"Free Speech Is Life Itself"

By KARSTEN PRAGER Salman Rushdie

Q. For more than 1,000 days, you have been under an all-points death sentence. What's it like to live like that?

A. Oddly, I don't that often feel afraid, although the first few days were very scary. But at some point I thought to myself, "If I spend my time being afraid and worried about where the bullet's going to come from, then I'm really going to go crazy." And then I said to myself, "I've got the best protection the British government can offer -- it's their job to worry about that. It's not my job." That was a kind of mental trick. What I had to worry about was mentally dealing with the threat and arguing my case and continuing to be what I am.

Q. And that worked most of the time?

A. Yes. I won't say there aren't moments when the other breaks through, because there obviously are. But by and large, day to day, it works.

Q. How often have you moved?

A. I haven't kept an exact count. There's a kind of legend around how I get moved every few days. It's never been as bad as that.

Q. But more than a couple of dozen times?

A. Oh, it's been a lot of places, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for longer periods. I've seen a great deal of Britain I'd never seen before. Where there are wide-open spaces, it's possible for me to get out and go for walks.

What I've tried to do is take very slow steps back toward as much of life as I can sensibly have. And that's a matter of instinct and judgment and discussion; the less said about it the better. But from the beginning I have felt the one thing that would be very dangerous to me would be to become an institutionalized prisoner, to give up control of my life to the people whose job it is to look after me. That's why I have constantly pushed against the bars of the cage and tried to make it a bit bigger.

Q. What social life is left?

A. It's almost entirely telephonic. I call friends.

Q. Do you read?

A. I read. To an extent, I still lead a writer's life.

Q. So in that sense life has not changed?

A. All my adult life, if I didn't have several hours a day to sit in a room by myself, I would get antsy and irritable. Now, that particular part of the day has spread to kill the whole day. I used to like the contrast between doing the work and getting out and having a very sociable life. So that's gone. And that's a real, obvious loss.

Q. Who takes care of your daily needs?

A. I can cook. And I have access to washing machines and dishwashers. Of course, I'm leading my life in premises that also contain armed policemen.

Q. Your own extended family?

A. Well, we get on very well. I'd never thought I would be in a situation where I'd have a lot of friends in the secret police. But we have shaped a relationship of mutual respect.

Q. How about your son?

A. Clearly, I miss him a lot. I wrote a book for him in this time because it was just about the only thing I could do for him. A lot of the normal requirements a child would have of his father I've been unable to discharge. I talk to him every day by telephone. But it's a huge deprivation, not just for me but for him. For the thing that has happened is also an assault on his rights.

Q. You say your marriage is over. Was that caused by your situation?

A. It didn't help, but it wasn't the critical factor. There were other things that went wrong.

Q. Let's turn to the political side. The Western hostages have been released. Does that help or hurt your cause?

A. It's a kind of knife edge, as I always thought it would be. Because to an extent I've been a hostage to the hostage situation. Whenever people have tried to make my case very public, to debate it very noisily, it has been suggested that to do so would be to prolong the hostages' plight. Now, since the hostages are out, I am able to speak more freely.

Q. What's the other side of the coin?

| A. The thing I've worried about is that there would be the enormous and quite understandable desire among the public to say, "Thank God, it's all over." Somebody then piping up with "Excuse me, there's one more problem" might generate irritation. "Oh, God, we don't want to deal with that because it's finished, it's over, hurrah, let's have Christmas."

What I'm trying to say is, "It isn't quite the end."

Q. How did you feel when Britain resumed diplomatic relations with Iran last year and your case remained unresolved?

A. I had very mixed feelings. I would certainly have wished for a clear, overt public statement about the Rushdie case. No such statement was made, apart from a vague statement about how Iran had agreed not to interfere in the internal affairs of Britain. Unfortunately, a few months later there were very vociferous restatements of the threat from Iran, and the bounty money on my head was doubled.

Q. To $3 million?

A. Well, $2 million -- a large amount. And then I heard about my Italian translator being knifed. I heard about my Japanese translator being murdered.

Q. What's your agenda during your U.S. visit?

A. People need to be reminded constantly that this is not a parochial issue. It's not about one writer of Third World origin in trouble with a Third World power. The publishing of a book is a worldwide event. The attempt to suppress a book is a worldwide event. This is not just about me.

Q. Your problem has to be solved at the political level?

A. Yes.

Q. But that might involve trade relations, arms deals, whatever? You expect to be part of some political equation?

A. It's not that I expect to become a part of it, but I am, whether I like it or not. The Iranian government is in breach of international law and at the same time is seeking to get closer to the West. As a citizen of Britain and of Europe, I can at least expect most countries and their allies to say to Iran, "If you wish to put your house in order, show us . . ."

Q. And Rushdie fits in there?

A. Yes. Both sides have a genuine interest in getting closer to the other. The West sees Iran as an important force in the gulf. Iran wishes to reconstruct its economy and play a fuller part in the community of nations -- and that's legitimate. My part is a tiny part in that equation -- it's big for me, but it's a tiny part.

Q. Do you ever feel like giving up?

A. Certainly. There were very long periods of time when I thought I would never write again. What was the point of it anyway? I'd simply written a novel -- a 500-page, complicated, literary novel that insulted even people who hadn't read it. You expect a debate, or a dispute, or an argument -- that seems to me an entirely legitimate function of art. What you don't expect is an attempt to intimidate the book's publishers and murder the book's author.

Q. Last year you embraced Islam. Why?

A. I believe there needs to be a secular way of being a Muslim. There are plenty of people in the Muslim world who feel exactly like that -- an identity with culture and values -- but who are not believers in the theology. That was what I was trying to say, or I would've said it if anybody had listened hard enough. But immediately I was called either a traitor to my own cause or a hypocrite.

Q. What if political pressure does not work? Are you living with a life sentence?

A. I don't want even to contemplate what you suggest because I don't believe the situation is as bleak as that. But the fact is I'm not going to accept it forever.

Q. You've said free speech is life itself. Has it been worth fighting for?

A. Yes, it has. Yes, it has. Clearly, nobody wants such an incredible distortion of one's daily life; in fact, nothing else will happen in my life of remotely this magnitude.

But at least it's the right plight. At least it's about what I believe most deeply in. And therefore it's possible to fight for it. At least the fight is about the right thing.