I wanted to just begin explaning that in march of 1992 i interviewedded him for the first time near dulles airport. I had to meet a stranger at a hotel bar to take me to the secret location. I knew him by the fact he was carrying a wall street journal, and [laughter] and we had a lengthy interview, by my standards, and i went back today to read what he said in the interview, and what i said in introducing it, and i realized what i wrote 20 years ago is equally true today. I wrote, theres one thing i want to say before anything else, and that is that he wrote midnights children, a novel about india having me in stitches several years ago. For that book alone, i wanted to interview him and go out of the way hotel and meet some designated intermediary and then go somewhere else to do it. [laughter] needless to say, hes no longer famous for writing good novels, and his popularity is not the reason for such bizarre arrangements. Hes famous because the later novel, the satanic novels, condemned him to die. Since then, for the past three years, he has been in hiding in britain most hi protected there by the security police. Heres what you told me in the interview in 1992. You said, i really think that before this year is out, this thing will be over. [laughter] your alter ego lived on for quite a while longer. Just temperature years wrong. Just ten years wrong. [laughter] what was it like getting frustrated, thinking it was going to get settled, and then dashed all the time . I think that the problem of hoping it went on is very difficult to write about duration, difficult to write about the fact that it was not that there were people shooting at me through the window. It was not, you know, it was not dramatic. It was just this sense that it was never going to end. It just went on and own and on which is why i used in the book, this image, the way he talks about the pompus of arian argen. If you photograph them, they look like a field. The only way to experience them is to travel through them, and then they just go on and on and on and on, always the same, and they go on and on and on and on, and they are always the same, and they go on and on and own, and they are always the same. It was like that, a situation that just went endlessly on. During that time, you could6 not live in your own home, but lived in the company of the police. Yeah. That was i mean, a lot of people thought that i was in sort of isolation somewhere, but actually, it was the opposite of isolation. I was living with four enormous men with guns. [laughter] and we became quite close, but it was it was sometimes the problem was not isolation, but klauser phobia. You mentioned to write. Eventually, up and down. I think the thing that saved me was that im a novelist. I think if i had been a playwright, suppose satanic verses was a play or a movie, if i were a director, it would have been virtually impossible for me to continue with my profession, you know, because of difficulty of getting a play put on or movie made, but writers are used to being in rooms, looking out the window, and thinking what the hell to do. [laughter] there you go. In a way, i was trained for this. [laughter] what you said about the image, never knowing when its over, that reminded me of a sensation in new york, and then after 9 11, which was with hindsight we say theres a moment when we knew that had happened. For a couple days we didnt know. There could have been another plane. One doesnt know when the things are over. Theres many ways in which what you experience seems to foreshadow things that we all came to experience. Well, i mean, thats what i very strongly came to feel that what happened the case of the satanic verses, was the harbor, the prologue, and thats why it was so badly understood when it first certainly in the west why it was badly understood because we had no narrative to fit it into. You know, it seemed to come out of nowhere, this sort of strange medievalist attack, you know, using accusations of things we had not heard about since the spanish inquisition, you know, these crimes, and people thought, what the hell is this . It was easy for people then to think, well, we dont understand this because its to do weird and foreign, but he understands it, and so if hes upset so much, he must have done something bad. Yeah. It was easy for people to do that because if they didnt have a larger frame, and what happened over the next decade, next 20 years was that people began to understand that the larger narrative, and the 9 11 attack, if you could say it, is the main event. Talk about this idea that some of you are detractors, i guess, and one thing we learn if were ever targeted with a death sentence confined to safe houses, every perceivedded flaw in the character will be published in the media in time. Yes, and not just flaws of the character, but appearance, too. Yes, everything. [laughter] well, it was argued, well, look, you wrote daringly about an area where given the state of leadership in islam in 1989, you were knocking on a door that was certainly possible, some ogre would jump out of it. You pay money, take chances. Thats a plausible argument, suspect it . Except, seems to me, one the greatest things about the history of literature is that writers have always taken on ogres, writers have always, in every country in the world, taken on tyrants and pointed up and called them by their name. You know, that when they wrote the poem about stalin, he knew well who he was and what he was like yeah. You know, knew who franco was. The history of literature is poets, artists, writers, standing up, telling the truth about tyrants to their face, and its one of the noble things about literature is to say that thats what you musten do is to diminish, i think, what writers have done. That we have a stake in the writer of fiction, feeling defended, and taking on ogres. Shelly said writers are unacknowledged legislators of mankind, which could be put a bit high, above poets [laughter] i think thats speaking truth to power. You know, that business of saying heres what i think of you is a good thing. You were speaking truth to power in a very important way, and its the imagination of the artist being free to speak truth to power, and the election was not going to depend on you getting the scoop you were not going to call out the government, Something Different from that. Yeah, and also, you know, the satanic verses was not a novel about islam. Most of it was a novel about migration, a novel about people coming from the indian subcontinents settling in england in the 1980 s, and the consequences of that. In the middle, theres a dream sequence in which theres a profit not called muhammed and islam and its a dream in the mind of somebody going insane. This is what we, in the trade, call fiction. [laughter] [applause] that would be the technical term for it, but instead, one of the strangest accusations leveled against me from portions of the islamic world. A suspicion about fiction itself, but fiction was proposed as being something that conceals the true motives of the writer, so whereas most that practice it think fiction is a way of revealing truth, not concealing it, but, anyway, i heard it a thousand times. People said hes hiding behind his fiction. Your real agenda. Yeah, my real agenda, concealed in this make believe, you know, and i thought this is this is really one way of describing it that its a category, people reading fiction as if its disguised fact. And so, for instance, in this dream, when the religion is born, and there are adversaries abusing the newly faithful, you know, jeering up, and, you know, which happened. You know, it was the early history of islamists were persecuted, and so how do you show persecution without showing the persecutors doing the persecuting . Cant do it. Right. And then if the things the persecutors say when they persecute the persecuted people are accused the authors accused of agreeing with them; right . That he means what they mean, and suddenly, you realize what they mean by disguising fact by fiction. It was the assumption that i was on the side of the persecuted. If you could put your words on paper, clearly. Clearly, i must mean them. You must mean them. Yeah. It was a surrealist experience. I mean, i often think that of the three the great trinity of 20th century writers who invented modern literature, seems to be the one who got it most nearly right that we live in it, you know, and that at the same time as being dark and scary, its very funny. I used to say to my friends at the time, often, if this stuff was not followupny at all, it would be quite funny. [laughter] you know . [laughter] for instance, quite soon after it all began, there was an interview on British Television with a rather sweet looking elderly british muslim leader, an organizer of the demonstrations, and those silver beard, very neatly trimmed and so on, and soft voiced, gentle, elderly bloke, you know, and the tv interviewer said to them, had he read the verses, he looked shocked. No, i mean, no, in as of course not, and the journal interviewer said, well, this is not mr. Rushdies first book, but fourth, and have you ever read anything hes written . This gentleman sweetly, disarmingly, with these gestures [laughter] he said, you know, books are not my thing. [laughter] burning books, however burning books . [laughter] we should get to this, you know, your global adversary, pursuer in this was the io toll la and within members of the very immigrant wave you have been writing about organized a book burning. People seemed, at least comfortable with the idea of a death sentence against you with the clergy and outright endorsements that he should die for it. This was domestic, british issue, and you, at one point, and this is the point of greatest regret for you, you sat down with the leaders of the movement, and its a very vivid scene described in a special Police Station. I want you to take us there. The green station in london is the maximum Police Station basically built to interrogate and house captured members of the ira. It was built as a terrorist holding station, and this was the place i was told i was the only place i was allowed to meet these people. The point is i was in a very bad state of mind. This is about two years into it, christmas 1990 is when this was. Christmas eve, i think, 1990. First of all, i was very worn down by the endlessness of it, but that was only two years. Also, i was worn down by a public rhetoric that was getting louder and louder in england. I mean, partly from conservative politicians, partly from bits of the, you know, the news media, and but also from the public at large. There had never been opinion polls published in which substantial majority of the British Public were of the view it was my fault and up to me to do something to fix it. You know, you broke it, you fix it. You know, all of this pressure really too big its toll, and thats what suckered me, really, into the meeting of these islamic worthies who claimed they would sort it out if i had a meting with them and make friends. When i arrived, they showed me a badly typed paper with stunning mistakes, you know, grammatical errors, things that offend me [laughter] [applause] i dont think this was the most clever way to appeal to the vanity of the confession. You had to write from that point on. [laughter] look, its not grammatical. [laughter] they said, no, no, rewrite it. Youre the writer. See, yeah. Yeah, thats who i am. [laughter] but the problem is is in the text constructed was what they considered bob the price of the ticket was i had to make a declaration of religious faith which was absurd because, no, i have less religion than you can inscribe on a chewed ave fingernail, and [applause] and but bsh but, you know, weekly and shamefully i got i got so desperate to break the log jam that i signed the document, and i immediately that i left, Police Station, taken away in the armored cars, and i realized i did something stupid, like i ripped the tongue out of my throat, lost my language, and i lied. I almost threw up in the back of the police car. Im glad i didnt because the windows didnt come down because they anyway, it was a bad moment for me, like, i think, its in the book of hitting bottom, and i think it was, but in retrospect, i came to think of it as beneficial to me because, i think, you know, it was a very clarifying moment showing me something that i had not looked at before which is that there was no way of making everybody like me. Yeah. You know, that there was nothing i could do, and that actually, it was dangerous to try and make everybody like you because that led you into a trap. It led you into areas of compromise about things that should not be compromised about, and i just, at that point, to hell with it, to hell with it, no more apiecement, no more apology, no more atonement, no more saying im really sorry, you know, fuck it. [applause] and i think from that moment on, i, in a way, it taught me how to fight, you know . It just taught me, just stand up for it, you know, just stand up for what you did, what you believe in, whats right, and if people dont like it, they dont like it. Although it was an awful moment for me, really sickening moment in my life, i think out of it came, you know, out of it became the person i was able to become. There we are. Yeah. Back to some of the the the difficulties of living as you did yes. When you were under protection that verged on con findment, another confinement, another 9 11 parallel for those who wonder if we gave up freedom in order to be secure in the threat of terrorism. Well, you were told routinely i dont dont think youre allowed to do that. You may not go visit him. Your son can come here under these particular protections. You were protected, but protection meant great curtailment of your freedom. Well, and also, the truth is that every single other person in england who received Police Protection got it living in their own house. You know, they didnt have to go under ground. They lived at home. The uniform police protected the property, and the special branch, secrets of police, looked after them going after their daily business. You know, there was no attempt to say you have to disappear. Except for me, and ive thought that i made a mistake, you know, that if i had to do it again, i might just say, you know what . Ive got a house over there. Im going home. You want to protect me . Thats where youll find me. Yeah. It would have been more dangerous, but maybe maybe it would have been maybe it would have been more dignified perhaps. Just how dangerous it was, the best you could do was to learn that somebody had had critical credible information there had actually been a plot somewhere. Yeah, that happened several times. I mean, i went one of the strange things is i got into strange places. I went into that building seen in james bond movies. The head of the secret service, and, anyway, i met all of these people, and actually, i came to admire them quite a lot. I thought they were really smart, really tough, and really knew what they were talking about, and i thought that it was quite good in a way to have them on my side. You told me 20 years ago at the Strange Hotel near dulles airport, you found them sophisticated, and talked with them and said you would write the book that would blow the lid off the secret police . Yeah. There are moments when you talk about the ease of someones life entirely secret, going to undisclosed places to protect individuals they cant describe, theres the perfect cover for extramarital affairs. Ask dick cheney, he was in undisclosed locations. [laughter] oh, yeah, it was its perfect cover. Perfect cover. For fooling around. Honey, i got to go on business. Its secret. They cant tell you anything about it. When i come back, i cant tell you anything. I wont be able to call you, and im going to be away for eight days. [laughter] some of your protecters did yeah, they did. They did. Did you say some . It was all. Roughly all of them. One i can tell you about because he was found out. One of the guys was with me for awhile was a bigamist. Yes. He had two families, two wives, two sets of chirp, and he took the precaution of giving both wives sets of children the same loving nicknames. [laughter] no risk of forgetting. No mistake. Right. Wherever he went, he called them whatever he called them, you know, and he only got caught because he was not he was using detective sergeant, i think, and he was just getting into bed so they caught him because he got up to dance otherwise, he was caught. In addition to the real life billing where the fictional character, you needed surgery, a medical treatment in i had a problem with my eyelids, a medical problem where the condition called tosis, where basically how much do you want to know . Well, you needed surgery. [laughter] it the muscles that work the io lids stop working, and so the eyelids come down and dont open at all. I had to have it repaired, and i went to the hospital, and there was this i mean, it was not an operate on the eyes, but eyelids, but i was there with my head bandaged, came out in the middle of the night, and i said hello . Nobody answered. I said, hello again, and nobody answered. I thought, what i mean, literally, i didnt know where i was, ect. , and i picked the moment i picked to emerge from anesthesia was the moment the night nurse went to the bathroom. There was nobody there. It was an extraordinary moment. Just, i mean, a minute or two minutes, but, to me, blindfolded and not know where you are and not even know what condition your eyes are in, it was a moment. And in a very special hospital, i gather . It was everything you know, everything i did was in a maximum security place where, you know, the royal family had surgeries had surgeries there. Dont ask what royal family surgeries are. [laughter] you dont want to know. [laughter] this is a memoir, and its not just the story of you and trying to get the satanic verses published in paperback, quite a struggle well talk about, but its about your life. At the beginning of this saga you had one wife and one exwife. By the end of it, you had four exwives, one of whom deceased by the end of the story. At the beginning, you had one young son; by the end of it, hes a young adult, and you have another son. Yeah. You were living to put it mildly, an active life, even within a shelf protection [laughter] that youre having theres this moment when, 1990 somewhere, i was interviewed by mike wallace for 60 minutes, and he came to whatever undisclosed location. Yep. And at that point it had just become known i had broke p up with my then wife marryann williams, and so, like, the second question its 60 minutes, but the second question he asks is so your marriage ended . I said, yes. He said, so what do you do about sex . [laughter] thats a very highly rated program, 60 minutes. [laughter] i thought this is the most important political show on american television, and the second question is about sex . [laughter] as it happened, i had my then through Great Fortune with who became my wife, mother of my youngest son, but i was not going to tell mike wallace that. It was one of those Magic Moments where the right words j