Rushdie Surfaces in London to Accept a Literary Award

Salman Rushdie, the British author sentenced to death by Iran for blaspheming Islam, emerged from hiding Sunday to accept a literary award in London.

Flanked by police guards, the Indian-born writer made a surprise brief appearance at London’s Dorchester Hotel to be honored by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain for his children’s novel, “Haroun and the Sea of Stories.”

Appearing close to tears, he told an audience of fellow writers and other guests: “I wanted to be here so much because of the hatred I have endured.

“I would like to apologize for the unusual manner of my appearance here. . . . I would like to have been here for most of the evening, but in this free country I am not a free man. I have hit a rather problematical reef,” Rushdie said.

Iran’s late leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a religious decree against Rushdie in February, 1989, demanding that he be killed for blaspheming Islam in his novel “The Satanic Verses.”

Rushdie, 44, has spent virtually the entire time since in hiding under heavy police protection. He said Sunday that the death threat against him is as real now as when it was issued.

Rushdie wrote “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” in hiding and said he did so “to tell myself as much as anybody else that I would not be silenced and would continue.”