R: I'm asking you to tell me what you understand by the word.
"A.": It means you pretend to be telling the truth when you're not.
R: Yes, it does.
"A.": So-- f*ck you, Mr. Smartypants.
Rushdie is curious about what changed "A." from the purportedly gentle harmless creature into a killer. What radicalized him? He asks:
R: So, in your opinion, I am not only disingenuous, I am the Devil. Is that why it's right to kill me?
"A.": You are only a little devil-- don't flatter yourself. But even a little devil is a devil.
R: And devils must be destroyed?
"A.": Yes.
R: These are views you have held for a long time? Or are these new ideas?
Rushdie wants to know where he obtained such radical views:
R: From books? From people?
"A.": From Imam Yutubi
"A." is not too happy to have his interrogator suggest he has no girlfriend. Rushdie pushes on, going after the real motive:
An incel is angry about being a virgin. You're an angry guy. Six billion enemies, zero friends, zero-plus lovers. Furious. So many resentments. I'm just wondering who you were really trying to kill. Some girl who brushed you off? Some guy at the gym or on the Israeli border? Maybe your mother? That's what one of my friends thinks, and she's a lot smarter than me. Was I the proxy murderee? Whose face did you see when you were stabbing me?
There is a telling silence. We imagine a new fatwa developing. Rushdie is clowning him. "The A." may take his time clowning back at time of his choosing -- by way of another fatwa clown, as "A." will be doing serious time.
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