Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 15, 1990 TAG: 9004150289
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOSH GETLIN LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
As she returned home at 1 a.m. with her spouse, writer Salman Rushdie, their talk turned to the future and an upcoming joint book tour of the United States. Both looked forward to leaving behind a world of trouble in Britain.
In recent weeks, Rushdie's novel, "The Satanic Verses," had triggered international protests by Moslems who said it blasphemed the Islamic faith. The mood was turning ugly in England, where Moslems were demonstrating against the book, but as the couple fell asleep neither had any idea it would be their last night together in the modest north London home.
It was Valentine's Day 1989.
"You never really expect anything to happen the way it does," Wiggins says, looking back. "But here's how it happens. At 10:30 in the morning, your husband comes running down the stairs because he's just been called by the BBC. And he tells you that he's been condemned to death by Iran.
"You're standing downstairs in your dressing gown, and suddenly this unbelievable thing has taken place." She laughs bitterly. "And the more you think about it, you realize that your life will never be the same. So of course you run and do something absurd; you rush to shut all the windows."
Today, 14 months later, Wiggins is curled up on a sofa in a fashionable New York hotel, finally beginning the promotional tour for her novel, "John Dollar," that was canceled when the storm broke over her husband's book.
When the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini offered a $5.2 million reward for Rushdie's death, Wiggins and the Indian-born author went into hiding under the protection of the British government. But after five months of isolation, the couple decided it was futile for her to remain underground indefinitely.
They have separated, although their marriage survives. For the last seven months, Wiggins has been living under an assumed name in London, venturing out only rarely. On March 31, the day her plane landed here in New York, she began re-emerging as a public person - on her own terms, yet very much alone.
"It is a cold, heartbreaking loss for us," Wiggins says, staring out the window at a foggy Manhattan landscape. "The danger to him has not lessened after all this time. There are still people who want to kill him, and it was simply going to go on and on. There was no foreseeable end to it."
Wiggins, an articulate, high-strung woman of 42, brushes a hand across her cheek and then momentarily clenches it into a fist.
"We decided that we have to live separate lives for as long as it goes on. I must pursue my own voice and my own writing, and that's something he wanted me to do. But it's going to be difficult . . . this is a very tough road."
It may have been a mistake to separate, she says, her voice trembling. In two years, it may prove to be intolerable. Beyond that, who knows?
When the couple announced their decision last August, the initial speculation was that the marriage had ended. But, Wiggins says, it has survived, with obvious limitations. Although she writes Rushdie nearly every night, it takes weeks before the letters reach him, because of security procedures.
While it is technically possible for the author to make phone calls from his hiding place, it is risky for British agents to arrange hookups with Wiggins. When they do speak, she says, it is an upsetting experience.
"Those calls are more painful than pleasurable, because what happens is we would finally get through and then there would be silence half an hour while we listened to each other breathing. Because we miss each other so much."
The worst thing is that Wiggins has no precise idea where her husband is, apart from the fact that he is in England. The two separated weeks before the news was announced, so security agents could move Rushdie several times.
"They wanted the trail to go cold, so I really wouldn't know where he is," she says, adding that agents expressed great concern for her own safety. By keeping her in the dark, Wiggins explains, it diminished the chances that terrorists might kidnap or torture her for information.
During their time in hiding, Wiggins and Rushdie were guarded constantly by men with guns, and had little time to do anything but read, write and watch television. There was no chance to do conventional things, such as going to a movie. "If one even thought of going to a deli on Sunday, you wondered if you should pack a heater. . . . It would not have been glorious or heroic for my husband to have walked into a bullet."
Meanwhile, the death sentence continues. Although literary figures around the world angrily protested Iran's actions last year, the issue has begun to fade from the headlines. As with the Western hostages in Lebanon, the story flares up periodically and then disappears.
"It is an outrage that my husband should be subjected to this kind of threat," Wiggins says, adding that it is essential for Viking-Penguin to issue a paperback edition of "Satanic Verses," to keep the book in circulation. So far, the publisher has made no such decision.
From his hiding place, Rushdie writes manifestoes defending his book and urges the literary world to resist terrorism. To keep busy, he has written book reviews for several British newspapers and periodically has been spotted around London.
"The fact is, Salman has a forum, he is still able to write and speak out. I don't have to do that for him," Wiggins says. "We felt it was completely unfair for this to affect us the same way. I had to get on with who I am."
Born in Pennsylvania to parents of Greek and Scottish ancestry, Wiggins has lived in Great Britain for the last five years and married Rushdie in January 1988. She is an intriguing hybrid who begins sentences with a flat American accent and ends them with a Hyde Park flourish.
Critics have praised her novels and short stories as elegant, sometimes quirky snapshots of human relationships, and her career seemed to be taking off with the publication last year of "John Dollar." Wiggins says she and Rushdie felt they had a tremendous future ahead of them.
"We had both just finished our books, and we looked forward to a honeymoon almost. You know, the books were like children and we would be away from the kids. We met, fell in love and got married when we were writing these books. And then whammo! the future isn't what you think it will be."
Wiggins speaks tensely, almost militantly in recalling the events that have altered her life. She and her husband had brief hopes last year that the death sentence might be revoked, but they were dashed when an expected counterrevolution failed to materialize in Iran.
"The psychopath, fascist maniac [Khomeini] died in June, and we had received reports that once this happened, there might be a major change over there. [President Hashemi] Rafsanjani was making a lot of moderate noises, but it just isn't going to happen."
The last remaining hope, she says, is that the hostages in Lebanon will be freed, including British citizens such as Terry Waite. If this occurs, Rushdie would be the only barrier to a resumption of diplomatic relations between Britain and Iran, and "something would be done about this," Wiggins insists.
For now, there are press interviews, room service dinners and the bizarre pleasures of watching American television. Looking exhausted, Wiggins says she plans to spend a quiet night in her room and watch the NCAA basketball finals. Then she might write a letter to Rushdie.
After her promotional tour ends, Wiggins plans to vacation in Spain and then return to England.
"I may not know where my husband is, but being near him fills a psychic need," she says. "I don't have a home. I don't even have a temporary home. But my emotional center is very much where I imagine him to be."
by CNB