FAMED INDIAN-origin controversial writer Salman Rushdie has started to pen down memories of his life under threat from Islamic radicals, apparently feeling that the danger to him may have abated. Sir Salman has began to write about what he calls his life’s lost chapter, the years he spent in hiding from the death fatwa issued against him by the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
It was on Valentine’s Day in 1989 that Khomeini called for the death of everyone involved in the publication of Rushdie’s fourth novel The Satanic Verses, which he said was blasphemous. This week, at an event organised by the literary magazine Granta, 63-year-old Rushdie confirmed that the moment to write about his life in mufti had arrived. “I am writing it now,” he said. “I found it kind of annoying that other people kept offering versions of it that were all bulls...” —pti