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Practice dictation & shadowing on the daily life story: Salman Rushdie: ‘Life Under Threat’ (3)
Salman Rushdie: ‘Life Under Threat’ (3)
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(1)
Salman Rusty.
(2)
Life under threat?
(3)
One day maybe, but not today.
(4)
Today my education in worthlessness continues, and what Sal Bellow would call my reality.
(5)
Instructors include the media pundit who suggests that a manly death would be better for me than hiding like a rat.
(6)
The letter writer who points out that of course the trouble is that I look like the devil and wonders if I have hairy Shanks and cloven hooves.
(7)
The moderate Muslim who writes to say that Muslims find it revolting when I speak about the Iranian death threats.
(8)
It's not the fatwa that's revolting, can you understand?
(9)
But my mention of it?
(10)
The rather more immoderate Muslim who tells me to shut up, explaining that if a fly is caught in a spider's web, it should not attract the attention of the spider.
(11)
I asked the reader to imagine how it might feel to be intellectually and emotionally bludgeoned from 1000 different directions every day for 1000 days and more.
(12)
Back in the balloon, something longed for and heartening has happened on this occasion.
(13)
Mirabel Dictu The many have not been sacrificed but saved.
(14)
That is to say my companions, the Western hostages and the gold businessmen have by good fortune and the efforts of others managed to descend safely to earth and have been reunited with their families and friends with their own free lives.
(15)
I rejoice for them and admire their courage, their resilience.
(16)
And now I'm alone in the balloon.
(17)
Surely I'll be safe now.
(18)
Surely now the balloon will drop safely towards some nearby haven, and I too will be reunited with my life.
(19)
Surely it's my turn now.
(20)
But the balloon is over the chasm again, and it's still sinking.
(21)
I realize that it's carrying a great deal of valuable freight trading relations, armaments deals, the balance of power in the Gulf.
(22)
These and other matters of great moment are weighing down the balloon.
(23)
I hear voices suggesting that if I stay aboard, this precious cargo will be endangered.
(24)
The national interest is being redefined.
(25)
Am I being redefined out of it?
(26)
Am I to be jettisoned?
(27)
After all, when Britain renewed relations with Iran at the United Nations in 1990, the senior British official in charge of the negotiations assured me in unambiguous language that something very substantial had been achieved on my behalf.
(28)
The Iranians, laughing merrily, had secretly agreed to forget the fatwa.
(29)
The diplomat put great stress on this cherry Iranian laughter.
(30)
They would neither encourage nor allow their citizens, surrogates or proxies to act against me.
(31)
Oh, how I wanted to believe that.
(32)
But in the year and a bit that followed, we saw the fatwa restated in Iran.
(33)
The bounty money doubled.
(34)
The book's Italian translator severely wounded, It's Japanese translator stabbed to death.
(35)
There was news of an attempt to find and kill me by contract killers working directly for the Iranian government through its European embassies.
(36)
Another such contract was successfully carried out in Paris, the victim being the harmless and aged ex Prime Minister of Iran Shapur Batyar.