hell. He had perplexed all his friends and had obliged himself to stand smiling alongside those who had vilified him and threatened others, people who had acquiesced in the threat of murder made by Iran, which Iqbal Sacranie, for one, had called “his divine retribution.” The “intellectual” Tariq Modood wrote him a letter saying he must no longer talk about the fatwa. “Muslims find it repulsive,” Modood said. The West had used the fatwa to demonize Muslims, so it would be “repulsive” of him to object to it anymore. This Modood presented himself as a moderate but such hypocrisy made it impossible for him to think in a straight line. And these were the people he could no longer challenge because he had torn out his tongue. Another “moderate,” Akbar Ahmed, called to say that the “hard-liners” may slowly be coming around but he must be “very conciliatory,” a “sadha [plain] Muslim.” He replied that there was a very limited amount of shit he was willing to eat.

  Dear God,

  If you exist, and are as they describe You, omniscient, omnipresent, and above all almighty, surely You would not tremble upon your heavenly seat when confronted by a mere book and its scribbler? The great Muslim philosophers often disagreed about Your precise relationship with human beings and human deeds. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) argued that You, being far above the world, were limited to knowing it only in very general and abstract terms. Ghazali disagreed. Any God “acceptable to Islam” would know in detail everything that went on upon the surface of the earth and have an opinion about it. Well, Ibn Rushd didn’t buy that, as You would know if Ghazali was right (and not if Ibn Sina or Ibn Rushd were). Ghazali’s contention would make You too much like men, Ibn Rushd argued—like men with their foolish arguments, their little dissensions, their petty points of view. It would be beneath You, and would diminish You, to get dragged into human affairs. So, it’s hard to know what to think. If you are the God of Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd then you don’t even know what is being said and done right now in your name. However, even if You are Ghazali’s God, reading the newspapers, watching TV, and taking sides in political and even literary disputes, I don’t believe you could have a problem with The Satanic Verses or any other book, no matter how wretched. What sort of Almighty could be shaken by the work of Man? Contrariwise, God, if by some chance Ibn Sina, Ghazali and Ibn Rushd are all wrong and You don’t exist at all, then, too, in that case, too, You would have no problems with writers or books. I conclude that my difficulties are not with You, God, but with Your servants and followers on Earth. A distinguished novelist once told me that she had stopped writing fiction for a time because she didn’t like her fans. I wonder if You can sympathize with her position. Thank You for Your attention (unless you’re not listening: See above).

  “Becoming a Muslim” prompted some Foreign Office types to propose that he speak up for a terrorist. He received a message suggesting that
he might usefully intervene in the Kokabi trial. Mehrdad Kokabi, a “student,” was charged with arson and causing explosions at bookshops selling The Satanic Verses. The prosecution said his fingerprints had been found on the paper wrapping two pipe bombs, and that he had used his credit card to hire cars used in the attacks. Perhaps, it was hinted to him, it would be a nice touch for the author of The Satanic Verses to plead for clemency in the case. Outraged by the suggestion, he spoke to Duncan Slater and David Gore-Booth. They both disagreed with the idea. That was faintly reassuring, but two months later all charges against Kokabi were suddenly dropped and he was recommended for deportation to Iran. The government denied that it had twisted the arm of blind Justice. Slater and Gore-Booth said they knew nothing about it. Kokabi returned to Iran, where he was given a hero’s welcome and a new job. It became his responsibility to choose “students” who would receive placements abroad.