The Times of London reveals that Salman Rushdie narrowly escaped a bomb attack in 1989, only five months after Iran issued its Valentine’s Day fatwa (thanks, Abhi). A Lebanese militant building an RDX bomb in a hollowed-out book made a bid for the Darwin Awards just a couple of miles from Rushdie’s London home:

The radicalised Lebanese citizen, born in the Guinean capital, Conakry, had joined a local Hezbollah… cell while in his teens… Mazeh… [took] a train to London on July 22, 1989. He checked in to Room 303 at the Beverley House Hotel, a five-storey building in Sussex Gardens, Paddington.

On the afternoon of August 3, a large explosion killed him in his room, destroying two floors of the building. Anti-terrorist squad detectives later said that he had died while trying to prime a bomb hidden in a book with RDX explosives. A previously unknown Lebanese group… claimed in a letter to a Beirut newspaper that Mazeh, whom they referred to as Gharib, died preparing an attack ” on the apostate Rushdie”. [Times of London]

In 1998, protesters in Tehran praised the would-be assassin:

After the rally, the militants unveiled a huge wall portrait of Mustafa Mazeh, who was killed by a bomb explosion in London in 1989, which Iranians believe was intended for Mr Rushdie. [BBC]

Die Gazette reports [in German] that an Iranian village gifted Mazeh’s parents with a house on the Caspian Sea, 1.2 acres of land and ten carpets. In Tehran, Mazeh got a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier-style shrine:

“Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh… Martyred in London, August 3, 1989. The first martyr to die on a mission to kill Salman Rushdie.” [Times of London]

This actual plot against Rushdie’s life is slightly more disturbing than Lollywood’s assassination fantasy. I preferred it when poison-pen literary reviews took the form of Michiko Kakutani.