Rushdie talks of his time spent in hiding

ST. LOUIS -- Salman Rushdie says his trips through airport security lines are slow again.

At first, the British author said he took the attention personally, remembering his years of hiding after his book "Satanic Verses" generated death threats from the Muslim world who found the book insulting to Islam.

But Rushdie said he asked around and realized he's being singled out for his occupation as a book-touring author with a perpetual one-way ticket.

"It's one of the problems of book-touring," he said Wednesday from Minneapolis, a stop on his American and Canadian book tour that brings him to St. Louis Thursday and Friday for appearances at Washington University.

Rushdie, 55, said being inconvenienced from computers trained to see a one-way ticket as a possible security risk breaks up the monotony of an otherwise normal life.

"I meticulously remove my shoes and inform them I do not have boxcutters," he said. "I don't plan on hijacking a plane any time soon."

Rushdie's visit to Washington University had been scheduled for last October, but university officials postponed it, citing advice of area law enforcement authorities who felt they could not provide adequate support in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Since Ayatolla Ruholla Khomeini's 1988 fatwa -- or Islamic edict -- against Rushdie was lifted by the Iranian government in 1998, the author has regained his freedom, moving to New York from London and traveling at will throughout the world.

"For almost four years I have had a pretty uneventful, security-free existence," Rushdie said.

He told a crowded lecture hall at Washington University Thursday that New York offers anonymity, a change from London, where authors are gossiped about in the tabloids.

"Privacy is the great gift of New York. It's a city built on not giving a damn," he said. "'Oh, look, there's Al Pacino. Al Pacino? So?'"

Rushdie said he now has the opportunity to help the American public grapple with what he described as "it" -- the situation with Afghanistan, terrorism and Iraq.

Rushdie is promoting "Step Across This Line," a book of essays which includes descriptions of his nine years of hiding because of the fatwa death edict.

"It's a strange fact, at a much smaller level I did seem to have experienced what thousands, millions of people have to face now," Rushdie said in reference to what has happened since the terrorist attacks.