Interview: Rushdie Unplugged
20 Dec, 2006
Published in NY Time on April 18, 1999
Last September the Iranian Government finally rescinded its nine-year fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie, and it appeared that his life had been given back to him. For much of the past decade, Rushdie had lived like a prisoner, guarded round the clock by ''the boys,'' as he fondly called them -- agents from the Special Branch of the London police. In recent years, owing largely to Rushdie's own determination, the conditions of his confinement had relaxed somewhat. He ventured out to parties and public events, and even traveled abroad. But the official lifting of the fatwa seemed to restore what Rushdie missed most -- spontaneity, the ability to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted -- until, a few days later, certain hard-line groups in Iran declared that they would continue to offer a bounty for his death. It's over, went one analysis of the Rushdie situation, except it isn't over.
Speaking by phone recently from London, where he lives with his third wife, Elizabeth, and their 21-month-old daughter, Milan, Rushdie preferred to look on the positive side. ''I have sometimes felt that some of the reporting has in a way been too eager to feel that the thing was still very active,'' he said. ''I think there's been a failure sometimes to distinguish between saber rattling by people with very few resources and real substantive problems. But it is also true that the problem in Iran is that the leadership is not unified -- that there is a kind of splintered state and that it's not certain that all parts of that regime have signed up to this deal. And until we are certain of that, it does mean that we have to go on being careful. But that's not remotely the same as it was until last September. I feel that I am now slowly reclaiming my own life.''
Last September the Iranian Government finally rescinded its nine-year fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie, and it appeared that his life had been given back to him. For much of the past decade, Rushdie had lived like a prisoner, guarded round the clock by ''the boys,'' as he fondly called them -- agents from the Special Branch of the London police. In recent years, owing largely to Rushdie's own determination, the conditions of his confinement had relaxed somewhat. He ventured out to parties and public events, and even traveled abroad. But the official lifting of the fatwa seemed to restore what Rushdie missed most -- spontaneity, the ability to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted -- until, a few days later, certain hard-line groups in Iran declared that they would continue to offer a bounty for his death. It's over, went one analysis of the Rushdie situation, except it isn't over.
Speaking by phone recently from London, where he lives with his third wife, Elizabeth, and their 21-month-old daughter, Milan, Rushdie preferred to look on the positive side. ''I have sometimes felt that some of the reporting has in a way been too eager to feel that the thing was still very active,'' he said. ''I think there's been a failure sometimes to distinguish between saber rattling by people with very few resources and real substantive problems. But it is also true that the problem in Iran is that the leadership is not unified -- that there is a kind of splintered state and that it's not certain that all parts of that regime have signed up to this deal. And until we are certain of that, it does mean that we have to go on being careful. But that's not remotely the same as it was until last September. I feel that I am now slowly reclaiming my own life.''
Let's talk about your new novel. Some early readers of ''The Ground Beneath Her Feet'' have been surprised that so much of the book is about rock-and-roll. Did you mean the book to be a departure?
Well, I'm delighted to surprise people. I mean, I always hope not to write the same book twice. But I don't know that the rock-and-roll element should be that surprising. I think of rock as a sort of international language. I grew up in Bombay, which, although it was a great metropolis, simply didn't have television. There was also very little radio and what there was, was state controlled. So the ability that now exists for ideas to zoom across the planet in five seconds simply wasn't there. And yet this music did cross the world at high speed. What was then called Radio Ceylon was more liberal in those days, and they occasionally played Western music. So we would listen to the hit parade on Sundays.
Which singers were you listening to?
To begin at the beginning, Bill Haley, followed by Elvis. Elvis, you know, had the same impact in India as he had everywhere else. He was the one your mother didn't like, and the one she did like, of course, was Pat Boone. The first record I ever bought was ''Heartbreak Hotel,'' which is one of the reasons it features in the novel. Looking back, it seems quite extraordinary, given that at that point I'd never been to the United States. I knew very little about it apart from what I saw in the movies. And yet this music made by this truck driver from Memphis seemed to be coming from next door.
But the novel is also about the more recent era of rock-and-roll celebrity. Where did the inspiration for that come from?
What people forget is that I've had a life which really has more or less nothing to do with the forces of international Islam, if you know what I mean. I have actually known quite a lot of musicians. That's one of the things that made me feel that I could do this without falling flat on my face. I've met Lou Reed and I've met Paul Simon, and I had one memorable weekend hanging out with the Everly Brothers. Well, actually Don Everly. You have to choose your Everly Brother, because they don't talk to each other.
Is it true that Bono, from U2, has actually recorded the novel's title track, if we can call it that?
Well, yes. When I finished the manuscript there were a few people that I wanted to read it just to make sure I hadn't made any kind of howlers. Bono was one of them, and in fact, he ended up enjoying the book very much. He took one of the lyrics in the novel -- the song which I suppose is the song called ''The Ground Beneath Her Feet'' -- and set it to music and it's going to be on U2's next album, which comes out in September, I believe.
Is there anything else we should know about the novel?
The plot is a version of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, which is something I'd been wanting to explore for years. Given the way in which the Orpheus theme has been used and re-used in opera and classical music, it would have been more automatic, I suppose, to use that background. But I thought, No, I don't want to do that. I want to write about the music I grew up with and that the world grew up with. But mainly, you know, what I set out to do was write a love story. And I think why I wanted to do that is that one of the reasons I've survived for the past 10 years is because of the love that I've been shown -- by friends and, indeed, by strangers. Nobody gets through a thing like this alone.
What's next?
One of the problems of writing a book as long -- well, not just as long but as large in effort -- as ''The Ground Beneath Her Feet'' is that when you finish it, there's a colossal hole in your head -- an enormous emptiness where the novel used to be. And it takes a while to fill that up. What I can say is that the subject of India seems to have gone away for the moment. In a way, the moment in this novel when the novel leaves India seems to have been pretty final for me. I mean, one should never say never but the stuff I'm mulling around at the moment doesn't have to do with the East. It has to do with that very large part of my experience which is Western.
Charles McGrath is the editor of the Book Review.