After years in hiding, author started living freely, championing free speech

NEW YORK • Although Salman Rushdie was forced to go into hiding for several years in the 1990s, he has been living freely in New York in recent years, his friends say, appearing in public without security, even as his status as a high-profile author and champion of free speech has made him a celebrity.

In an interview last year, Mr Rushdie, 75, was casual and easygoing as he spoke about literature from his Manhattan home, adopting the air of someone who had long ago re-entered society and revelled in being a man about town.

Asked about the long-standing call for his death, he answered simply, "Oh, I have to live my life."

That was a dramatic change from 1988, when his novel The Satanic Verses was published.

Some Muslims considered it blasphemous because it fictionalised part of the life of the Prophet Muhammad, and the following year, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Mr Rushdie.

Mr Rushdie lived in London for some 10 years after the fatwa was issued. In the first few months, his wife at the time, novelist Marianne Wiggins, said the couple had moved 56 times, once every three days. The couple soon separated, under strain from the tense life they lived.

After that, Mr Rushdie remained largely under British police protection, at a fortified safe house with security gate and a porch with a double door. Six years after the fatwa was issued, he began to appear in public again.

In September 1995, he attended his first publicly scheduled appearance, at a London panel discussion called "Writers and the State".

"The term 'coming out' has gone through some unusual metamorphoses," a smiling and relaxed Mr Rushdie said.

At the time, he was never without heavily armed bodyguards. Still, as The New York Times' Sarah Lyall reported, "he travels, eats in restaurants, appears at bookstores and is a regular fixture at London's smartest literary parties".

Ms Suzanne Nossel, chief executive officer of free speech organisation PEN America, said Mr Rushdie had done many events with the organisation in recent years without special security arrangements by PEN.

"There was a feeling that the threat had lifted and he was able to focus on the threats facing others, standing up for others facing peril," she said.

Before Mr Rushdie arrived on Friday, the bucolic New York retreat where the author was due to speak had arranged for law enforcement presence at his lecture, mindful that security might be needed for a man who faced death threats.

Chautauqua Institution, a haven in the west of the state where writers and artists gather each summer, was not the kind of place where people worried about their safety.

Members of the audience said there were no bag checks, metal detectors or other security to enter the event in the gated community.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters Chautauqua was a "tranquil" community where the most pre-eminent speakers, thought leaders, politicians, justices and others came together to have free expression of thought.

NYTIMES, REUTERS