Martin Amis died last week aged only 73. Like many other women, I found his novels masculine and too full of unsympathetic female characters, and his public persona narcissistic and hubristic. But he was undeniably a brilliant, gifted wordsmith, whose books will live on forever.
We had a brief, significant encounter in 2006, followed by a very public exchange, a year later, in the pages of The Independent where I was a weekly columnist. A big national conversation about liberals and Islam followed. The happenstance and the ensuing drama has been replaying in my head since the demise of the very complicated Mr Amis.
We were both speakers at the Cheltenham Literary Festival in October 2006. Anti-terrorism measures were being strengthened at this time, after a terrorist plot was uncovered by North American security services to take home-made mixtures of chemicals in drinks bottles on to US and Canada-bound flights from London and cause explosions. All Muslims once again became suspects and were subjected to overt racism. Muslims at airports were body searched and some prevented from boarding planes.
In the evening of the festival, in the hotel bar, Amis, whom I’d never met, came up and asked if he could buy me and my husband drinks. We joined him and his wife Isabel Fonseca and chatted until way past midnight, mostly about liberal Muslims and Islam.
Earlier that year, he had casually shared this with a newspaper interviewer: “There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order… Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan.’”
Furious condemnations rightly followed. Did he come up to me to seek redemption? Who knows?
Professor Terry Eagleton, a left-wing cultural theorist, walked on to the stage next. He lambasted Amis and other racist members of the literati, including Kingsley, Martin’s father.
I then penned a column about the forces ranged against liberal Muslims: “We are crouching nervously, sheepishly, as packs of wolves try to blow our house down. At the front door are the Muslim fanatics, growling and exacting, these days as likely to be teachers, doctors, scientists, students, salesmen and social workers as one-eyed maddened Imams and fat, hairy crusaders… We stand for a composite, open and evolving society. They want to drag us to the Bora Bora caves… If he is reading the column, Martin Amis will want to raise a glass to me.
“He generously bought me two drinks at the Cheltenham Festival last year and seemed to believe we are on the same side. He should hold off the first sip. For I see him as another kind of threat to the kind of society I stand up for. He is with the beasts pounding the back door, the Muslimbaiters and haters, these days as likely to come from the Groucho and Garrick clubs as the nasty, secret venues used by neofascists… Amis wants to stripsearch anyone who looks Muslim (me too, then, Martin? Shall I lift my skirt the next time we meet to reassure you?).”
Strong stuff, deeply felt.
Amis came back with an open letter, at times soul-searching, at times full of Amis certainties and creepily flirtatious. Here is an extract.
“Dear Yasmin, yes, I remember those drinks we had at the Cheltenham Festival last year… That night you revealed, inter alia, that you were Shia; and, as far as I understand it, the Shia minority speaks for the more dreamy and poetic face of Islam, the more lax and capacious… the more spiritual (in the general sense of that word)… Your Shia identity endeared you to me, and made me feel protective, because Islamism, in most of its manifestations, not only wants to kill me – it wants to kill you.
“As for perpetual punishment for all Muslims, that was a thought experiment, or a mood experiment, I felt that urge, for a day or two. My mood, I admit, was bleak – how I longed, Yasmin, for your soothing hand on my brow!
“The press interview took place in the immediate aftermath of the foiled plot (August 2006) to obliterate 10 commercial jets with explosives put together in transit. Which would have resulted in the deaths of another 3,000 random Westerners… Anyway, the mood, the retaliatory ‘urge’ soon evaporated… Meanwhile, I don’t want to stripsearch you, Yasmin, or do anything else that would trouble or even momentarily surprise your dignity… I am off to Cheltenham tomorrow afternoon. And I hope to see you at the bar. Martin.”
The letter led to months of fiery comment and debate. Most Muslims found it patronising and insulting. We never met or spoke again.
Did our conversation change him in any way? I can’t tell. I think he found me different, fascinating perhaps. He certainly seemed drawn to my kind of Islam. Yet his anti-Muslim preconceptions and prejudices probably remained fixed. Words don’t change people as much as we think.
Looking back at his letter now, I am struck by the condescending way he educated me on Sunni and Shia Islam with only shallow knowledge. And how he only appeared concerned about the lives of westerners.
Eulogise the man and his works but never forget that he, like other fine writers, became neo-con cheerleaders and were coolly indifferent to the countless casualties of the West’s war on terror. I would have raised that if we had met again at the bar.
