Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 148
148 C H A P T E R E IGH T E E N : R US H DI E BE GI NS T O C O M E O U T I N T H E OPE N With the ‘Rushdie Affair’ no longer being considered as a high- profi le topic for the media, Salman Rushdie slowly began to make in-roads to appear on television to appeal to a larger audience and to continue the fight for writers’ freedom of speech and expression. He started to travel all around the western world to achieve some sort of success. For instance, he accompanied Taslima Nasreen, the Bangladeshi feminist writer in almost the same predicament as himself, to attend a symposium on free expression in Norway in September 1994. A month later he was invited to Germany to meet European Union foreign ministers to take his case further. (This was also seen as a gesture against Muslims. ) On Monday 1 October 1994 he appeared on a BBC2 television programme called Face to Face in which Jeremy Isaacs questioned him on a subject about how far writers are justified in giving of- fence, with special reference to The Satanic Verses. If anything, and despite the Iranian death threat, Rushdie was less apologetic than ever. Indeed he mounted a sturdy defence of the writers’ freedom to explore contentious areas and said that the easiest way not to be offended by a book is to shut it. What an irrational and fatuous idea ! Does this mean that people should be allowed to perform lewd and lavatorial acts in public and if you are offended by it then you should close your eyes ? Rushdie’s public appearances began to be regular, but it was not until 7 September 1995 that he dared to make his first pre-an- nounced appearance since his exile in 1989. This was at The Times/ Dillons debate, -Writers Against the State’, held in Westminster Central Hall, London, to mark the publication of his new novel The