Angel Jaramillo
After the vicious attack he suffered, the Western world has again come to the defense of a writer who embodies the supreme value of freedom.
On February 14 -the day of the accompanied hearts- in 1989, Salman Rushdie ceased to be a name known only to the literary world. He became a celebrity, at the same time that the irate Ayatollah Khomeini put a price on his head.
What was the reason? To begin with, the publication of his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, a coded story of magical realism inspired by the life of the prophet Mohammed. The episode can be seen as the beginning of a new moment in the relationship between the Middle East and what I have no choice but to call the Western world.
Then came the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in 2001, the military intervention of the Anglo-American alliance in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Arab Spring in 2011, and the great Islamic diaspora to united Europe, which will transform the destiny of our world.
But it all began with Rushdie. At the origin of this mess is the clash of two antithetical versions of the world: on the one hand, the theocratic idea, in which certain writings cannot be criticized, much less mocked, since to do so would call into question a closed conception of reality. On the other hand, the liberal and secular ideas, according to which there is a market of ideas where none can be imposed except by reason. There are no sacred points of view, and everything can be the subject of ridicule.
This is the source and origin of liberal civilization, without which it cannot exist. Needless to say, the Islamic orb is in a battle that will decide its fate between the theocratic order and the liberal order, tertium non-datum.
Salman Rushdie, of course, has taken sides – except for a moment of hesitation that does honor to him – for the liberal cause in the battle for the Islamic soul. And it is this decision that forced him to live in hiding and protected by a police guard, courtesy of the British government, during the period immediately following the publication of the fatwa.
Arduous diplomatic negotiations seemed to have resulted in a truce that allowed Rushdie to continue with a more or less normal life in the last two decades, even if there is a million-dollar reward for his life. He made his home in New York, has continued to devote himself to literature, and every now and then gives us new novels to read and analyze: from the tragicomic Fury, where an Indian plutocrat discovers New York, to the fictional investigation of how an Islamic fundamentalist is produced in Shalimar the clown. From the intertwining historical narrative between Machiavelli’s Florence and Akbar’s court in the Persian Empire that is The Enchantress of Florence to the contemporary reconstruction of Cervantes’ saga that is Don Quixote.
I met Salman Rushdie briefly at Christopher Hitchens’ apartment in Kalorama. He seemed very nice to me and commented that he admired Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I told him that I also thought they were great authors and asked him if he had read Octavio Paz. Of course, he had. Anyone who has followed, even superficially, his work cannot deny that we are dealing with a polymath. To this quality of connoisseur of various subjects must be added an eloquence rarely seen: Rushdie can talk for hours at a stretch and with impeccable English about the powder keg of the Middle East, Bollywood, Shakespeare, or Don Quixote.
Rushdie’s map is one worth touring. It crisscrosses the round of civilizations and the brave new world of human imagination.
This rich map may now come to an end, depending on how Salman Rushdie recovers from the vicious attack perpetrated against him on his way to deliver a lecture in New York. It is necessary to know the motives of whoever tried to assassinate him and, if possible, to establish whether he had the support of any government on the planet. The Western world has once again come to the defense of the writer, for he embodies the supreme value of freedom in these times of despots.
