Salman Rushdie Considers Kashmir,Radical Islam and Modern Fiction

Salman Rushdie Considers Kashmir,
Radical Islam and Modern Fiction

By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 8, 2005

Salman Rushdie, 58 years old, has written 15 books, including nine novels. His latest, "Shalimar the Clown," is being published this week by Bertelsmann AG's Random House imprint. In it, Mr. Rushdie tells a story of revenge and heartbreak that extends from Kashmir to Los Angeles. His portrayal of village life, vividly drawn, is reminiscent of the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Mr. Rushdie is probably best known in the U.S. for having written "The Satanic Verses," the 1988 book for which he was condemned to death by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Mr. Rushdie subsequently went into hiding but says he no longer has security concerns; today he lives primarily in New York. Mr. Rushdie spoke recently to The Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey Trachtenberg by telephone from London about his new book, radical Islam and the state of modern fiction.

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The Wall Street Journal Online: Why is it that love and fidelity don't last in this novel?

Salman Rushdie: It's a sad fate, falling in love in one of my books. People get beaten up. But at the end of the book, India, or Kashmira as she's then called, does fall in love in what might be an enduring way. So there could be a happy ending.

Salman Rushdie

WSJ.com: Was village life ever as idyllic as you portray here?

Mr. Rushdie: It's not really idyllic. It's hard to make a living. The work the villagers do is less and less required by the country. And they have to compete against their neighbors to make ends meet, which leads to violent conflict at one point.

What is true is that there was a happy composite culture in Kashmir whose loss is the thing that needs to be mourned. Different communities lived in harmony. Going to Kashmir every year -- as I did growing up -- I saw that what people treasured most, above the natural beauty, was the composite culture. I wanted to show it in a way that made people fond of it, to show that it was worth caring about. Almost all my writing about India and Pakistan has been about the cities, not about villages. I felt it was an absence in my work.

WSJ.com: Is Islam on an inevitable collision with the West? Or, as your new book suggests, do the extremists lack popular support?

Mr. Rushdie: I think they do lack popular support. But the absence of other politics in the Muslim world is very dangerous. I'm talking about a secular, anti-terrorist group, one that believes in the separation of church and state. Islam is at a crisis point and needs that separation. It's not a radical movement but a personal experience. And that's the thing: The large majority of Muslims don't see faith as a political ideology. Most see it as a private matter. I grew up in a Muslim family and know many who call themselves believing Muslims, and they don't wish it to be a political ideology. But radical Islam has all the momentum. The important thing is for another Islamic voice, one which would represent the majority, to rise up.

WSJ.com: At least one of the July 7 London bombers was a cricket enthusiast, a British-born Muslim who came from a middle-class family. What is this about?

Mr. Rushdie: One of the strange things is that a number of recent terrorists have come from comfortable homes. The 9/11 bombers weren't the dispossessed. They came from middle-class families with comfortable lives. The same is true of the first wave of British suicide bombers. They weren't the poorest; they were well-off. It's a mistake to see this aberration as arising only out of great personal privation or hardship. It seems that the thrown switch has to do with ideology, not socioeconomics. That's what scary. It seems extraordinary that people who have been comfortably off decided to blow up their own country.

My great fear is that there will be a colossal backlash in [the U.K.]. If there is one more attack, all bets are off. There is a residue of good sense of not to punish the innocents for the crimes of the guilty. But the level of nervousness is very high, and the number of hate crimes has spiraled.

WSJ.com: Do those bombings suggest that the West is going to be plagued with similar terrorist attacks for years to come?

Mr. Rushdie: My record as a prophet isn't good. Having had some trouble with prophets myself, I don't know. I hope not.

WSJ.com: What is your situation regarding the bounty put on your life for writing "Satanic Verses?"

Mr. Rushdie: It's all fine and has been for years. Except when I'm talking to journalists, it never comes up. My life has been completely free of security concerns for many years now. Let's hope it stays like that.

WSJ.com: Have other writers been the subject of such a decree?

Mr. Rushdie: The thing that was different was the dimension of international terrorism. I was living in my country and people were sent to kill me. That hasn't happened much. But many writers in the Arab world in the same period were accused in similar terms, and some were killed. In this novel, the assassin is first sent to Algeria, where he is told to 'kill a Godless man, a writer against God, who spoke French and had sold his soul to the West.' I was referencing a great Algerian journalist and novelist, Tahar Djaout, who was killed in Algeria in a manner not unlike the one in the book. He was accused, as I was, and was less fortunate.

WSJ.com: Has that experience tempered your choice of material or how you handle potentially sensitive subjects?

Mr. Rushdie: I hope not. No punch was pulled in this book. I've always had a clear view of where my subject lay. The experience of those years clarified it. Now, of course, that subject is the world's subject. The thing I was banging on for 20 years is suddenly something people are more interested in today. It's generally true that readers chose what they read on the basis of their concerns. And it's sometimes that a writer can be on a particular line for a long time and then reader attention moves in that direction.

WSJ.com: In the Kashmir that you describe, Muslims and Hindus look out for each other when pressured by extremists. What is the situation there today?

Mr. Rushdie: Politically, there is a sense that India and Pakistan have a slight détente, but it's a long way from peace. There are still 1.6 million troops in a place where the population is five million, and on top of that you have the terrorist groups. The incredible militarization of the valley makes it difficult to see peace showing up soon. What can be done is to make soldiers from both sides back off. The fact that Kashmir is one of the most beautiful places in the world heightens the ugliness of what is happening. The valley is small and surrounded by the biggest mountains on earth. It's breathtaking and extremely lush and full of orchards and saffron fields and rice. If the people were left to their own devices, they'd be quite well off.

WSJ.com: There's a strong mystical element in this book. Is that because realism doesn't provide enough reader nourishment?

Mr. Rushdie: My view is that if the book is solidly grounded in reality there can be moments of surrealism that can be metaphorical or heightening devices. But if it's not grounded, they feel easy and whimsical. Although there are fantastic elements in my novels, they arise out of genuine historical situations. They are extensions of the real, which makes them more striking, more poetical, more beautiful.

WSJ.com: What is the state of fiction today?

Mr. Rushdie: It's all right. Philip Roth's 'The Plot Against America' was a big bestseller. And I'm amazed that 'Kite Runner' did so well. Who would have thought it? It's very encouraging. Same with 'Reading Lolita in Tehran.' What it shows is that the reading public is willing to be non-parochial in its choices.

It's always the case that pop fiction dominates the short-term sales but long-term sales are another thing. I remember a trade magazine asked publishers to name not just their bestsellers for that year, but also the bestsellers in their history. And when you saw the second list, the cream rose to the top. It was Joyce, Faulkner, very literary writers. So this is perhaps the trade-off. Literary fiction endures, and because it endures it can outstrip this year's top seller.

WSJ.com: What are your thoughts regarding Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code?"

Mr. Rushdie: I would give 'The Da Vinci Code' a prize for the worst written novel of all time. It's the worst novel I've ever read. It makes Jeffrey Archer look like Tolstoy. He's found a pot of gold, but it's a shameful piece of work, and I'm not talking about the fact that the Pope doesn't like it.

Write to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at jeffrey.trachtenberg@wsj.com¹

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