He had evaded bounty hunters for 10 years, but had reckoned without the paparazzi, writes Stephen Moss.
"Come on Salman, punch the air," instructed one snapper. Nothing doing. "Come on, a picture's worth a thousand words." "Stick yer 'ead out of the window, Salman," shouted photographers desperate for a picture of him breathing the sweet air of freedom. Nothing doing.
Freedom can bear a heavy price, including talking to the British press. It wasn't exactly Nelson Mandela's walk to freedom, more a sidle to safety, as Rushdie appeared from a room of the Islington, London, offices of Article 19, the anti-censorship organisation which has co-ordinated the Rushdie campaign.
Rushdie performed as if he had been preparing for this moment for 10 years. He was happy, funny and wonderfully fluent. He was also admirably honest: "There were times when I attempted to compromise, when I said things that weren't true. I'm not a religious person and I shouldn't have said I'd rediscovered religion."
He said he did not apologise for writing The Satanic Verses. "It seems to me that we have fought a colossal and important battle for freedom of speech," he said.
Above all, he was pleased to go back to being a writer, rather than a cause. Had the threats against him changed him, limited him as a writer? "I did not want the threats against me to define my writing. This is the end of the story," he told the doubters. "Now is the time for the next story."
What would that story be? He said he had finished a new novel and had kept a journal of the entire period. "It's a hot story and most of you don't know it. I wanted to wait until I knew the last chapter."
What would freedom mean, what could he do now, go to the ball game? asked a French journalist. He already went occasionally, he said. He saw Spurs v Middlesborough last week. "It is very hard being a Spurs fan, but that is the burden I have to bear, that is my fate."
There are worse fates.
--(Guardian Service, PA)