“Salman Rushdie always wants to write and speak freely”
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Christophe Ono-dit-Biot spoke at length with Salman Rushdie at his home in New York, for a series of interviews broadcast this week on France Culture and an interview to appear Thursday in Le Point, of which he is deputy editorial director . Christophe Ono-dit-Biot has regularly met, for 20 years, the author of “Satanic Verses”, victim in August 2022 of a knife attack which left him with serious after-effects. An assassination attempt at the heart of an autobiographical story, “The Knife”, which comes out in bookstores on Thursday (Ed. Gallimard, 23 euros).
How did you find Salman Rushdie?
CHRISTOPHE ONO-DIT-BIOT. I had seen him in June when he was still very physically scarred: he had lost a lot of weight, he still had scars on his face and this smoked glass on his eye which gives him a pirate look. I found it much better this time. Already, he is very much in love with a writer and poet and, as soon as he speaks, there is absolutely tremendous mischief, playfulness and humor. Without ever any fear. Obviously, he tells you that it was the worst day of his life, that he saw himself die and that his recovery was excruciating. He is aware that in principle, we cannot survive this. But he wants to continue living, writing and laughing. He’s always very funny.
How does he view his life punctuated with threats?
He told us about his youth, the time when he read Peter Pan to his two sisters as we can see in a photo he has in his living room. He talks about his parents, the way they lived in an open and hyper-tolerant environment, at a time when we could debate, whereas today, we no longer can. He returns at length to the “Satanic Verses”. He regrets absolutely nothing, he repeats that it is a novel that was misunderstood, he talks again about his atheism. He is not affected at all and, in this, the fundamentalists who have threatened and hunted him all these years have not won at all. He always wants to write and speak freely.
Is he a man more peaceful than angry?
He’s not angry at all. He does not say that the fear has completely disappeared but he makes arrangements with it. He learned to live with it. He understands the danger but that doesn’t stop him from speaking or living. He constantly evokes his happiness which, certainly, has been damaged, but is still there. His goal was not to become a fearful or vengeful writer. He doesn’t want to stop himself from writing what he wants to write. He hopes that a reader who discovers it without knowing that he was threatened with a fatwa does not realize it.
What memories does he have of these years spent under high protection?
It really was the worst ten years of his life. At the time, he felt like a sort of shadow of himself. He couldn’t speak when everyone else was doing it for him. But these years of suffering allowed him to write his wonderful book “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”. This novel is about a son saving his father who can no longer write…
Is it a symbol of resilience?
Many in his place would have collapsed and would have no longer written, or else more timid works, which is not his case. He has already started working on the next book. He is a fighter but not an ideologue. The last sentence of the story he published Thursday in France is: “Words are the only winners”. What matters to him now is to fight bigots, puritanism and those who want to burn books with words.
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