It was the nineties and a few years had already passed since Ayatollah Khomeini had issued the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I managed the interview with the writer without much hope that he would grant it to me, through his literary agent, under the pretext of the publication of a new book of his. But one fine day I received a phone call (it was still not common to communicate by email, mobile phones were still quite primitive and WhatsApp did not exist) suggesting an appointment.
I asked where, and my interlocutor said, with a certain mystery, that I would already be informed, that it was not yet known. On the appointed day, a car showed up at my house in Belsize Square, opposite a synagogue, with a chauffeur and two other men. They invited me up. One of them sat next to the driver, and the other sat in the back seat with me. He offered me a hood and asked me to put it on, for “security reasons”. It was better that he didn’t know the place of the rendezvous. The journey took between half an hour and forty-five minutes, in the middle of traffic. They helped me out of the car, still with my head covered, and led me by the arm, as if I were a blind man, through a space where there were voices and a certain noise. We got into an elevator, down a corridor, and into a room. It was a living room, overlooking the street, and when they took off my hood there sat Salman Rushdie himself.
The meeting lasted about an hour and a half, and the author seemed relaxed, calm, unhurried and without the tension that all the precautions had suggested. We talked about it, about the fatwa, about what it’s like to live under threat, about how horrible it must have been for him and his family, about his books, literature, cricket and politics. From Iran, the Middle East, Pakistan, India, British colonialism, the United States… Always with the two men who had accompanied me in the car in front, attentive, with earpieces in their ears and -I got the impression- armed with pistols.
I no longer had to cover my eyes to leave. They offered to walk me home, but I replied that it was not necessary. The secret place turned out to be a hotel. Stepping out into the street late in the afternoon, with a nice breeze, the sun receding and clouds colored pink, yellow, indigo blue and turquoise like an artist’s palette, I found myself right in the center of Knightsbridge, near from Harrods department store. That was my experience with Salman Rushdie.
