Month: July 2005

I’ve hit a rough patch with my novel, and the writing isn’t going as smoothly as in previous weeks. Posting may be a little sporadic over the next few days.

The CSM catches up with Salman Rushdie, who is in the Brazilian city of Paraty to attend its literary festival.

Since the fatwa was lifted in 1998, Rushdie’s life has gradually been returning to that of an international literary superstar, with foreign travel, speeches and appearances, and even a glamorous model wife. He has taken on a very public role as the president of the PEN American Center, a writers’ human rights organization, and feels at ease doing all the things he did before the death sentence was imposed by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. Shuttling between his two homes in London and New York without bodyguards shadowing his every step, Rushdie is in jovial form.

Even being stopped in the street can bring a smile to Rushdie – despite his longstanding reputation for grumpiness. “It’s not so bad to have lots of people interested in what you write,” Rushdie says when asked if the attention bothers him. “The people who come up to me are mostly coming up because they are interested in something I have written. Sometimes it can become intrusive, but on the whole it is not bad, really.”

There’s also lots of praise in the article for Rushdie’s latest novel, Shalimar the Clown, which I’m reading at the moment (and enjoying quite a bit.)

The NY Times‘s Edward Wyatt reports that W.W.Norton, which published The 9/11 Commission Report, will donate $600,000 (approximately 10% of gross proceeds from the book) to the following charities: the Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response and the International Center for Enterprise Preparedness, both at New York University, and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, of Johns Hopkins University.

I can’t help but notice that the Nitze School is home to Professor Fouad Ajami, who, by the by, notoriously predicted that after the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam, the streets were “sure to erupt in joy.” I can’t imagine what kind of scholarship that kind of money is going to fund.

An Al-Jazeera journalist’s permit has been withdrawn by the Moroccan government on charges of ‘bias’ in reporting news about Western Sahara. Despite impressive advances in freedom of speech in the last five years, the Sahara issue remains very touchy in the Kingdom. In fact, just recently, journalist Ali Lmrabet incurred the wrath of the authorities for a Sahara-related article. Lmrabet received the 2005 Hellman/Hammet Award, which is given out to “writers all around the world who have been victims of political persecution and are in financial need.” Not the kind of award I want to see Moroccans listed for, ever.