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Practice dictation & shadowing on the daily life story: Salman Rushdie: ‘Life Under Threat’ (4)
Salman Rushdie: ‘Life Under Threat’ (4)
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(1)
Salman Rusty.
(2)
Life under threat?
(3)
It seems reasonable to deduce that the secret deal made at the United Nations hasn't worked.
(4)
Dismayingly, however, the talk as I write, is all of improving relations with Iran still further, while the Rushdie case is described as a side issue, is this a balloon I'm in or the dustbin of history?
(5)
Let me be clear.
(6)
There is nothing I can do to break this impasse.
(7)
The fatwa was politically motivated to begin with.
(8)
It remains A breach of international law and it can only be solved at the political level.
(9)
To affect the release of the Western hostages in Lebanon.
(10)
Great levers were moved, great forces were brought into play.
(11)
For Mr.
(12)
Richter, 70 million in frozen Iraqi assets were thawed.
(13)
What then is a novelist under terrorist attack worth despair?
(14)
Murmurs once again.
(15)
Not a plug nickel.
(16)
But I refuse to give in to despair.
(17)
You may ask why I'm so sure there's nothing I can do to help myself out of this jam at the end of 1990, dispirited and demoralized, feeling abandoned even then, in consequence of the British government's decision to patch things up with Iran.
(18)
And with my marriage at an end, I faced my deepest grief, my unquenchable sorrow at having been torn away from cast out of the cultures and societies from which I'd always drawn my strength and inspiration, that is, the broad community of British Asians and the broader community of Indian Muslims.
(19)
I determined to make my peace with Islam even at the cost of my pride.
(20)
Those who were surprised and displeased by what I did perhaps failed to see that I was not some deracinated Uncle Tom Wag.
(21)
To these people it was apparently incomprehensible that I should seek to make peace between the warring halves of the world, which were also the warring halves of my soul, and that I should seek to do so in a spirit of humility instead of the arrogance so often attributed to me in in good faith, I wrote Perhaps a way forward might be found through the mutual recognition of our mutual pain.
(22)
But even moderate Muslims had trouble with this notion.
(23)
What pain, they asked, could I possibly have suffered?
(24)
What was I talking about as a result?
(25)
The really important conversations I had in this period were with myself.
(26)
I said, Salman, you must send a message loud enough to be heard all over the world.
(27)
You must make ordinary Muslims see that you aren't their enemy and make the West understand a little more of the complexity of Muslim culture.
(28)
It was my hope that Westerners might say, well, if he's the one in danger and yet he's willing to acknowledge the importance of his Muslim roots, then perhaps we ought to start thinking a little less stereotypically ourselves.
(29)
No such luck though.
(30)
The message you send isn't always the one that's received.