The real reason was cost, he knew that; cost, and the tabloid mentality that believed he didn’t deserve what it might cost to protect him properly, overtly, as they protected everyone else.
Certain things about the fatwa were known at that time: not publicly known, but known among the people who needed to know, including himself and Deputy Assistant Commissioner Howley. The threat was not merely theoretical. There was a special task force inside the Iranian intelligence ministry whose duty was to make and carry out a plan to put the Khomeini order into effect. The task force had a code name, and there was a chain of approval in place. A plan would be developed, then approved by different levels up to and including the president, and finally signed off on by the religious leadership. That was the normal Iranian modus operandi. The task force that had executed Shapur Bakhtiar had almost certainly operated the same way. That Howley should be prepared to withdraw protection knowing what he knew, and so soon after the Bakhtiar killing, revealed a lot about his thinking. We’ve never lost anyone, the members of his protection team had told him, proudly, but Howley was telling him something different. We don’t care if we lose you. That felt … bad.
He said to Elizabeth that she should consider her own safety. If the police left there was no saying how dangerous life might become. “I’m not leaving you,” she replied.
Somehow he managed to do a little work. He completed a synopsis of The Moor’s Last Sigh that finally made some sort of sense. It had taken him a long time to get right. Now all he needed was the peace of mind that would allow him to write it.
He had been invited by the writer Scott Armstrong to speak at the Freedom Forum in Washington, D.C., in late March, and he wanted to go. It seemed probable that meetings with senior American politicians and journalists could be arranged while he was in D.C. He decided he would use the platform to express his doubts about the British commitment to his safety—to begin the fightback in a place where the media were more likely to give him a sympathetic hearing. Andrew told him he would do everything in his power to get him a copy of the paperback of The Satanic Verses in time for the forum. That would be a reply to the censors that the forum might very well wish to hear. The book was actually at the printer at last. It had been delayed by Penguin, who had somehow failed to sign the reversion document until the eleventh hour, and had then argued that the now-famous cover image of the two grappling, tumbling figures, a prince and a demon, belonged to them (it had actually been taken from an old Indian miniature, Rustam Killing the White Demon, from the Shahnama, or Book of Kings, the original now preserved in a Clive Album at the Victoria & Albert Museum). Eventually Penguin had given up being obstructive and signed on the required dotted lines and the printing and binding machines had been turned on. After all these years, paperbacks were actually beginning to exist.
After much reluctance the RAF agreed to fly him to Dulles and back on one of their regular transport flights—just this one more time. The service would not be available to him in the future. Also, on this occasion they would ask him to pay not only for his own seat but for the seats of the two RAF security personnel who would travel to America and back with him. Humbly, having no alternative, he paid up. He thought often of a line from a song by John Prine: There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes. The fatwa was his heroin. It made him spend everything he earned and, though it might end up killing him, it didn’t even give him a high.
Before he left for America, Fat Jack “wanted a word” on behalf of the lads. They were all worried about proposed changes in the status of “A” Squad that, if put into effect, would push them out of Special Branch and strip them of their detective status. Some of their Tory principals were working to have these changes scrapped but there was a general election imminent and what if the Labour Party got back into power? The latest polls showed Labour leading the Tories by 3 percent. Might he perhaps be able to talk to his chum Neil Kinnock on their behalf if Kinnock became prime minister? “Frankly,” he said, “vis-à-vis Labour, you’re just about all we’ve got.”
The alarm rang at half past five in the morning and they creaked out of bed. The protection team took Elizabeth to Swiss Cottage so that she could catch a train to Heathrow and then he was driven to RAF Brize Norton through the pretty Cotswolds dressed in early morning mist and began his second trip abroad in three years.
At Dulles he was met by a private security firm hired by the Freedom Forum at the shocking cost, he later learned, of $80,000. His detail chief was a sweet-natured fellow who asked if he could have copies of the paperback edition for himself and his team. The total number of copies he wanted was over fifty. That was alarming: How big was this team? “Sure,” he said. “I’ll get them for you.”
He met Elizabeth and Andrew at a conference center called Westfields six miles from Dulles. He was to do his interviews in the Windsor suite. He had grown up in Bombay in a house called Windsor Villa, a part of the Westfield Estate. The coincidence made him smile. Long days of interviews followed, and all the journalists were excited, even aroused, by the cloak-and-daggery. They had been brought to this location by security and had not known where they were going in advance. A big thrill. The fatwa was the only subject that interested most of the media. Only Esther B. Fein of The New York Times actually wanted to talk about his writing, and how he managed to do it in these extraordinary conditions.
Scott Armstrong, burly, businesslike, every inch the D.C. insider, had bad news: The meeting with congressmen planned for the next day had been canceled after, according to his information, an intervention by Secretary of State James Baker himself. Why was Baker doing this? The answer became clearer in the following days, when the George H. W. Bush administration refused all requests for meetings and declined to make a statement on the case. The White House press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, said, “He’s just an author on a book tour.”
Andrew lost his temper and accused Scott of having tricked them. Voices were raised. Scott was furious with Andrew but rightly suggested they shelve their anger and see what could be salvaged. They had dinner with Mike Wallace and a few others. Here, in confidence, and to enlist the sympathies of these august journalists, the true nature of the Consortium was revealed, as well as the hostility of the U.S. administration and the possibility of the British withdrawing protection.
It was time for his speech. He was wearing a burgundy linen suit that was by now spectacularly crumpled but there was no time to change. He looked like a nutty professor but maybe that was okay. He was more worried about his words than his appearance. The language of political speeches was alien to him. He believed in pushing language, making it mean as much as he could make it mean, listening to the meaning of its music as well as its words; but now he was supposed to speak plainly. Say what you really mean, he had been told; explain yourself, justify yourself, don’t hide behind your fiction. Did it matter if a writer was denuded in this way, stripped of the richness of language? Yes, it did, because beauty struck chords deep within the human heart, beauty opened doors in the spirit. Beauty mattered because beauty was joy and joy was the reason he did what he did, his joy in words and in using them to tell tales, to create worlds, to sing. And beauty, for now, was being treated as a luxury he should do without; as a luxury; as a lie. Ugliness was truth.
He did the best he could. He asked for American support and help, for America to show itself to be “the true friend of liberty,” and spoke not only of the freedom to write and publish but also of the freedom to read. He spoke of his fears that the British were prepared to abandon him to his fate. Then he announced that after many adversities it had finally been possible to publish a paperback of The Satanic Verses, and he held up a copy of the book. It was not an attractive edition. It had a hideous gold cover with large thick black and red lettering that looked a little too much like Nazi typography. But it existed, and that felt very good. Three and a half years after the novel was first published he had managed to complete the process of publication.
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There were journalist friends in the audience, Praful Bidwai from The Times of India and Anton Harber, whose Weekly Mail had tried to invite him to South Africa in 1988. But he was not able to linger and chat. The security team spoke of the “risk of snipers.” The building across the street “had Libyan connections.” Ah, yes, Colonel Gadhafi, my old friend, he thought. He was spirited away.
Elizabeth had been “looked after” by Scott’s wife, Barbara, and she told him the security people had not let her enter the conference room, and made her sit in a garage. She was graceful about it, but now it was his turn to get furious. They were taken to stay at the welcoming home of an extremely talkative seventy-five-year-old gentleman named Maurice Rosenblatt, a powerful liberal lobbyist who had played an important part in the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy. While Rosenblatt soliloquized Andrew was still fuming with rage about the canceled Congress meeting. Then Scott called and Andrew went for him. “I’ll tell you what an asshole you are later,” Scott said, and asked to speak to Mr. Rushdie, to whom he said, “I don’t owe Andrew an explanation, but I do owe you one.” As they were talking Peter Galbraith, a senior staff member for the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, whom he had never met, but knew as the son of John Kenneth Galbraith and, more salaciously perhaps, as the young university lover of Benazir Bhutto, came through on the other line to say that the meeting was on again. There would be a lunch at the senators’ private dining room hosted by Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Patrick Leahy, and many other senators would come. The temperature came down rapidly. Andrew calmed down and apologized to Scott, Scott felt vindicated, and there was much relief. They went to bed exhausted but feeling a good deal better.
It was their first time in Washington and the next day he and Elizabeth had their first sight of the citadels and fortresses of American might. Then Elizabeth was left to explore the Smithsonian and the Botanical Gardens and he was taken to the Capitol and Senator Leahy was advancing toward him, big and avuncular and bear-pawed. And here were Senators Simon, Lugar, Cranston, Wofford, Pell, and the great man himself, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, skyscraper tall as befitted the senior senator from New York, bow-tied, with that professionally puckish grin. They listened carefully as he went through the situation and then it was Senator Simon who leaped in first, insisting that the Senate pass a resolution of support. Soon they were all coming up with proposals, and it was exciting, no doubt about that, to have these men rallying to his flag. By the end of lunch (chicken salad, no possibility of alcohol) Moynihan had taken charge and suggested that he and Leahy draft a resolution and put it to the Senate. It was a huge step.
Andrew had arranged for everyone at the meeting to be given copies of the Satanic Verses paperback, but now, amazingly, the senators pulled out multiple copies of earlier books and wanted them personalized and signed for themselves and their families too. He was not often impressed by book signings but this one was an astonishment.
Then another surprise. The senators led him to an antechamber of the Foreign Affairs Committee and there was a huge throng of journalists and photographers waiting for them. Scott had been “working his ass off” and Andrew owed him an apology. Andrew did in fact apologize later that day. “I don’t really do this,” Scott said. “I’m a writer not a publicist. Normally I’m trying to break down security around a story, not maintain it.” But his affability returned.
And so now here was the author of The Satanic Verses, “just an author on a book tour,” giving a press conference at the heart of America’s power with the senators standing behind him like a backup group, all holding copies of The Paperback in their hands. If they had broken out into a little doo-wop, shang-a-lang chorus it would not, on that day of amazements, have been very surprising.
He spoke about this being one battle in a larger war, about the assault on creative and intellectual freedoms across the Muslim world, and expressed his gratitude to the gathered senators for their support. Moynihan took the microphone and said it was an honor to be standing beside him. He was plainly no longer in England. That was not what politicians said about him there.
They had dinner—in a restaurant!—with Scott and Barbara Armstrong and Christopher and Carol Hitchens. Marianne was living in D.C., Christopher said, but he didn’t think she would say anything hostile because it would mess up her “connections” with “the people she wants to know.” She did indeed remain silent, which was a blessing. The next day he recorded a one-hour special with Charlie Rose and in the afternoon did a one-hour phone-in program with John Hockenberry for NPR. A nine-year-old girl called Erin called to ask, “Mr. Rushdie, do you have fun writing your books?” He said he had had a lot of fun writing Haroun. “Oh, sure,” Erin said, “I’ve read that book. That’s a good book.” Later a Muslim called Susan came on the air and wept a lot and when Hockenberry asked her if she thought Mr. Rushdie should be killed she said, “I’d have to read up on that.”
Scott had called his friend Bob Woodward for help and was very struck, he said, “by the depth of Bob’s commitment.” Woodward had arranged something pretty special: a tea with the legendary Katherine Graham, owner of The Washington Post.
In the car on the way to Mrs. Graham’s house he felt so tired that he almost fell asleep. But adrenaline was a helpful little biochemical and once he was in the great lady’s presence he was alert again. The op-ed columnist Amy Schwartz was there. She wrote the editorials about him, he was told. Not all of them had been friendly. David Ignatius, the foreign editor, was there too, and wanted to discuss the approaching Iranian elections. Don Graham, Mrs. Graham’s son, was “one hundred percent on board,” Scott told him.
He had to do almost all the talking. The Post journalists asked questions and he answered. Mrs. Graham hardly spoke, except when he asked her directly why she thought the U.S. administration had acted so offhandedly. “This is such a strange government,” she said. “It has so few power centers. Baker’s one. He’s a funny man, always seems to have his own private agenda.” Ignatius chipped in to echo something Woodward had also said. “The best route to the administration might be through Barbara Bush.” After the meeting he said to Scott that he would just have to hope that the Post would back him now. “Kay Graham wouldn’t have seen you,” Scott said, “if the decision to support hadn’t already been taken.” So it was work well done. The New York Times had already said it would back him if other papers came in too. If Graham was in, so would Sulzberger be, and Andrew thought he could bring in Dow Jones and Scott believed he could deliver Gannett. He would draft a two-part statement for them all to sign: support for the paperback publication and support for its author against the fatwa, and, at the end, a demand that the U.S. administration join in and lend its support as well.
In fact, The New York Times didn’t wait to sign a support statement. As if energized by his meeting with its Washington rivals, the Times ran an editorial on the morning after his tea with Queen Kay, attacking the White House and State Department for their hands-off approach. “This is sadly consistent with three years of official waffling ever since Ayatollah Khomeini denounced The Satanic Verses as blasphemous and called for the death of its author and publishers. Mr. Rushdie has since lived in hiding. His Japanese translator was stabbed to death, his Italian translator wounded in a knife attack. Meanwhile exiled opponents of the Iranian regime were assassinated in France and Switzerland. If this is not state-sponsored terrorism, what is? Yet the West’s response has been shamefully squeamish.… Far more than Mr. Rushdie’s life is at risk if Western states do not jointly warn Iran that it cannot win the trade it covets until it ceases exporting and exhorting terrorism.” Nations acted in their own self-interest. For Iran to cancel the fatwa it would be necessary to show Iran that it was in its interest to do so. This was what he had said to Mrs. Graham and to Mike Wallace before her. Now The New York Times was saying it too.
Elizabeth was taken to her plane and a few hours later he was on an RAF flight out of America. The high
life was over. In London the police didn’t want to take him to Angela Carter’s memorial event at the Ritzy cinema in Brixton. He came down to earth with a bump, and argued for a long time until they agreed he could go. Elizabeth went separately as usual. The Ritzy, gaudy, down-at-the-heels, seemed perfect for Angela. On the stage there was a large three-panel screen painted by Corinna Sargood in very bright colors, featuring macaws. And a big spray of flowers. On the walls there were panels showing movie scenes. Nuruddin Farah embraced him and said, “There is a woman I am very serious about I want you to meet.” He replied, “There is a woman I am very serious about I want you to meet.” Eva Figes hugged him too. “It’s so nice to have you to touch instead of seeing you on TV.” Lorna Sage spoke, wonderfully describing Angela’s laugh—the mouth opened wide in a great rictus and then her silent shaking for several minutes before the noise came. She had met Angela after reading Heroes and Villains and had praised her writing effusively. “I must have sounded very strange,” she said, “because after a while Angela drew herself up and said, ‘I’m not gay, you know.’ ” After the ceremony the police made him leave at once. Clarissa and Zafar were there too but he wasn’t allowed to say hello to them. “I came after you but you’d gone,” Zafar told him later. He had followed his father out of the side door and watched him being whisked away.