Think history doesn’t repeat itself? Think again.
I. Then. Salman Rushdie talking about his memoir, Joseph Anton, in an interview with Spiegel.
The first thing the police officers told me was that I needed an alias in order to make possible certain practical things: secret houses had to be rented, and I needed a fake bank account and had to write checks. Besides, my bodyguards needed a code name to use when they talked about me. But just try coming up with one. I thought about it for days.
At first I wanted to use the name of a character I had developed for a new novel. The character was a little mentally confused, also a writer, and he was named Ajeeb Mamouli. It seemed fitting. Ajeeb means “strange,” while Mamouli means “normal.” So I was Mr. Strange Normal, a changing contradiction. That’s how I felt about myself.
Well, my security people didn’t like the name. Too hard to remember, too hard to pronounce, too Asian.
