 |
The Booker prize-winner on dreams of
his father, marriage, the fatwa – and the death of Osama bin Laden Haroun and
The Sea of Stories was when I started writing as the dad rather than
the
child'. Your latest
book, Luka and the Fire of Life, is dedicated to your youngest son,
Milan, who
is 14. And it's a sequel to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which was
written
for your eldest son, Zafar, now 31, at a time when your life was
threatened by
the fatwa. You've written a lot about fathers and sons…
Well, I only
have sons, so in one sense it is all I know. The thing that has shifted
with
age is that when I was writing Midnight's Children and those earlier
books,
right up to The Satanic Verses, the point of view was from the child
looking up
to the parent. Then you realize the point of view has shifted. Haroun
was that
moment – when I started writing as the dad rather than the child. Your own
father was a storyteller? Not by
profession, but he told us good stories. When people read these two
books there
is an assumption that the character Rashid is me, but I also think of
it as
being inspired by my father, the first storyteller in my life. A lot of
the
early Indian wonder tales I first heard in his version of them. He was
a
scholar of Arabic and Farsi so he was able to read some of this in the
original. Do you hear
his voice when you are writing? Not so much
lately. But he still shows up in my dreams, usually as a quite severe
critic.
Though even then he is much nicer in my dreams than in life… much more
understanding. I also feel
Lewis Carroll hovering around the edge of this new book, Luka and the
Fire of
Life. When did you first read Alice? Before I
ever came to England. The English children's literature that got out to
India
was hit and miss. I mean, Arthur Ransome made it, and I just read that
[Swallows and Amazons] as a piece of surrealism: who are these children
on a
lake who go off for days on their own and sleep on islands? Flying
carpets were
much less extraordinary. Billy Bunter made it; Winnie the Pooh didn't.
But
Alice did get there and I loved those books. Almost the only thing I am
proud
of about going to Rugby school was that Lewis Carroll went there too. I was
remembering just after the fatwa that you wrote something about being
"in
a looking-glass world", where things that seem most improbable become
real. Are you writing a memoir of that time? A
looking-glass world was probably more fun than where I was. But yes, I
have
been immersed in that stuff. And it is almost done. Substantially it is
about
the period that began with the writing of The Satanic Verses in late
1984 until
the police protection ended in early 2002. Does that
time feel like a life outside of your life? No, it went
on too long to feel like that. I didn't always keep journals until this
trouble
started, but after that there was just so much event I knew I wouldn't
remember
it unless I started writing it down. The other thing that made it
possible is
that a university in America, Emory, now has all my papers. They used
to be in
cardboard boxes in the attic but now every scrap of paper has a
barcode. All I
have to do is say I want this, this and this, and zing, there it is… You've been
living and writing a lot in New York. Where do you think of as home? I have
different ideas of home, and I don't feel I have to choose between
them. There
will always be a sense that going to Bombay will feel like going home.
London
is the place I have lived longer than anywhere else, and both my
children are
here, and my sister. And then I feel very at home in New York. It's a
good
place to write, not least because people work incredibly hard there.
You feel
like a loser if you are not grafting away. You're not
married, but you have spent more time married than not. Would you
prefer to be? Well, I've
not been married for four and a half years. And that's fine. People
tell me I
am this incurable romantic, but perhaps I am finally cured. And I also
think
that my children may nail my feet to the floor if I tried to get
married again. Would you
describe yourself as an atheist? Of course.
It's all nonsense, and I've always thought it was. My father was like
that too.
The only religion that got into our house was that my mother didn't
like eating
pig: I never had the flesh of swine till I came to public school in
England. I
had a ham sandwich and was not killed by thunderbolts. But you
always had faith in stories? It is what I
do. I mean, if you are a carpenter you have faith in carpentry. Do you ever
reread The Satanic Verses? No, not
really. The thing is, when I wrote it I thought it was the least
political
novel I had ever written. I thought it was a deeply personal book about
migration, about examination of the self. One thing that does strike me
now,
though, is that if I go and talk in colleges, the students were barely
born
when it was published. All the stuff that went on is like ancient
history to
them. So they can just begin to read it as a book again, which is great. But do you
think history will also judge it as one moment when our world shifted,
a kind
of Archduke Ferdinand moment? It was a
harbinger. I don't think it was the first moment but it was certainly
one of
the first visible signs of what has now become a much larger
phenomenon. It
didn't feel like that at the time. I suppose it never does. What did you
make of the latest chapter, the news of Osama bin Laden's death? I thought:
good. It's about time. And of course I loved the fact that it turns out
he
enjoyed looking at pornography, and watching himself on TV – the more
of a jerk
he looks, the better for everyone. One of the likely consequences of
the Arab
spring is that al-Qaida immediately starts to look more irrelevant. It
shows
that this argument (which has been far too prevalent in the west) that
there is
a different set of criteria you have to use when you look at Muslim
countries
is bullshit. This is not an ideological revolution, or a theological
one; it is
a demand for liberty and jobs, desires and rights that are common to
all human
beings. I remember
you writing once that "life teaches us who we are". Writing your
memoir, have you been surprised at what you discovered about yourself? Absolutely.
In years like those you discover all your weaknesses as well as your
strengths.
And writing it, you have to be most brutally honest about yourself.
It's long.
It will be 600 pages, so I guess there was plenty to discover…
|