Read Joseph Anton: A Memoir Online
Authors: Salman Rushdie
Joseph Anton: A Memoir (58 page)
On his way to and from the embassy he was shocked to notice that
the Place de la Concorde was closed to traffic
. All the roads in and out of Concorde were blocked by policemen so that he, in his RAID motorcade, could rush across the place unimpeded. It made him sad. He did not want to be the person for whom Concorde was closed off. The motorcade passed a little café-bistro and everyone drinking coffee under its awning was staring in his direction, with curiosity and a little resentment mingling on their faces.
I wonder
, he thought,
if I will ever again be one of those people drinking a cup of coffee on the sidewalk and watching the world go by
.
The house was beautiful but it felt like a gilded cage. He had learned how to withstand the Islamic attacks on him; it was after all not surprising that fanatics and bigots should continue to behave like bigots and fanatics. It was harder to handle the non-Muslim British criticisms, which were mounting in volume, and the apparent duplicity of the Foreign Office and John Major’s government, which consistently promised one thing and did another. He wrote a furious article letting all the rage and disappointment show. Cooler heads—Elizabeth, Frances, Gillon—persuaded him not to publish it. He thought, looking back, that he had been wrong to take their advice. Every time he chose to remain silent during this period of his life—for example, during the year between the
fatwa
and the publication of “In Good Faith”—the silence afterward felt like a mistake.
On Monday 22nd February, the prime minister’s office announced that Mr. Major had agreed in principle to a meeting with me, as a demonstration of the government’s determination to stand up for freedom of expression and for the right of its citizens not to be murdered by thugs in the pay of a foreign power. More recently a date was set for that meeting. Immediately a vociferous Tory backbench campaign sought to have the meeting canceled, because of its interference with Britain’s “partnership” with the murderous mullahs of Tehran. The date—which I had been assured was “as firm as can be”—has
today been postponed without explanation. By a curious coincidence, a proposed British trade delegation to Iran in early May can now take place without embarrassment. Iran is hailing this visit—the first such mission in the fourteen years since the Khomeini revolution—as a “breakthrough” in relations. Its news agency states that the British have promised that lines of credit will be made available
.
It is becoming harder to retain confidence in the Foreign Office’s decision to launch a new “high profile” international initiative against the notorious
fatwa.
For not only are we scurrying off to do business with the tyrannical regime that the U.S. administration calls an “international outlaw” and brands as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, but we also propose to lend that regime the money with which to do business with us. Meanwhile, I gather I am to be offered a new date for my little meeting. But nobody from No. 10 Downing Street has spoken or written to me
.
The Tory “anti-Rushdie” pressure group—its very description demonstrates its members’ desire to turn this into an issue of personality rather than principle—includes Sir Edward Heath and Emma Nicholson, as well as that well-known apologist for Iranian interests, Peter Temple-Morris. Emma Nicholson tells us that she has grown to “respect and like” the Iranian regime (whose record of killing, maiming and torturing its own people has recently been condemned by the United Nations as being among the worst in the world), while Sir Edward, still protected by Special Branch because, twenty years ago, the British people suffered under his disastrous premiership, criticizes the decision to offer similar protection to a fellow Briton who is presently in greater danger than himself. All these persons agree on one point: The crisis is my fault. Never mind that over two hundred of the most prominent Iranians in exile have signed a statement of absolute support for me. That writers, thinkers, journalists and academics throughout the Muslim world—where the attack upon dissenting, progressive and above all secularist ideas is daily gathering force—have told the British media that “to defend Rushdie is to defend us.” That
The Satanic Verses,
a legitimate work of the free imagination, has many defenders (and where there are at least two views why should the book burners have the last word?), or that its opponents have felt no need to understand it
.
Iranian officials have admitted that Khomeini never so much as saw a copy of the novel. Islamic jurisprudents have stated that the
fatwa
contradicts
Islamic law, never mind international law. Meanwhile, the Iranian press is offering a prize of sixteen gold pieces and a pilgrimage to Mecca for a cartoon “proving” that
The Satanic Verses
is not a novel at all, but a carefully engineered Western conspiracy against Islam. Does this whole affair not feel, at times, like the blackest of black comedy—a circus sideshow enacted by murderous clowns?
In the last four years I have been slandered by many people. I do not intend to keep turning the other cheek. If it was proper to attack those on the left who were the fellow travelers of Communism, and those on the right who sought to appease the Nazis, then the friends of revolutionary Iran—businessmen, politicians or British fundamentalists—deserve to be treated with equal contempt
.
I believe we have reached a turning point. Either we are serious about defending freedom, or we are not. If we are, then I hope Mr. Major will very soon be willing to stand up and be counted as he has promised. I should very much like to discuss with him how pressure on Iran can be increased—in the EC, through the Commonwealth and the UN, at the World Court. Iran needs us more than we need Iran. Instead of quaking when the mullahs threaten to cut trade links, let us be the ones to turn the economic screws. I have discovered, in my conversations across Europe and North America, widespread all-party interest in the idea of a ban on offering credit to Iran, as a first stage. But everyone is waiting for the British government to take a lead. In today’s newspaper, however, Bernard Levin suggests that fully two-thirds of all Tory MPs would be delighted if Iranian assassins succeeded in killing me. If these MPs truly represent the nation—if we are so unconcerned about our liberties—then so be it: Lift the protection, disclose my whereabouts and let the bullets come. One way or the other. Let’s make up our minds
.
The much-postponed meeting with John Major finally took place on May 11 at his office in the House of Commons. He had spoken to Nigella Lawson before he went and her levelheadedness was a great help. “He can’t possibly refuse to back you,” she said. “The bad state of the economy helps you, because if he can’t point to economic success he’s going to have to go for some moral strength.” She also had good news; she was pregnant. He told Elizabeth this, knowing that she very much wanted to be pregnant herself. But how could they think
about bringing a child into this nightmare, into their soft prison? And then there was the simple translocated chromosome, which turned pregnancy into biological roulette. A baby didn’t seem like the wisest option for a man who was about to beg the prime minister to help him save his life.
The prime minister was not wearing his trademark nice-guy grin and did not talk about cricket. He seemed closed off, maybe even a little defensive, a man who knew he was going to be asked to do things he might not want to do. He said bluntly that there would be no photographs taken at this meeting because he wanted to “minimize the reaction from Iran and from his own backbenchers.” That was an inauspicious start.
“I’d like to thank you for the four years of protection,” he told Major. “I’m immensely grateful to the men who look after me, risking their own lives.” Major looked shocked. This was not the Rushdie he had expected, the one the
Daily Mail
described as “bad-mannered, sullen, graceless, silly, curmudgeonly, unattractive, small-minded, arrogant and egocentric.” It immediately became plain that the prime minister had the
Daily Mail
in his head. (It had printed an editorial opposing this meeting.) “Maybe you should say things like that more often,” he said, “in public, to correct the impression people have of you.” “Prime Minister,” he said, “I say it every time I talk to a journalist.” He nodded vaguely but seemed more relaxed and affable. The meeting went well from then on. It was not the first or last time that people discovered, once he had managed to wipe away the tabloid cartoon-Rushdie from their eyes, that he was actually quite companionable. “You’ve put on weight,” Major suddenly said. “Thanks a lot, Prime Minister,” he replied. “You should do my job,” the prime minister told him, “and you’d lose it in no time.” “Fine,” he answered, “I’ll do your job if you’ll do mine.” After that they were almost pals.
Major expressed his agreement with the high-profile approach. “You should go to Japan and shame them into action,” he said. They discussed getting a resolution from the Commonwealth so that Iran could not characterize the issue as a difference of opinion between East and West. They talked about the International Court of Justice; Major did not want to take the case there because he didn’t want to
“paint Iran into a corner.” And they agreed on the value of a meeting with President Clinton. He told the prime minister what the UN hostage negotiator Picco had said.
The U.S. is the key
. Major nodded and looked at his aides. “Let us see what we can do to help,” he said.
When the news of the meeting was released, along with a statement by the prime minister condemning the
fatwa
, the Iranian regime’s official newspaper
Kayhan
reacted angrily. “The author of
The Satanic Verses
is literally going to get it in the neck.” This was high-stakes poker. He was deliberately trying to up the ante, and so far the Iranians were hanging tough and refusing to fold. But there was only one way to go now. He had to raise again.
Clarissa called him to say there was a lump in her breast, “and it’s four out of five on the cancer probability scale.” She was having the lumpectomy in six days and the result would be available a week later. There was a tremble in her voice but there was her usual stoic courage too. He was very shaken. He called her back a few minutes later and offered to pay for private treatment, whatever she needed. They talked about whether it was possible to avoid a full mastectomy and he passed on such information as he had gleaned from Nigella and Thomasina about the high quality of the breast cancer unit at Guy’s Hospital and the name of the specialist, Mr. Fentiman. There had been a
Sunday Times
magazine cover story about breast cancer and there was Fentiman again. He thought,
She must beat it. She doesn’t deserve it. She will beat it
. He and Elizabeth would do whatever they could. But in the face of fatal illness one was always alone. And Zafar would have to face this too; Zafar, who had already spent four years fearing for one parent. The blow had not come from the direction in which he was looking. It was the “safe” parent who was now in danger. He couldn’t help thinking ahead. How could he make a livable life for Zafar if the boy lost his mother? He would have to live in this secret house but what of his school, his friends, his life in the “real” world? How could he help him heal the wound of so terrible a loss?
He said to Elizabeth, it feels as if half your life is a sort of struggle toward the sunlight. Then you get five minutes in the sun and after
that you’re dragged down into the darkness again and you die. No sooner had he said it than he heard the character of Flory Zogoiby saying it too, Abraham’s mother in
The Moor’s Last Sigh
. Were there no limits to the shamelessness of the literary imagination? No. There were no limits.
He told the prot officer Dick Billington about Clarissa and the possibility of cancer, and Dick said, “Oh, women are always getting ill.”
Sameen told him she’d had a long talk with Clarissa, who wanted to reminisce about the old days. She had been brave but said she felt she’d “had her share of bad luck.” Clarissa’s illness had made Sameen think about her own mortality. She wanted to ask him if he would assume guardianship of her daughters if she and their father died.
He said yes, of course, but she should have a backup plan, considering the danger to his own life.
The test results came in from Bart’s—St. Bartholomew’s Hospital—and they were very bad indeed. Clarissa had an
invasive ductal carcinoma
, and it had been undetected for perhaps eighteen months. Radical surgery would be required. The cancer had “probably” spread to the lymphatic system. She would have to have blood tests, and her lungs, liver and bone marrow would have to be tested too. She was speaking in her most controlled voice but he could hear the terror under the words. Zafar hugged her very tightly, she said, and was close to tears. She had already, with huge strength, accustomed herself to the need for the mastectomy but what would she do, she said, if there was bad news about the liver and the bone marrow? How did one face the inevitability of death?
He called Nigella. There was a man she knew who was trying new techniques with liver cancer and having some success. That was a straw to clutch at, but no more than a straw.
Zafar came to spend the night. He was suppressing his feelings. His mother had always done the same thing in the face of adversity. “How’s Mum?” “Fine.” It was better to let him deal with the news slowly, at his own speed, rather than sit him down and terrify him. Clarissa had spoken to him and used the word “cancer.” He replied, “You told me that already.” But she hadn’t.
The new test results arrived. Clarissa’s blood, lungs, liver and bone were all cancer-free. But it’s a “bad cancer,” she was told. The mastectomy was unavoidable, and ten lymph nodes would also have to be removed. She wanted a second opinion. He wanted her to get one. He would cover all her costs. She went to a highly recommended oncologist named Sikora at Hammersmith Hospital and Sikora didn’t think the mastectomy was necessary. Now that the lump had been removed she could have chemotherapy and radiotherapy and that would handle it. When she heard she could keep her breasts she brightened enormously. She was a beautiful woman and the mutilation of that beauty had been hard for her to bear. Then she had to meet the surgeon who would perform the lumpectomy, a man named Linn, and he turned out to be a creep.
Darling
, he called her oleaginously,
sweetheart, why do you object to this op so much?
He told her she should have the mastectomy, directly contradicting the head of oncology, Sikora, wrecking her newfound confidence and removing her justification for having switched to Hammersmith Hospital from Bart’s, where she had had counseling she valued and doctors she actually liked. She began to panic and was close to hysteria for two days until she could speak to Sikora again. He reassured her that his proposed course of action was the one they would follow. She calmed down, and took Zafar away for a week’s cycling holiday in France.
