Salman Rushdie is haunted by betrayal, which has now been about to kill him in New York, while he was talking about literature. They could have killed him many times, in Spain, for example, in El Escorial, in the Community of Madrid, in Granada…, in all the places where he came after the publication of his most threatened book, here, in other foreign countries , since all the sites were abroad for the author of satanic verses, origin of the fatwa that has now handled the hand of another madman in one of the capitals of the world.
Defenseless, because he was going to speak, he did not carry a gun and he was not defended by as many bodyguards as he had in the even more dangerous past, he succumbed on the canvas of a public place. On the ground is a symbol of the active threat against freedom of expression, as it was in 1988, when that book cursed by Khomeini, written as a fiction, according to the dictates of freedom that made him a writer, that is, a creator, a poet, placed him before a sad and universal wall. The same one that now has it, in New York, at the feet of gravity and death. Hopefully these last two words will be erased as they are written.
In 1988 that book (I repeat: cursed, not cursed) put a inviolable recitation, that of the freedom of printing, on the edge of a horrible knife: will it be published again, will it be able to come off the plates as it came out when Khomeini decided that he had to give the imprimatur to whatever was said of his saints? The publisher who had published it in English, the original language of satanic verses, Peter Mayer, then president of Penguin, the predecessor of Penguin Random House, decided to bring publishers from everywhere to an agreement, and achieved (among others, that of the Spanish Alfaguara) an unusual global solidarity.
Entered the publishing world when he was a taxi driver in New York and fell in love with call it dream, of Henry Roth, Mayer rose to the top of publishing thanks to that enthusiasm that took him from the taxi to the plates, and when he was faced with the challenge of confronting the first betrayal suffered by Rushdie, he put all his energy in favor of the freedom of expression of the writer of Hindu origin and of those who came with the same problem to his door, in the street or, as now, in a place dedicated to the dissemination of books.
Time after it could already seem that the event that shocked the publishing world, and the entire world, Peter Mayerstill an editor, at the head of Overlook Press, which his father had founded, an active friend of the man who could die so many times from Khomeini’s curse, recalled the reason why his fight was launched, personally, but also as an editor , in favor of a writer threatened for reasons of freedom of his trade.
This is one of his statements regarding that event, made in November 2011, but he did not stop talking about it, in Spain, where he was a friend until his death of great publishers, such as Manuel Arroyo Stephensand of others who also remember him for his fight against a ‘fatwa’ who today has found her way to New York, where by the way she lived until her death, in New York, in 2018. Today it is worth transcribing it as said the editor of satanic verses.
Said Peter Mayer: “In the case of the famous book whose publication I had to see, The satanic verses of Salman Rushdie, Many people told me that I should stop publishing it, as there was danger of loss of human life based on that publication, and there could have been more, including those of our own staff at Penguin.
“You had to try to balance that, connect the possibility of people losing their lives with defending a principle that was honored until it was not compatible with the interests of a very noisy minority, the minority that there was, without a doubt, without a doubt in Western countries. .
“My point of view was that we live in the westand those principles were not only marked by the French Revolution, but that all the freedoms that emerged then and that are part of our heritage should be preserved. Our freedoms would be curtailed if any minority could ban any book. For example, a book about Catholics could offend the Church, and then the Church could indicate that if that book continued to be published, someone could end the life of another. Or a Jewish group could be offended by something and prevent the publication of a book about Jews…
“I believe that everything must be published and have a debate about what is published… But at least 70 people died as a result of ‘The Satanic Verses’, some in India, I think there were attacks in Japan, in Italy, in Norway, in Belgium, I don’t know where else… These are terrible decisions that I never thought I had to take. I wasn’t personally involved in the matter of Rushdie’s life – of course I didn’t want him to lose it, nor when we published the book could I foresee what was going to happen. I also never fully understood how affected Muslims would be by the post. I had no knowledge of Islam, and in fact when the Ayatollah launched the ‘fatwa’, I knew that I had not read the book, because I did not read English and the book had not been translated.
“So there was a fraudulent aspect to the attack on The Satanic Verses, but it was the book and its concept that I felt had to be defended, because once you give in to the terrorists you’re done. It is the concept behind not paying ransoms to terrorists when they do kidnappings.
“Everyone wants free the hostages, but if we pay there will be more kidnappings and more hostages. Well once you say ‘I’m not going to publish such a book because someone who doesn’t like it has threatened me’, you’re done. Others will. So I made the decision I made, for which I had the support of Penguin, for social, civic, political, intellectual principles… for the freedom of ideas.
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“Obviously, knowing Salman, I had all sorts of positive feelings towards him and his suffering. But the subject was even older than him, and he is a great writer & rdquor;.
Peter Mayer said it in November 1999, before some microphones; he said it where they asked him, he said it to us. It was his creed, which could now be, once again, that of all the publishers in the world, in favor of the freedom to publish and also of the freedom to believe or not in these or in those gods. “Once you give in to the terrorists, you’re done.” He kept ‘The Satanic Verses’ alive. Now they have tried to kill, again, the author of it, a hardly free man in New York, persecuted by treason who lives wrapped in a ‘fatwa’.