Transcripts For DW DocFilm 20240713

W. That might not be the level of product. That a lot of us not that was not about receive all that god god god god. For more than 10 years Selman Rushdie was a hunted man living in hiding with a false identity and under Police Protection. The front walk calling for his execution was issued in 1989 following the publication of his book the satanic verses which was considered blasphemous. With the threat of death hanging over him rushdie changed his address 56. Times during those 10 years and was the target of some 20 assassination attempts. But thats all behind him now rushdie has left england and settled in new york where he has lived for almost 20 years. d i was born in what was then called bombay in india in june 147 lets just say exactly 8 weeks to the day before the end of the british empire. My father used to tell this joke which i think he told slightly too many times about how i was born in 8 weeks later the british ran away a 100. Things. I did not move my childhood as being very happy. And i came for work nonobservant muslim family you know but religions really werent a big issue you know and always nationalities so in the little neighborhood where we lived there would i would my childhood friends were of every possible religion you know they were hindu muslim sikh christian. And all of that seemed completely normal. And that sense of it of everybody elses culture being available to us. You know it was one of the great things about growing up that. Like many children i was told my time stories by my parents my father would tell us. I mean the east indian equivalent of fairy tales of the arabian nights stories and actually when you read the 2001 nights you realize that its not at all a Childrens Book its full of sex but of course my father gave me his version his adaptations of them which interested me in to read when i grew up to read the real thing and that was influential too but i never had any idea of what to do with my life except being a writer so when even when i was a child. My parents off to its told me that when their friends asked them asked me what do you want to do when you grow up i would not say that i want to be a you know Airline Pilot or im astronauts i would say i want to rewrite it this is when i was like i dont know 910 years old you know so it was always the plan i never really had a plan b. And i did start rising Little Things my memory of the 1st story i ever wrote is that i went to see the movie the wizard of oz. And i came home and wrote a story called over the rainbow is a story about a boy like myself in a city like bombay and he meets magical creatures and anyway personally wasnt long it was a few pages long and my father said that he would have his secretary type it up so you know he did and and then he said you know if i give this to you youre going to lose it so i will look after it so he took it away and then he lost it at. My parents they still thought that an english education in europe in england was the best thing they could offer me but nobody forced me you know and thats to say my father said to me. Would i be interested to go but if i said no then i didnt have to go so they left the decision to me my mother was completely against the idea she didnt want me to go. But she also left the decision to me and and. The strange thing is that i was very happy as i said growing up in bombay you know i i liked the world of my childhood i liked my school you know i had plenty of friends and its very hard not to understand about that young boy who was what 1212 and a half years old when this question was asked you know. Why did he say yes he wanted to go you know and it seems mysterious to me that i made that decision and it suggests that there was i dont know some spirit of adventure some desire to go away and see other things you know and maybe it was in part inspired by reading but if i could id read all these english Childrens Books you know and so i had a picture of england in my mind which of course was completely inaccurate england is not like a Childrens Book. The in. When i arrived i well 1st of all it was very cold but i arrived in winter in january and i had boys from the tropics so so just the physical fact of how cold it was it was difficult and then i discovered. More disappointing things about england which was to put it in a simple word racism you know. It was the 1st time in my life that i had had the feeling or been given the feeling of being the other of being the person who is not like the people who are there and and and disliked for that reason. Boys find all sorts of ways of being nasty to other boys thats true but the way they found being nasty to me was to attack me for my racial origins and that was i mean that was very shocking it was very shocking i didnt speak english with an english accent and and yes i mean my skin is its color is relatively light and so it means that over the years i in many ways suffered less racial prejudice than other people with my background you know. But it was all around you know in the that period of after i graduated i graduated in 1988 and you know the seventys and eightys in england were a time of quite considerable racial tension. But i had a very bad start as a writer you know when i Left University because i had decided to settle in england and not go back east i think that i was very confused about my identity as a writer but what kind of writer i was who exactly i was as a rising and and so a lot of the things that i wrote to begin with. We were floored because of that they were they were. They were very good. As working as a advertising copywriter to pay the rent and i was writing these various other projects probably 3 book length manuscripts that that i wrote in that in that time that were never published. And i mean i actually now im very grateful they were not published with. Very good. So there was a lot of work and failure. I published one novel that essentially nobody liked and there were various other abound and projects that i really felt that i was i hadnt found my way and i think the question in the end was that i had to do much more introspective night to really understand who i was and where the writing was coming from and and out of that came a desire to reclaim what i feared might be lost territory which was which was the world id come from to the world of bombay in india you know and and so i went back there with my small savings. And i just decided im going to stay here as long as i can and im going to travel as widely as i can im going to just try and. You know drink this in again and i was there for an almost a quite not quite 6 months or 5 and a half months Something Like that. And by the time i came back i had a much clearer idea of what i wanted to do and i was at that came in by children. What the book is about is about my generation which is the generation of of freedom the generation of independence you know the the 1st generation to be born in india not on the colonial rule you know for over 200 years. The british left on august the midnight of august 14th the 15th yes thats what i want to write about. And so by the time i came around to writing midnights children i i really thought this is a kind of lost child is another if if if i couldnt if i cant make this work that maybe i should stop but fortunately thats not what happened. It did change my life the success of midnights children it was completely unexpected so i Left University in 1988 and by the time midnights children was published up in 1901. The idea that it would become this got a global phenomenon but selling multiple millions of copies and translated into you know 50 languages and so on i did it would never have crossed my mind that that would happen is that sal would rush it. For the. Thing that when a brilliant book was still some opposition from the novel for that. So it was a complete shock. Yes then you know what he did was allowed me to live by my writing. And then i was what i was 34 years old at the time. Rushdie spent 5 years writing the satanic verses at the time no one could foresee the rise of islamic fundamentalism but the backlash that followed the books release was the harbinger of what was to become the dominant issue of the 21st century the spread of fanatical islam. Before the satanic verses was published rushdie asked a few friends to read the proofs his publisher said that rushdie had no idea the storm of the satanic verses was about to unleash. The figures i didnt show it to them the book the number of people who knew who knew the world at writing about it was quite obvious that people of conservative religious views would not like the book with their they hadnt liked anything else i wrote either so thats not particularly different i felt that in many ways it was my most formally ambitious. Book you know it was a book where i was pushing things father that i pushed in before and i. I like that about it. The book tells of 2 passengers on a flight to london brill and son a dean fall victim to a terrorist attack. As their plane explodes and they fall from the sky the 2 protagonists are transformed into archangels of good and evil the book denounces the oppression of women intolerance and violence and questions the core tenants of the islamic faith and one seen prostitutes working in a brothel take the names of the wives of the prophet in order to boost their earnings and in a thinly veiled reference to Ayatollah Khomeini the novel also depicts an exile the mom who during the revolution returns to his home country and tyrannizes the people i knew about the rise of islamic fundamentalism in fact theres a character in the satanic verses who is who is you know who is of that kind who is a fundamentalist preacher. I think you know anyone who comes from the east who had paid attention to what was happening in the world we knew about that. And. The only reason now a lot of people who read the book say that it seems to have foreseen what was going to happen but it wasnt for seeing it was just paid attention to what was actually happening which at that time people in the west were not paying attention i use this metaphor of hitchcocks film the birds. Because theres this scene in the birds where there are children singing in a classroom and outside the classroom theres the playground but theres a theres a climbing frame jungle gym and the film cuts back and forth between the 2 and 1st time it looks outside the window you see one block would come to sit on the frame and then you go back in the children singing and then you go back out and theres like 500. And the point is that when theres just one bird sitting there doesnt mean anything its just a bird sitting on a climbing frame its only retrospectively when there are 500 goods that you begin to think oh yeah there was that 1st blood. But i think what happened in the case of what happened to the satanic verses is its it was Something Like the 1st started. In september 1908 the publication of the satanic verses caused an instant uproar in the Muslim Community it criticized what they saw as rushdies irreverent portrayal of the prophet the book triggered a wave of protests across the arab world. I mean attacks like this against books had taken place before they were against other writers in the muslim world Najeeb Mahfouz for example the nobel laureate. Well i think what happened in the west is that people were completely taken by surprise. There was some argument about the book you know there were some in england who particular there were some muslim priests who. Spoke up against it and thats more or less what would have had it not be in the intervention of holy. Book came out in september largely radiate and the felt that was 6 months later for everybody maybe not. On february 14th 1909 in toronto the spiritual leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khomeini issued a religious decree or fatwa ordering all muslims to kill the British Indian writer Salman Rushdie and his publishers for the books blasphemous attacks on islam the prophet and the koran a bounty of 25000. 00 was offered to any iranian who carried out the sentence and 7500. 00 to any muslim up another nationality he said in the name of god almighty i call on all zealous muslims to execute them quickly wherever they may find them so that no one else will dare insult islamic sanctities. But i was at home in london. The telephone rang and it was a woman from the b. B. C. From the news radio news program. Who. I think what she said is how does it feel to know that youve been sentenced to death by the are too low who me. Its the 1st ive heard of it. And i said something stupid like it doesnt feel very good and and put the phone down and then i did something even more stupid which is to run around the house locking the doors and windows as if that that it would be fired. My 1st thought was i think i think im a dead man i think i have begun to think that and then my days might be numbered in less than double figures. At the time nobody understood exactly what it might mean i had to go a Television Interview 1st c. B. S. Television in america and i was asking the journalists at the c. B. S. Office in london what do you think this means. And one of them said oh dont worry about it you know khamenei he said this is the president of the United States to death every friday you know so. So nobody knew whether to take it seriously or not. But i did and i think within 24 hours the british had also decided that they had the take this seriously and and thats when the protection was offered and i accept. His literary agent andrew wylie remembers rustys call miley said i had to ask him what a fatwa was i had never heard the word before he said he was going into hiding right away. But. Over the next few weeks demonstrations against rushdie escalated across britain muslim communities help book burnings thousands of protestors who considered the book evil and insulting to islam demanded that it be banned. In london activists burned effigies of the author while chanting allah is great and death to rushdie. A professor of islamic. Studies spoke out against rushdie in an open letter to the International Herald tribune your western readers are unable to gauge the acuteness of the blow you have dealt us he wrote what do you think the response of black americans would be if you were to mock Martin Luther king jr or the reaction of the Jewish Community if you you know just get the. You saw the director of the Islamic Center and his library and were murdered tonight on the premises of the mosque of brussels. Had apparently taken a moderate stance in the rushdie affair. With the. Director of the Islamic Center. Was found dead with gunshot wounds to the head and the neck. Of the head was killed in a similar fashion he was head of the Islamic Center libraries he said. The t. V. Is full of blood lost im not to the hotel and he will i mean this unnamable place. There is weaponry everywhere and the moment when things really changed for me was when i saw Television Coverage of the burning of these people those who profit by thought of it them i think of it as one of the most have seen images like that or witnessed when khamenei intervened that the that the narrative of changed that that i say what i thought of him had up to that point when an argument. Turned into something much more dangerous. Britains biggest book seller withdrew the satanic verses from its 430 stores on the same day the writer stephen king called the head of the chain and gave him an ultimatum if you dont sell the satanic verses you dont sell stephen king the book was back on the shelves the next day. There was some political problems which is that the thatcher government in england was aware of the fact that i had been a strong critic of the thoughts of government and so they werent particularly in love with me but on the other hand they offered the Police Protection and maintained it. Today a protest took place in paris with banners reading kill rushdie to get more. Death to rushdie and a low akbar or god is great were chanted between the both of them plus the laughter public metro stations by about a 1000 demonstrators i mean you to manifest all you for them in a rush this book was a stab in the back. But not all politicians and intellectual supported rushdie John Le Carre wrote in the guardian that nobody has a god given right to insult a great religion and be published with impunity. The beloved childrens author rod dollar leveled the harshest attack this kind of sensationalism does indeed get an indifferent book on the top of the bestseller list he seems to be regarded as some sort of a hero to my mind hes a dangerous opportunist. Even jimmy carter whose presidency was destroyed by Ayatollah Khomeini denounced the book calling it an insult to the sacred beliefs of our muslim friends and the singer cat stevens who converted to islam in 1977 expressed disapproval of rushdies writings and support for the death sentence another critic Prince Charles said im sorry but if someone insults someone elses deepest convictions well then you shouldnt pretend to be surprised a few years later his mother Queen Elizabeth the 2nd knighted rushdie for his service to literature effigies of the queen and the author were burned at several demonstrations. On june 3rd 1909 Ayatollah Khomeini died in tehran leaving the fatwa in place. His successor i have told many declared it is incumbent on every muslim to employ everything he has to send Salman Rushdie to hell even if it means sacrificing his life. The death sentence against solomon pronounced a year ago by the khomeini has been reaffirmed by his successor ayatollah ali hama now a irans religious leader referred to the british writer mr rushdie as the author of the blasphemous book the satanic verses for the islamic fanatics continue to pursue Salman Rushdie the author of the satanic verses condemned to death by khomeini hes in hiding somewhere in england protected by Scotland Yard as translators have also become targets the 1st attack took place earlier in the week and italy and a 2nd one has now heard in japan. Itoshi gosh. Expert islamic professor at the university of dead this morning in front of an elevator near his office that he had been stabbed several times literary agent has already been attacked by a pakistani militant in february 1900 at a press Conference Marking the books release in tokyo but. Rushdie went to new york in december 1901 to give a speech at Columbia University it was his 1st trip outside britain he had to take a Royal Air Force plane because British Airways refused to let him fly with them citing security reasons the windows of his new York City Hotel room were bulletproofed. It isnt. So much of bush. You know over 992 the writer launched an International Campaign to have the death sentence against him removed i decided to make a lot of noise he said because noise is my only hope rushdie came to paris in march 1903 for the 1st time since the fatwa had been declared on 3 previous occasions the french authorities had refused his request to enter the country. And look at our country is the country of artists writers and freedom and i wanted someone rusty to be here at the earliest possible opportunity so we can express our friendship our admiration and our support clients here dont let me assure. You this year but there were some ups and i like in france it was there was great support across the political spectrum and i was in france several times in those years and met everyone from jackson on 2 to 2 but i do to you know everyone you can think of sheer luck etc the only person that would not meet me was was me to. Just refused and of course you know how close. Repeatedly tried to persuade him that he needed to come aboard but for whatever reason he would not so i never met me through all the mush if i was. Out. I was the only thing that was in july 993 islamic radicals set fire to a hotel and see for us turkey where the translator of the satanic verses was among those attending a cultural conference 37 people died in the blaze it was the last large scale protest as the years passed the Death Threats became fewer. Gradually rushdie began to appear in public again bookstores ushered him in through the back door 994 in january a group of 100 arab and muslim intellectuals published statements in favor of rushdie excerpts of the satanic verses banned in all muslim countries appeared in an egyptian newspaper on october 14th the Nobel Prize Winning novelist. Was seriously wounded in a knife attack in cairo. But gradually things improved in the sense that the. Analysis of the threats against my wife begun to diminish and eventually there was an agreement between the british and the iranian governments which essentially ended the thread good afternoon im delighted to say that his ex and saved up to karate as clarified there in governments position on this and on the bounty on the life of the author of the satanic verses the government of the stomach probably called me on has no intention nor is it going to take any action whatsoever to threaten the life of the author of this authentic verses. Or anybody else to shit it because it is a bore no repeat encouraging or a cease and if i do to do so. Gradually the security measures put in place to protect rushdie more relaxed he was able to live more freely British Airways announced that he was once again welcome on board its flights but despite irans decision to drop the fatwa many hardliners continue to upload it. I want to have a dialogue reviewed by a martian gun you know. Themes 10 years ago guy walking youre writing today hey. Were killing you the way Eminent Domain is being the law of the imo. 2 the. But that. Might not be given. That others. That let us see them not that i thought i might rush by the way to see them all. But i see a nazi i saw it coming to america i would come here. For 2 or 3 months a year and here it seemed possible to live relatively normal life without any of those this in force an innocent america you know as an american before 911. It felt fine felt safe. But im often asked the question about whether i regretted writing the satanic verses but i mean i regretted what happened to me as a consequence of it you know i would much rather that had not happened but as far as the book is concerned you know im more and more proud of it. I mean this year it will be 30 years since the satanic verses was published and and i also think that whats happening now as the as the scandal goes away is that people are able to read it as a book rather than as some kind of standards text. On the effect of the rise of radical islam has been to not so much to frighten writers as to frighten publishers and i think i think theres a lot of books that would not get themselves published now because people are scared to publish them one of the great surprises of my life has been the return of religion to the center of the stage you know that i mean im an old source on twitter you know and in those days we argued about many things but we didnt discuss religion and religion seem to be. An irrelevance politically and since then it has become obviously central in a way in a way that none of us suspected. In the setting of western europe and america where there is a lot of prejudice against muslim people it is obviously wrong that people should be discriminated against their religion and they need to be protected. But its equally wrong to protect the religion from all criticism. Criticism of islam has become equated with an attack on muslim people. And and so even people on the liberal end of the progressive leftist end of the spectrum now find problematic the idea of supporting people who make fun of religion of want or at least of that particular religion nobody cares if it will make fun of you know catholics or jews but but islam people seem to have. A false sense of having to protect it you know and that sometimes leads to terrible mistakes like the failure of a number of american writers to support for example. On january 7th 2015 gunmen stormed the offices of the french satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo during a weekly editorial meeting 12 people including 8 journalists and 2 Police Officers were murdered in the islamist terrorist attack the famous cartoonists couple shop on their day she knew and would instantly were among the victims in february 2006 they had published a series of caricature was of the prophet mohammed the killer said you will pay for insulting the prophet before killing the journalists i think people are in a kind of state of denial and they dont really understand how difficult is going to be thats a sadness of our time i mean i remember here in new york after after the 911 attacks. A couple of journalist friends of mine i mean very senior journalists who experienced you know us saying to me oh now we understand what happened here and i thought really thought you know what thousands of people have to die before you understand what happened to me but then i understood that thats not what he was saying exactly what he was saying was or the 2 of them were saying was that now it had also happened to them. This is the this is the the horrible trump said to reveal. More tour. But. At the pretty difficult times because he knows how much people in new york dislike her you never heard. Her bill whats happening in this country right now and i think what has been happening at the borders has been almost almost the worst thing you know so far the the imprisonment of children but one of the most awful things about this administration is that it appears to have no bottom that you know every time you think theres no way they can get more than this they find a place to go even lower than that. And i mean its horrifying every day the novel before it was in a 2 years 8 months 28 nights is a kind of fairy tale of new york with genies and so on and and so i thought what did i do that is really radically different from that and thats what led to the the method to the mountain of the golden house. The book is shaped as having a beginning on the day of the inauguration of barack obama and it ends at the time of the inauguration of the 45th president who was not referred to by name in the book theres a cartoon character who replaces trump in the novel which is which is the joker the villain from the batman. And so i thought well i dont want to have that word trump in the book so ill have the joker instead and then it seems to me not inappropriate that a comic book will and should become president of the United States and i just thought im writing a book roughly speaking about the obama years about about what was happening in america in those in that just under a decade from a moment of great optimism. To a moment of Something Like the opposite of that. In this novel when a Young Filmmaker in search of a story spends his days spying on his new neighbor nero golden and enigma matic millionaire from india who settles in the heart of Greenwich Village new york with his 3 sons these strange fascinating neighbors with their Mysterious Ways become an unexpected source of inspiration. I thought that he would be watching what happens and telling us. One of the films that was really just seemed like an obvious reference in this novel was a fish box rear window because where a lot of the novel is set is in this kind of secret garden in the middle of Greenwich Village and it suddenly struck me that this would be a wonderful space for the action of the novel that it had something theatrical about it its almost like a stage you know in which the actor the characters the novel can act out their stories on the stage and they can be watched by everybody the bigger of the garden. But really his head is full of movies so hes always to do other movies the thing he does share with me is a passion for the cinema this obsession with this with with movies that ive had all my life because it becomes his obsession just goes to show you get away with a lot more and it didnt really start when i was a college the only other dream that i had was to be an actor and and then i i think probably wisely i didnt i didnt pursue that that particular career but for me its always been like a little bit of an unscratched h. Sometimes of people have offered me small come your roles in movies ive been excited to to do it its fun and the actress helen hunt was directing her 1st film and in it there was a character of an indian doctor. In the im going to college asst and i just out of the blue they called me and said would i like to do it so i had to play helen hunt scott ecologist. Oh hello hello hello how are you i. Oh. Sorry so. Anyone else coming in oh yeah this is it is this it if you load it. Just looks great. I had to learn a great deal about how to work ultrasound machines that things like that so you know if you know anybody who needs an ultrasound i can do it. Although the fatwa issued against rushdie was finally lifted the Iranian Press continued to put a price on his head the price rose 500000 dollars and 2012600000 in 2016. And on the eve of the sinister 30th anniversary of the fatwa some religious fanatics decided to add another 300000. 00 to the 3000000. 00 offered 15 years ago by ayatollah husain sinai. While the muslim uproar over the satanic verses continued larry david who produced h. B. O. s Comedy Series curb your enthusiasm asked rushdie if he was willing to draw a line under the fatwa and that period by doing a sketch about it. When they 1st approached me to ask me to do it my 1st reaction was im not sure that this is funny is you know is this really funny and then i thought about it and i thought well actually there would be a point in my life when it really wasnt funny at all you know but even if weve now reached a point but which it can be comedy you know which we can make jokes about it then actually thats a very good point to have reached and so then so i said yes im happy to do it because it is for. Mr david is here now to say. Today coming please have. A youve survived many many years and well its you know its there yeah but. Yeah for us yeah to be scary could be bewildering cetera but there are things that you gain a lot of women who are attracted to you in this condition. If it was any condition or a dangerous man. There are very beautiful the fatwa wrapped around you like kind of sexy pixie dust ha but what sex is beginning to circle around you but that is not the only benefit for example you dont have to go to anything you dont want to go to so like your cousin is giving a reading of his lousy poetry book. And you say sorry. Fatwah so because he says could you come pick me up at the airport you say make it make it this musical about me in the us so. I dont think there really will be a musical. The musical was aired just once on h. B. O. Following an episode of davids show featuring rushdie. Over. This man. Said it was just the look we put him off oh. God knows i. Was. Going. Through. The. Tensing overcome balladry. Changing the world with dad. No words required. But full body engaged. With. John. Mark 20. 30 minutes on w. They were forced into a nameless mass of. Their bodies near tools to. The history of the slave trade is africas history. For power and profit plummeted and entire continent into chaos and violence. This is the journey back into the history of slavery. I think will truly be making progress when we all accept the history of slavery as all of our history. Our documentary series slavery routes starts march 9th on t w. This is to give you news live from berlin russell sends a clear message to might. And hoping to enter the European Union dont go to do border. To polish not open. And this is what it looks like at that border frustrated migrants and police determined to keep them out the latest from our correspondent in turkey. South korea steps up its measures to fight the coronavirus millions of people are now turning to a website to get information about which areas have