Joseph Anton: A Memoir

by Salman Rushdie

  15 Hermitage Lane was a small fortlike building on an anonymous street corner. It was ugly and had almost no furniture. Cosima bullied the landlords into supplying basic furnishings, a worktable and chair, a couple of armchairs, kitchen equipment. But for as long as he stayed there it continued to look like an uninhabited space. This was where he found a way of getting back to work, and Haroun and the Sea of Stories began, at last, to progress.

  Four Iranian men were arrested in Manchester on December 15, 1989, suspected of being members of a hit squad. One of them, Mehrdad Kokabi, was charged with conspiracy to commit arson and cause explosions in bookshops. After that it was even harder to get Peter Mayer to commit to a publication date for the paperback of The Satanic Verses. “Maybe by the middle of next year,” he told Andrew and Gillon. And, catastrophically, Random House suddenly got cold feet about signing up his future books. Alberto Vitale, chairman of Random House, Inc., declared that they had made an “underestimate of the danger,” and on December 8, Random backed out of the deal. Now he had no paperback and no publisher. Should he just stop writing? The answer was on his worktable, where Haroun was insisting on being written. And Bill spoke to him with great sweetness. Granta magazine was beginning a publishing venture, Granta Books. “Let us do it,” he said. “I’ll show you that it’s better for us to do it than a big corporation.”

  The Brandenburg Gate was opened and the two Berlins became one. In Romania, Ceausescu fell. He agreed to write a review of Thomas Pynchon’s silence-breaking novel Vineland for The New York Times. Samuel Beckett died. He spent another weekend with Zafar at the old rectory, and his son’s love lifted his spirits as nothing else could. Then it was Christmas and the novelist Graham Swift insisted he spend it with him and his partner, Candice Rodd, at their south London home. He spent New Year’s Eve with friends too: Michael Herr and his wife, Valerie, who had formed the irresistible habit of calling each other “Jim.” No darlings or honeys or babes for them. In his low American drawl and her bright English chirp they Jimmed the Old Year out. “Hey, Jim?” “Yes, Jim?” “Happy New Year, Jim.” “Happy New Year to you too, Jim.” “I love you, Jim.” “I love you too, Jim.” 1990 arrived with a smile in the company of Jim and Jim.

  And Marianne was there too. Yes. And Marianne.

  IV

  The Trap of Wanting to Be Loved

  HE HAD STARTED RECEIVING LETTERS FROM A WOMAN NAMED NALINI Mehta in Delhi. He did not know anyone by that name, but she was certain she knew him, not just socially, but carnally, pornographically, biblically. She knew the dates and places of their assignations and could describe the hotel rooms and the views from the windows. The letters were not only well written but intelligent, and the handwriting, in thin blue ballpoint, was strong and expressive. The photographs were terrible, though: badly taken, poorly lit, the different stages of undress all a little foolish, none of them remotely erotic, though the woman in them was obviously beautiful. He did not reply, not even to try to dissuade her from writing, knowing that would be a bad mistake. The passion with which the writer insisted on their love made him fear for her. Mental illness still bore a stigma in the minds of many Indians. Families denied that such an affliction could have struck one of their members. Any problems were hushed up instead of being properly treated. That Nalini Mehta’s letters continued to arrive, that their frequency even began to increase, indicated that she was not being given the loving help she needed.

  His own situation exercised her greatly. She “knew” he could not be getting the loving attention he needed. Once she had seen in the newspapers that his wife was no longer beside him she pleaded to be allowed to replace her. She would come to him and make him feel good. She would do everything for him and stand beside him and look after him and wrap him in her love. How could he not agree, after everything they had meant to each other—everything they still felt for each other? He had to send for her. “Send for me now,” she wrote. “I will come at once.”

  She told him she had studied English literature at Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi. He remembered that his friend Maria, a Goan writer, had taught there, so he called her to ask if she knew the name. “Nalini,” she said sadly. “Of course. My most brilliant student, but completely unbalanced.” And he had been right: Her family refused to admit the girl was ill or to get her proper medical care. “I don’t know what’s to be done,” Maria said.

  Then the letters changed. I’m coming, she said. I’m coming to England so that I can be there for you. She had met an Englishwoman of her own age in Delhi and had got herself invited to stay with that woman’s retired parents in Surrey somewhere. She had her ticket. She was leaving tomorrow, then today. She had arrived. A few days later she walked unannounced into the London agency and barged into Gillon Aitken’s office. Gillon told him afterward, “Well, she is very striking, my dear, and she was quite dressed up, and she said she was a friend of yours, so of course I asked her in.” At once she insisted that she be given his address and phone number, because he was expecting her to join him, and the matter was extremely urgent, she had to go to him immediately. That very day, if possible. Gillon saw that something was badly wrong. He did tell Nalini, not unkindly, that he would be happy to pass on a message and if she left a contact number he would pass that on as well. It was at this point that Nalini Mehta offered him sex. Gillon was startled. “My dear, it doesn’t happen in my office every day, or even at home.” He declined the offer. She became insistent. They could clear the papers off his desk and she would have sex with him right there and then, on the wooden desktop, and then he would give her the phone number and address. Gillon became firm. No, really, that was not an option, he told her. Would she please keep her clothes on. She deflated and became tearful. She had no money, she said. She had spent what little she had getting to the agency from her friend’s parents’ Surrey home. If he could lend her say a hundred pounds she would repay him as soon as she could. When Andrew Wylie heard the story he said, “She was done for the moment she asked Gillon for money. That was a fatal move.” Rising to his great height, Gillon guided her to the door.

  Several days passed, perhaps a week. Then at Hermitage Lane the police had a question. Did he know, Phil Pitt asked him, which was to say, had he had any dealings with a lady name of Nalini Mehta? He told the officer what he knew. “Why,” he said, “has something happened to her?” Something had happened. She had disappeared from the home of her friend’s extremely worried parents, to whom she had been talking incessantly about her intimacy with Salman Rushdie, whom she would soon be going to stay with. When she had been missing for two days the fretting couple called the police. Given the circumstances surrounding Mr. Rushdie, they said, and considering how loosely she was talking, somebody might have done her a mischief. It was several more days before she was found in Piccadilly Circus by a bobby on the beat, her hair unkempt, wearing the sari she had worn when she left Surrey five or six days earlier, and telling anyone who would listen that she was “Salman Rushdie’s girlfriend,” that they were “in love,” and that she had flown to England at his request, to live with him.

  Her Delhi acquaintance’s parents didn’t really want her back. The police had no reason to hold her; she hadn’t committed any crime. She had nowhere to go. He called her old English teacher Maria and said, “Can you help us get in touch with her parents?” And, fortunately, she could. After some initial reluctance and some defensive remarks to the effect that there was nothing wrong with his daughter, Nalini’s father, Mr. Mehta, agreed to go to London to bring her home. After that there were a few more letters, but they eventually stopped coming. This was, he hoped, a good sign. Maybe she was recovering her health. Her need to be loved had been very great and it had pushed her into delusion. He hoped she was now receiving the real, familial love and care that would allow her to escape from the trap her mind had built for her.

  He did not then understand that before the year was out his mind would build a trap for him and he, too, desperate for love, wou
ld plunge toward delusion and self-destruction, as though into a lover’s embrace.

  He had dreams of vindication. They were detailed dreams, his critics and would-be murderers coming to him bareheaded and shamefaced, begging for forgiveness. He wrote them down and for a few seconds each time they made him feel better. He was working on his silence-breaking essay and his Herbert Read lecture and the conviction that he could explain, he could make people understand, kept growing. The Guardian ran a nasty ad promoting a piece by Hugo Young: a picture of a bandaged Penguin alongside the line DOES SALMAN RUSHDIE HAVE ANY REGRETS? Hugo Young’s piece, when it appeared, continued this process of shifting the blame from the men of violence to the target of their attack, saying that he should be “humbled by what he had wrought,” and it only made him more determined to stand his ground and demonstrate the rightness of that stand.

  It was the first anniversary of the Bradford book burning. A newspaper survey of 100 British bookshops showed that 57 were in favor of the publication of a paperback of The Satanic Verses, 27 were against it and 16 had no opinion. The Bradford Council of Mosques’ spokesman said: “We cannot let go of this issue. It is crucial to our future.” Kalim Siddiqui wrote a letter to The Guardian saying that “we [Muslims] have to support the death sentence on Rushdie.” A few days later Siddiqui traveled to Tehran and was granted a private audience with Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

  He wrote day and night, pausing only when he could spend time with Zafar. There was a last, charmed weekend at the old rectory under Miss Bastard’s gentle supervision. Marianne, who was generally in a bad mood, unable to write, feeling that she had no life, that she was “living a lie,” and that her book’s publication had been ruined by her association with him, was a little more cheerful than usual, and he found a way not to ask himself why he was with her again. When they left Little Bardfield for good and returned to Hermitage Lane he was visited by Mr. Greenup and told that he would not be permitted to deliver the Herbert Read lecture. There was that word again, permitted, which, like its brother allowed, turned him into a captive, not a “principal.” The police had informed the Institute of Contemporary Arts that they would be unable to protect the event if he were to appear. For him to do so, Greenup said, would be irresponsible and selfish and the Metropolitan Police would not collude with him in his folly.

  The ICA people were obviously spooked by the police advice. He told them he was prepared to come and speak even without protection but that was too scary for them. In the end he was obliged to give in. He would find someone else to deliver the lecture on his behalf, he said, and they agreed to that suggestion with relief. The first person he called was Harold Pinter. He explained the situation and made his request. Without a moment’s hesitation, and with his usual volubility, Harold replied: “Yes.” He was able to go to see Harold and Antonia Fraser at their home in late January and the next day, inspired by their enthusiasm, courage and determination, wrote for fourteen hours without pausing and completed the final version of “Is Nothing Sacred?” Gillon came to Hermitage Lane—as the place had been found by Cosima Somerset and was being “fronted” by the literary agency, Gillon, the “tenant,” was allowed to visit, and was brought in by the police after the usual dry-cleaning run—and sat in that bleak beige underfurnished house to read both the lecture and “In Good Faith,” an explication de texte of The Satanic Verses, which was also a plea for a better understanding of it and its author, to be published as a single seven-thousand-word piece in the new Independent on Sunday. Gillon took the work away and delivered the ICA lecture to Harold. It was time to restart work on Haroun.

  “In Good Faith” ran on Sunday, February 4, 1990. The junior minister at the Foreign Office, William Waldegrave, called Harold Pinter to say that it had made him cry. The first Muslim responses were predictably negative, but he detected, perhaps wishfully, a slight change of tone in what Shabbir Akhtar and his sidekick Tariq Modood had to say. There was one piece of bad news: The families of the British hostages in Lebanon planned to issue a statement opposing the Verses paperback. Then on Tuesday, February 6, Harold stood up at the ICA and read “Is Nothing Sacred?” The lecture was televised on the BBC Late Show. He felt an immense sense of relief. He had said his piece. The storm had been raging for a year, and he had felt that his voice had been too small to be heard above all the other voices bellowing from every corner of the globe, above the howling of the winds of bigotry and history. Now he had proved himself wrong. He wrote in his journal, “The reaction to both IGF and INS? has cheered me immensely. It seems a real shift has taken place. Demonization is in retreat and the attackers seem confused.” Friends called, describing the mood at the ICA as “loving,” “electric,” “exciting.” Marianne offered a dissenting view. The atmosphere had been “sterile.” She was feeling, she added, “unloved.”

  Three days after the Read lecture, Ayatollah Khamenei, at Friday prayers, renewed the Iranian mullocracy’s death order. It was becoming a familiar pattern in the year-old “Rushdie Affair”: An apparent lightening of the clouds, a moment of hope, was followed by a sickening blow—an escalation, an upping of the ante. “Well,” he wrote defiantly in his journal, “they haven’t got me yet.”

  Nelson Mandela walked out of the shadows into the sunlight, a free man, and the twelve months of atrocity and wonder acquired another exclamatory moment of joy. He watched Mandela reappear from his long invisibility and understood how little he himself had suffered in comparison. Enough, he told himself. Get back to work.

  But Valentine’s Day was upon him again. Clarissa sweetly called to wish him well for the anniversary. Harold called. He had met the new Czech president, the playwright and human rights hero Václav Havel, in Prague “and his first question was about you. He wants to do something big.” There were more threats, from the Speaker of the Majlis—the Iranian parliament—Mehdi Karroubi (twenty years later an unlikely leader of the opposition to President Ahmadinejad alongside Mir Hossein Moussavi, another enthusiastic supporter of the fatwa) and from the “acting commander in chief” of the Revolutionary Guard. Ayatollah Yazdi, Iran’s chief justice, said all Muslims with “resources” had a duty to implement the threat, and in London, the garden gnome was having fun, leading a large gathering in “approval” of the threat but adding that its fulfillment was “nothing to do with British Muslims.” This was emerging as a new party line. Liaquat Hussain of the Bradford Council of Mosques said that “Is Nothing Sacred?” was a “publicity stunt,” and that Rushdie did not need to remain invisible, because he was in no danger from British Muslims—he was just doing so, Hussain said, to keep the controversy going and make more money.

  A New York Times editorial criticized publishers and politicians for their vacillations and equivocations and supported him for “defending every author’s right to publish books that ask troubling questions and open doors to the mind.” As the pressure mounted, such sympathetic words had come to mean a great deal.

  British Muslim attempts to indict him for blasphemy and under the public order act were heard in court. Geoffrey Robertson argued his case, making the simple point that the consequences of violence were the moral responsibility of those who committed the acts of violence; if people were killed, the fault lay with their killers, not with a faraway novelist. It did not help these Muslims’ cause that on the third day of the judicial review the judge started receiving threatening letters. In the end neither of the legal attacks succeeded. This was greeted with “anger” by Muslim leaders, though the “Islamic Party of Great Britain” went so far as to ask for the fatwa to be lifted because the author had been “mad” when he wrote the book, quoting as “evidence” the published statement by the director of the mental health charity SANE that The Satanic Verses contained one of the best descriptions of schizophrenia she had ever read. Meanwhile, Keith Vaz, who had so enthusiastically joined the Muslim demonstrators a year earlier, now wrote to The Guardian to describe the death threat as “odious” and to say that li
fting it was now the priority.

  A “celebration” dinner was arranged at Jane Wellesley’s apartment and Sameen, Bill, Pauline (whose birthday it was), Gillon, Michael and Valerie Herr joined him and Marianne to toast a year of continued life. He was happy to escape the Hermitage Lane house for an evening; he had come to loathe it, for its damp walls, its leaky roof, its low-grade carpentry, above all its lack of furniture. It was expensive and he had never felt so thoroughly ripped off; and he had had to accept it for the sake of being in London and because of its internal garage. The next day Zafar was brought to spend the day at that depressing place and as he watched his son struggle with geometry homework he wished, bitterly, that he could be a proper father again and not miss the boy’s childhood. This was the greatest loss.

  Marianne came around and scolded him for playing video games. Thanks to Zafar, he had grown fond of Mario the plumber and his brother Luigi, and sometimes Super Mario World felt like a happy alternative to the one he lived in the rest of the time. “Read a good book,” his wife told him scornfully. “Give it up.” He lost his temper. “Don’t tell me how to live my life,” he exploded, and she made a grand exit.