Rushdie’s chronicles on his ‘Fatwa’ years is available at stands now but the publication is like a long dark tunnel for the author who spend around 12 years in hiding. “The Satanic Verses” was THE book that was the prime reason behind the British born journalist and writer’s hideout in London many years back. Rushdie wrote this controversial book based on anti-Islam and anti-Prophet topics and consequently he was sentenced to ‘death’ by the Iranian president Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989.
In Bradford, in February 1989 “The Satanic Verses” went off in flames and the worst spark was lit off by the Western Muslims. Ayatollah gave rise to this entire blaze and makes it a global rage with harassment for the American Embassies in Arab countries. The whole episode once again displayed the poor relationship between western free vocalizations and Islamic wrath.
Rushdie’s hideaway began on the sunny morning of Valentine’s Day in the year 1989 during Bruce Chatwin’s memorial service in Central London. The author was pushed inside the back of a car once the memorial was wrapped up and the car drove the terrified and befuddled author somewhere.
In the 1990’s till the end of the Fatwa recently, Mr. Rushdie lived like a caged person in heavy steels and glasses with his protection team. The entire saga left him petrified and everything was so intense in those days that the author had no option to write down his feelings and thoughts on papers and here comes the journal that will divulge the Rushdie’s Fatwa timeline to us.
‘Joseph Anton’ is the name of the newly release memoir of Rushdie that has initials of two of Rushdie’s favorite writers Anton Chekov and Joseph Conrad. The memoir contains the weird incidents and happenings of all those 12 years when Rushdie was hiding himself. The writer felt the height of annoyance in those days because everyone was trying to mould his identity and story for their own agendas without even knowing about the real Rushdie. However, now Rushdie is out of Fatwa, that was not enforced, but still the danger is hanging over him as Iraq is a terrorist state and a non-tolerant country.
Salman Rushdie had even faced distances from his family members, his mother even advised him to write a ‘good’ book next time and his son asked him to write a book that he can read. These such incidents were quite touchy for the writer, but still his inner self is with him and with no regrets from past, Salman Rushdie is now out of that long dark tunnel to live a normal life all over again.
