The Satanic Verses controversy country has not forgotten the vow to kill him. He was also quoted saying, "It's reached the point where it's a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat". One of the immediate consequences of the fatwa was a worsening of Islamic-Western relations. Rushdie lamented that the controversy fed the Western stereotype of "the backward, cruel, rigid Muslim, burning books and threatening to kill the blasphemer", while another British writer compared the Ayatollah Khomeini "with a familiar ghost from the past – one of those villainous Muslim clerics, a Faqir of Ipi or a mad Mullah, who used to be
The Satanic Verses controversy but "to sing on, in spite of attacks". But in June, following the death of Khomeini, he asked his supporters "to tone down their criticism of Iran". His wife, Marianne Wiggins, reported that in the first few months following the fatwa the couple moved 56 times, once every three days. In late July Rushdie separated from Wiggins, "the tension of being at the centre of an international controversy, and the irritations of spending all hours of the day together in seclusion", being too much for their "shaky" relationship. Late the next year Rushdie declared, "I want to reclaim my life",