One of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush'd, the 12th century Arab philosopher known as Averroes in the West. In his time, he was making the non-literalist case for interpreting the Koran.
Even before I could vote, I was involved in the political arena. My father was an admirer of Adlai Stevenson, and he took me to the Stevenson for President headquarters, and he volunteered me. That was my introduction to electoral politics, which was exciting and fun and thrilling and very theatrical.
My father is an architect, so I often think like a designer or an architect. I remember when I was admiring buildings, I would look up at them and see this perspective and this awesome power of the monument in front of me.
My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
He's a very strange guy, my father. I can't get mad at him because he's so adorable.
I adore India, its culture, and all the beauty of the nation. My father is from Jammu, and he's had a profound influence on my mindset and way of being.
I adored my birth father and constantly worried that I was being disloyal to him and his schoolteacher roots if I spent too much time performing and enjoying it.
My father is gone, and I miss him as only an adoring daughter can.
I was the adoring son of a Welsh-Irish father, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, a Catholic Knight of Columbus who was a blue-collar, trade union organizer and, not surprisingly, a fervid Nixon-hater.
Peter Fleming was a famous English traveler, explorer and adventurer, whose non-fiction books were hugely successful. My father owned signed copies of all of them - he and Peter Fleming had become acquainted over some detail of set design at the Korda film studio in Shepperton - and I had read each of them with breathless adolescent excitement.
Father Time and injuries are tough adversaries.
The fact I had my father as an adversary was such a powerful tool to work with. I subconsciously fought him to the degree that I drove me to be one of the most successful musician in the world.
My father describes himself as a Pole of Lithuanian descent. At Southampton University, he read aeronautical engineering and then the family moved to Hong Kong - this was before I was born - where he designed aeroplanes. Back in the U.K., he worked as a civil engineer, although every spare minute was spent researching his family's history.
At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Christmas story. A young mother and a dutiful father with their baby were joined by poor shepherds and visitors from afar. They came with their gifts to worship the Christ child.
My mother was a high-strung perfectionist. She would check my homework for the slightest imperfection and demand that it be redone if she detected any flaws, which she invariably did. My father, in contrast, was easy going and affable and delighted in helping me with any project.
My mother and my father have been married 50 years, and he's just started to understand that something's wrong with the system. He accepted the whole thing, you see. Yet this industrious kind of engagement didn't bring him the success, according to American terms, that he wanted. I was probably affected by this very much. In fact, I know I was.
Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars.
My father was a San Francisco firefighter. He also was an amateur artist. Art ran deep on his side of the family, which originated in Spain. He painted our portraits. My mom, Jacqueline, was Scots-Irish. They met in 1947 when dad played for the Houston Buffalos, a minor league baseball team affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals.
My father claimed no political affiliation. He supported Al Gore because he knew him as a human being. He supported Lamar Alexander, who was the governor of Tennessee, who was a Republican. It was based on the individual. He didn't believe in politics. He based his support for someone on their heart and their integrity.
The affinity towards suits was a functional thing for me early on because I was thrifting at secondhand shops, and it was also initially a way of grieving - my father had passed, and he used to wear suits all the time.
