Salman Rushdie, Alone Again and on the Run Again ; Only Weeks Ago, the Author of The Satanic Verses

Jun 22, 04:27 PM

Current Headlines: By KEITH DOVKANTS

WHAT a difference a "K" makes. Some weeks ago, Salman Rushdie told an audience at Hofstra University on Long Island that he didn't want to say much about the fatwa passed on him by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, except to point out that "one of us is dead". The message, he added mischievously, was: "Do not mess with novelists." There was laughter among the 400 students and academics who had come to hear him speak, although some expressed a faint unease. None of them doubted his wit, but his nerve surprised them. This was a man who had lived under a death sentence for nearly half his adult life. Did he feel so secure now that he felt he could mock his enemies with impunity? The answer then, a matter of weeks ago, was yes. The answer today may be very different. Since he accepted a knighthood in the Queen's birthday honours, the shadow of a threat to murder has again fallen on Salman Rushdie.

He once said his life story might read like a bad Salman Rushdie novel. Recent events suggest a title: From Horror to Happiness and Back Again. When Rushdie spoke at that university in New York, the fatwa years must have seemed like a bad dream. He had put so much distance between himself and the decade of virtual imprisonment he felt free, able to live without fear even able to joke about his oppressor.

Now, with his knighthood prompting renewed calls for his death and an 80,000 bounty on his head, is he once more running scared? The evidence suggests he is.

Where was Rushdie when his literary and media peers turned out for his great friend Tina Brown's big party at the Serpentine Galley on Monday night? What happened when he had his own 60th birthday celebration in London the next evening? No one will say, not even his usually loquacious friend Kathy Lette, who gave a speech in his honour. The party was given by his former publisher Caroline Michel, wife of the Labour peer Matthew Faber at their Belgravia house and included friends such as Dominic Lawson, the former Sunday Telegraph editor.

Rushdie's friends have gone back into high security mode. The protective wall they built around him after the fatwa is going up again. Even Scotland Yard is back on the case. Rushdie stopped having police protection years ago, but since the revival of threats following his knighthood senior officers have pulled his file out of storage.

They are not ready to assign him another armed guard yet, but a source told the Evening Standard the matter is being monitored on a "risk assessment" basis.

To be pushed back underground now would be a cruel fate for Rushdie. Before the knighthood furore, he was on the brink of a new phase in his life, one that promised intellectual satisfaction, a lot of fun and, it has to be said, a great deal of money. There was even a hint of new romance.

The problem for him now is it involved very public exposure, something that once more threatens to carry a grave risk.

Rushdie knows better than anyone just how dangerous his predicament is. There might be a temptation to imagine that the crazies who are calling for his murder again (they include a Pakistani government minister) are just that: mad people to be pitied more than feared. That would be a mistake.

When Khomeini issued his death sentence on Rushdie, on St Valentine's Day 1989, for alleged blasphemy against the Prophet in The Satanic Verses, there was real concern that his edict would be carried out. Armed police moved in with Rushdie and his family and kept guard 24 hours a day, year after year, running up a bill to the taxpayer of around 10 million. Rushdie himself made a significant, but undisclosed, contribution to the costs.

Were the precautions necessary? No one can say for sure, but in Japan the academic who translated The Satanic Verses was stabbed to death at the university where he worked shortly after he dispensed with the services of a bodyguard. In Milan, the Italian translator of the work was ambushed at his apartment and stabbed. He survived.

In 2004, Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker, was not so fortunate. He was murdered by a Muslim of Moroccan descent who apparently objected to his treatment of Islam in a documentary.

By then, Rushdie felt safe. He had implored the British and American governments to put diplomatic pressure on Iran to have the fatwa lifted, but without success. He has talked with bitterness recently about the rebuff he was given by the White House under George Bush Sr.

When Bill Clinton took power in 1993 things began to change. Rushdie met him and his wife Hillary, who promised to help.

Clinton, with the support of the US senate and a number of friendly countries, including Britain, applied pressure to Iran. In 1998, almost 10 years after the fatwa was imposed, Iran's President Khatami gave a commitment that his country would not sponsor the harming of the British author.

BILL AND Hillary Clinton are today among many celebrated Americans who help make up Rushdie's innermost circle.

Rushdie's new life is based in America. He still has a large, two- storey flat on the edgier side of Notting Hill and still spends lots of time in London, where he is at present. But New York and his Manhattan home have become his centre of operations. And what an operation it is.

There are few British marques more bankable in the United States than the Rushdie name.

This benefits not only him, as we shall see, but his wife, the Indian beauty Padma Lakshmi, or Padma Lakshmi-Rushdie as she called herself for a while. The couple married in 2004, five years after meeting at Tina Brown's launch party for her ill-fated Talk magazine. Rushdie was still married to his third wife, Elizabeth West (wives number one and two were Clarissa Luard, with whom he has a son, Zafar, and American novelist Marianne Wiggins).

Lakshmi, 36, was an actress who had hosted an Italian television show, starred in a soft-porn movie and modelled a bit. She was also an author; she wrote a cookery book with Indian recipes for those anxious not to gain weight. She said of Rushdie: "I was taken with him before I could even admit it to myself. It seemed ridiculous, but we were falling in love." For many, it seemed a mismatch. She was 23 years younger, several inches taller and, as some acidly remarked, hardly his intellectual equal. Perhaps not, but three years after their marriage, Lakshmi is making a name for herself. She is hosting a new series of a hit TV show, Top Chef, in which 15 upand-coming cooks vie with each other, and has become something of a cult figure for the catchphrase with which she dismisses losers: "Please pack up your knives and go." There has been speculation she has used the phrase on Rushdie.

His friends now see her as someone who has, perhaps been a little too enthusiastic in taking advantage of his celebrity. Rumours about their relationship have circulated for years and although they once wrote a joint letter to The Independent that ended: "We remain together and in love", sources close to Rushdie say the marriage has crashed.

Their friend Diana von Furstenberg, the fashion designer, was overheard talking about them in March, saying: "I can't believe she's leaving him." The episode, given wide currency in New York, was not denied. Then just two weeks ago Rushdie was snapped in an embrace with Hollywood actress Rosario Dawson.

In fact, he's been cosying up to Hollywood for some time and part of his new life includes a budding career as an actor.

Encouraged by his friend Steve Martin, the actor, director and writer, he has declined opportunities to play himself in movies (he did in the original Bridget Jones movie) in favour of a proper role. It paid off. Later this year he will be seen playing a gynaecologist in Then She Found Me, a Helen Hunt movie starring Colin Firth and Bette Midler.

It's a small part, but Rushdie is said to adore making movies, although this, apparently, does not include working with his wife. She has formed her own production company, but she said recently Rushdie would not be involved. "He'll make me pay him for his contribution," she said. "No matter how big a budget I can come up with there will be no way I can afford him." Indeed, Rushdie has become very expensive.

His divorce from Elizabeth West was said to have cost him 5 million and although his books have continued to sell well he has been exploring other financial opportunities.

In America, this has meant joining the highly lucrative academic circuit.

He gave a series of lectures at Yale on which he based his 2002 book Step Across This Line, a non-fiction work that dealt with the fatwa and, many felt, was intended to put it behind him for ever. Late last year, he did a deal with Emory University in Atlanta, one of America's richest academic institutions and the beneficiary of a family foundation with a major holding in Coca-Cola.

Rushdie is believed to have been given close to 1 million for his personal papers including journals, manuscripts, letters and two unpublished novels. They form part of an archive in 100 boxes he had kept in a lock-up in London for years. One box contains the original 1,600 page typescript of The Satanic Verses.

Under his deal with Emory, Rushdie will spend a month every year for the next five years at the university teaching as writerin- residence. He has stepped up his public appearances recently and currently charges around 15,000 to speak. Even without his book royalties, the Emory deal and appearances could probably earn him close to 500,000 a year.

But all that is predicated upon him being able to move freely and be the public person he has become since the fatwa was lifted.

Will the anger over his knighthood change that? His friends certainly hope not. One, a major figure in literary London, said: "There is a sense of 'here we go again' but everyone hopes it won't come to that. The idea of a defence committee all over again is not appealing, apart from the risk to Salman." Another said: "I don't think we want to go back to that period when every time he turned up at a party, the place went flat. It wasn't his fault, but when you have (names deleted) smoking joints and a policeman on the doorstep it made things a bit tricky. And however much you admire him, you can't help asking yourself if you want to be in the same room if the suicide bomber turns up." His friend Rosie Boycott said: "He probably feels the threat has re-emerged, but we were right to protect him then and we would be right to protect him now." Others have voiced the same sentiment, among them Rod Liddle in yesterday's Spectator.

Rushdie is said to have decided to keep a low profile for now, while his many friends and supporters hope attempts to revive the fatwa will simply fade away. Like him, they also hope the cup he lifts in celebration of his knighthood does not prove to be a poisoned chalice..

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