From Shahrzad To Salman Rushdie
I view Shahrzad's storytelling as symbolic of the situation of Iranian writers. We have always told stories, experienced scary and horrible conditions, and had swords held over our heads. These are the swords of tradition, religion, and government.
Today, I don't want to talk about Shahzad. Rather, I want to tell you about a letter I began writing to Salman Rushdie 16 years ago and have yet to finish. In December 2007, I received a fellowship from Brown University and came to the United States. In an interview that year, I stated, "The fatwa of killing Salman Rushdie was, in fact, the religious order for killing Iranian writers." I tried to explain what I meant but found that I couldn't due to my English language limitations. I assured myself that I could use Google Translate and write a letter to Rushdie. It was initially written in Farsi and translated along the way with Google software.
The salutation originally read, “Dear Salman,” but I thought no, he is not my friend. So, I changed it to “Dear Mr. Salman Rushdie.” The Queen of England had bestowed a royal title upon him, so perhaps I should have written, “Dear Sir Salman Rushdie.”
The formality of writing a letter to a friend, knight, or colleague shouldn't be the same in either Farsi or English. Thus, it was better to use Google and learn how to write such a letter. While preparing, I searched for his latest news, collected data and documents, and simultaneously discovered the meaning of words I didn't know in the English dictionary.
Rushdie was in great form, very famous, and respectful. Though under constant threat, he took part in events here and there. As I tried to learn how to write a letter to him while also improving my English, he was busy signing books, making rare appearances, and enjoying love and marriage with the glamorous Padma Lakshmi.
Later, I found Grammarly and I subscribed to it annually. It reviewed whatever I wrote about him, and I actively began working on the letter and revising its sentences.
After immigrating to the U.S., I conducted research to learn how the fatwa had affected other writers. Articles analyzed its effect on Egyptians, Pakistanis, and Arab intellectuals, but nobody mentioned anything about Iranian writers, the fatwa’s main targets.
Today, I returned to the Grammarly file ‘An unfinished letter to Salman Rushdie’. Unfortunately, it is impossible to publish it on Substack. It is simply too long. Despite this limitation, I will summarize some clear parts and points to provide you perspective. If you understand it, that means I can send it to him. Otherwise, I have to work on my language for another 16 years!
1. The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) lost power and internal prestige after failing to achieve its goal of winning the Iran-Iraq War. Subsequently, in order to control the country, it had to do something because the Iranian people had essential questions:
Where is the promised victory?
Where are our young men who jumped on landmines? Who is responsible for these ruined cities?
After eight years of fighting Iraqis, you suddenly accept a ceasefire. Thus, what is the meaning of an enemy?
2. Iranian leaders were subsequently forced to create new enemies in order to continue to control the Muslim world. If asking questions were allowed, they could lose their power very quickly. Literature became a real enemy.
3. This was because writers who were quiet during the war began to talk about it afterwards. Young Iranian people, thirsty to know the truth, joined them. Collectively, they would inevitably became a reliable and active power against the government. Blogging opinions about the lost war emerged and intellectual circles formed. That was dangerous. The IRI had to destroy the power of asking questions, writing freely and challenging the official narrative.
We have a proverb in Farsi- if you want to scare everybody, attack the strongest. Rushdie was the most famous and influential Muslim writer in the world.
The Satanic Verses was a good target, already commercially popular and by then under attack by fundamentalists in other Muslim countries..
Two years after its publication, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa related to the book and specifically targeted Salman Rushdie. The world became busy with that threat.
At the same time, Iranian writers, bloggers, poets, and researchers began to be murdered. We got the terrifying and horrible news from our friends; suicides occurred and others disappeared or died by ‘accident’. Post-fatwa and in the wake of the failed war, Iran was being violently purged of intellectual resistance to state power. The message was that resistance was both futile and dangerous.
After the fatwa, 30 Turkish intellectuals were burned to death in a rage.
A translator of The Satanic Verses was killed by a bullet.
The author had to live a secret life for years
Rushdie spent several years living under a false name and surrounded by constant police protection. In a 2019 interview he stated, "I was 41 back then. Now I am 71. Things are fine now". I don't believe things are very fine for him. I am sure that in his mind there are nightmares which will never truly end, such as the fear of being kidnapped and executed. Iranian writers are still living in this nightmare; since then, nothing has changed for us. Nothing is fine for us.
In 2019 when I searched for the latest news about Salman Rushdie, hundreds of photos showed that he was still alive. He had many events scheduled for public reading and signing his 14th novel, Quichotte, and he had just been nominated for the Booker Prize. Everything was evidently OK for him, and all of this did make me very happy.
I am delighted because being alive and working non-stop is our wish, too. It is an Iranian writer's dream to work without the fear of reprisal. In Iran, we couldn’t assemble to hold a reading session in our house. The fatwa consumed many years of his life, but not all. The world had his back and protected him,
Ultimately, he survived it. He is a free and flourishing writer.
We didn't. We didn't survive.
The initial reward for his death was $1 million, which rose quickly. However, for killing us, there was no price offered. It was free and remains so. An honor.
I still search online for the names of my friends. Many of them have been killed. The last image of these Iranian writers is their grave. Nobody dares to place flowers on these graves in memoriam- it is an arrestable offense. That's why I think the fatwa for the murder of Salman Rushdie was also, in fact, a fatwa against Iranian writers.
Khomeini knew the world would not leave an author who had won the Booker Prize alone and he would be hounded for the rest of his days.The IRI punished us because we dared to write and think differently.
Thirty-three years have passed since the fatwa.
Rushdie is alive, active, and successful.
We, Iranian writers, are still struggling.
We are scattered around the world.
We can't even publish our books on Amazon.
Kindle does not accept Persian fonts.
The fatwa continues and nobody cares. Nobody supports us. Nobody signed a petition that I signed requesting Amazon consider Farsi as a living language. We are left alone.
Source: Substack