The Italian writer and journalist, also under police protection because of his writings, was the exceptional guest of BFMTV. The opportunity to express his support for Salman Rushdie.
Two days after the knife attack on Salman Rushdie, targeted by an Iranian fatwa for 33 years, Roberto Saviano speaks. The Italian journalist, who also lives under police protection because of his writings, fears that the aggression of his colleague and friend will force the latter to be extra vigilant.
“Unfortunately, I think this experience will ruin Salman’s life”, he regrets on BFMTV this Sunday. “Beyond the suffering of the body, I fear that he will end up under protection, which is really the worst for him. I fear that in the future, he will still be considered a target. And that is terrible, because he had really managed to free himself from all that all these years.”
Since 1989, Salman Rushdie has lived under the threat of this call for murder launched by the Iranian Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, because ofa passage from his book deemed blasphemous by the religious fanatic. For a long time, he was forced to live in hiding and under police protection. From 1993, tired of being “an invisible man”, Salman Rushdie multiplied his trips and public appearances. Like Friday, when he was about to give a lecture in New York State, before a man appeared on the stage to stab him.
“He did very well to live without protection”
Roberto Saviano has led a similar existence since the release in 2006 of his book Gomorrah on the Camorra, the powerful Neapolitan mafia. So, at a time when Salman Rushdie’s safety is questioned, he believes that the writer has on the contrary “very well done to live without protection, because he has conquered thirty years of life”:
“The first years of life under protection since the 1989 fatwa were terrible: he had to constantly change his address, he had a lot of gendarmes around him (…) Maybe with a police escort (the attack on Friday) would not have happened, but he would not have loved as he loved, traveled as he traveled, written as he wrote.
Because, as he puts it bluntly, life under protection is “a shitty life”. He himself believes that it is “very possible” that he will give up his own protection, and his fight against the mafia: “I don’t know if I’m going to continue (…) I was 26 when I Been under escort; at least September I’m going to be 43. That’s a bit much.”
“It’s not a knife that was going to stop him”
He concludes by paying homage to Salman Rushdie – “He is a man who defended me, who advised me (…) He is a very intelligent, very cheerful man, he loves life” – and addressing him a message: “I was sure that you would survive this attack; a person like you, who managed to overcome attacks of all types… a knife was not going to stop you.”
Salman Rushdie was taken to hospital in serious condition. Saturday, his agent gave reassuring news to the American press, declaring that the writer was no longer on artificial respirators and that he was better. The suspect in the assault was charged with attempted murder.