The actress, who has often shown her support for the author targeted by a fatwa, signs a text in “Paris Match” to pay tribute to him.
A few days after the attack on author Salman Rushdie on Friday in New York State, Isabelle Adjani takes up the pen. The one who, several times over the past 30 years, has shown her support for the author targeted by an Iranian fatwa, once again sends her sympathy in a message published this Thursday by Paris Match.
“Faced with the drama, my first reflex is always silence, a certain confusion, a movement of recoil…”, writes the actress of Queen Margot to explain his silence, only broken on Sunday by a few words addressed to the JDD.
“Around, fear and concern rumbled, then the astonishment, and also a certain mistrust in front of this panic, the media frenzy, won me over,” she continues. Because Salman Rushdie had been living under the threat of attack since 1989, when Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for the murder of the author because of a passage from his book The Satanic Verses, deemed blasphemous by the religious fanatic. So much so that Salman Rushdie had to live for a long time in hiding and under police protection. He was due to give a talk on Friday when a man came onto the stage to stab him.
Taken to hospital in serious condition, Salman Rushdie finally saw his health improve. “Now it’s about taking a step back and taking the height, as much as possible… since we are all relieved to know that the worst has been avoided, that Salman Rushdie has survived and with him, the faculty of our thinking “, continues Isabelle Adjani.
“The world is closing in, we must resist”
And to compare the author, who has become a symbol of the fight against religious obscurantism, with other personalities. Marilyn Monroe (Isabelle Adjani performs the play on stage The Vertigo Marilyn), “who fought so hard against the oppressions of men, of studios, of power in general.” Lady Gaga, who “just gave a concert in Washington during which she challenged the public to defend the right to abortion and gay marriage”. Or Marguerite Duras, and “her visionary text The right death“.
“The world is closing in, fear, wars mean that extremes are gaining ground, all over the planet”, writes Isabelle Adjani again. “Here we are telling ourselves, once again, that we must resist and make ourselves heard, artistically and politically.”
Isabelle Adjani sent her support to Salman Rushdie for the first time in 1989, on the stage of the Caesars, a few weeks after the launch of the fatwa. By coming to collect her award for best actress for Camille Claudelshe read on stage a few lines of satanic verses. In 2018, she again addressed Salman Rushdie in a letter, read to the author through a video during the latter’s passage in The Great Library.