How does it feel to know that you have just been sentenced to death by Ayatollah Khomeini?

Salman Rushdie answers the question on the first page of his autobiography: "I'm a dead man," he immediately thought on February 14, 1989.

The following seven hundred pages describe how he laboriously freed himself from this fatalism - a path paved with depression and oddities, such as the police advice to wear a wig.

Jan Wiele

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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An almost unimaginable way, one recalls, everything that has happened since that day in 1989, the Iranian religious leader Khomeini called on all the Muslims of the world to kill the author of the novel The Satanic Verses and everyone involved in its publication because the book mocks Islam.

It wasn't just that Rushdie dolls were being burned, there were actually deaths and serious injuries.

Rushdie's Japanese translator was stabbed, his Norwegian publisher was shot, and other translators were assassinated, resulting in more deaths.

A million-dollar bounty on Rushdie kept going up.

Evil in the guise of virtue

And yet, after years underground, Rushdie decided not to let his pursuers win.

The fatwa was not a judgment of a court, but "the edict of a cruel dying man."

In a church pulpit in England, the country where fanatics had burned his books on the open street, the Bombay native, who was born in 1947, summoned up all the courage to counter-sermon: “One could see Khomeini’s fatwa itself as a collection of satanic verses.” In of the fatwa, "evil appears in the guise of virtue, and the believers are deceived".

But even with this rationalization, Rushdie did not stop.

He took another almost incomprehensible step: he finally began to view his situation with irony and to treat the incitement to murder against him as material for satire.

The daring of a series by the American comedian Larry David, to satirically distort Rushdie's outrageous situation to make it recognizable ("Fatwa - The Musical"!), he took to the extreme himself with a guest appearance.

When a death fatwa is also issued against David in the series, Rushdie comes to him on the show and tells the comedian in a skit that he should stop hiding - after all, the fatwa makes him sexy and desirable.

Not only in the willingness to make fun of oneself in this situation, but also in fictionalizing it,

Waiver of personal protection

Rushdie maintained artistic freedom in his continued provocative, over-the-top postmodern novels.

And also in the way of life he freed himself again after years, decidedly refraining from personal protection.

He described himself as optimistic in interviews, as stupid as that may seem.

He ate out in public again.

He took part in literary life.

Such was the case last Friday when he sat on the stage at the Chautauqua Humanitarian Educational Facility in western New York State to discuss the topic of "America as a Sanctuary for Persecuted Writers".

A 24-year-old New Jersey man jumped onto the stage and began stabbing Rushdie with a knife.

He injured his face, neck, arm and abdomen.

According to eyewitnesses, several people were barely able to stop the perpetrator from continuing to stab him before he was arrested.

Rushdie was flown to the hospital and underwent a lengthy emergency operation.

Since Friday, the world has followed the reports of his condition with shudders.

It was said he was on a ventilator, and his literary agent Andrew Wylie said Rushdie had suffered a liver injury and was likely to lose an eye.

After a long period of uncertainty as to whether Rushdie will survive, cautious news of his stabilization was heard on Sunday.

What has since been reported is again hard to believe.

Hundreds took to Twitter to share their joy at the assassination attempt, and an Iranian newspaper, under the auspices of religious leader Ali Khamenei, wrote that one must "kiss the hand of one who stabbed the throat of an enemy of God."

Unfortunately, this reality surpasses even the most grotesque satire.