Writer Salman Rushdie spent years in hiding after Iran’s chief Ayatollah Khomeini referred to as for his assassination in 1989, declaring Rushdie’s novel, “The Satanic Verses,” blasphemous and an insult to Islam. After 10 years Rushdie got here out of hiding and moved to america, the place he felt protected. Then, on Aug. 12, 2022, at a literary occasion in Chautauqua, New York, he was attacked by a knife-wielding assailant. Rushdie was stabbed 15 instances and practically died. He misplaced his proper eye within the assault. He has come to phrases with the try on his life the one approach he is aware of: by writing about it in his guide. “Knife,” which was revealed in April 2024.
Rushdie learn a number of excerpts from “Knife” for 60 Minutes.
“I’d reply violence with artwork,” says writer Salman Rushdie. He initially did not need to write his guide “Knife” in regards to the assault, however he felt he wanted to personal what occurred, refusing to be a sufferer.
“It doesn’t matter what I’ve already written or might now write, I will at all times be the man who received knifed. The knife defines me. I will battle a battle in opposition to that, however I believe I’ll lose,” he writes.
“There was nothing supernatural about it. No ‘tunnel of sunshine.’ No feeling of rising out of my physique,” writes Rushdie, describing his near-death expertise in 2022 in his guide. “The truth is, I’ve hardly ever felt so strongly related to my physique. My physique was dying, and it was taking me with it.”
“I don’t need to use his title on this account,” the writer writes of his 24-year-old assailant. In “Knife” Rushdie refers back to the attacker as “the A.” After the assault, he discovered the assailant had solely learn a few pages from his guide, “The Satanic Verses,” based on the New York Put up.
“So it is you. Right here you’re.” These have been Rushdie’s first ideas as a person with a knife rushed in direction of him earlier than stabbing him.
“It’s mentioned that Henry James’s final phrases have been ‘So it has come ultimately, the distinguished factor.’ Demise was coming at me, too, however it did not strike me as distinguished. It struck me as anachronistic,” says Rushdie.
Whereas speaking with 60 Minutes’ Anderson Cooper, Rushdie defined: “It felt like one thing popping out of the distant previous. And attempting to tug me again in time.”
“There was the knife within the eye. That was the cruellest blow, and it was a deep wound. The blade went in all the best way to the optic nerve, which meant there could be no chance of saving the imaginative and prescient. It was gone,” writes Rushdie.
After being stabbed 15 instances, Salman Rushdie’s face was slashed open. In his guide “Knife,” he writes his face seemed like “a sci-fi film particular impact.” He describes his eye as bulging out of its socket and hanging down on his face like a big soft-boiled egg. He writes: “the swelling was so dangerous that the docs did not even know, in these first days, if I nonetheless had an eyelid. (I did.)”
Within the days after the assault, he did not acknowledge his personal reflection. “The lips of the person within the mirror don’t transfer. There’s a slash throughout the highest of his brow,” Rushdie writes. “Now he’s the person past the mirror and the mirror is behind him and darkish. He’s the stranger who has to play his half.”
When Salman Rushdie contemplated testifying in court docket in opposition to his assailant, he imagined what he would say: “I discover I’ve little or no to say to you. Our lives touched one another for an on the spot after which separated. Mine has improved since that day, whereas yours has deteriorated. You made a foul gamble and misplaced.”
“The very last thing my proper eye would ever see: I noticed the person in black working towards me down the right-hand facet of the seating space. Black garments, black face masks. He was coming in onerous and low,” writes Rushdie in his guide, “Knife.” “I did not attempt to run. I used to be transfixed.”
In Might 2025, Salman Rushdie’s attacker was discovered responsible of tried homicide and sentenced to 25 years in jail.
The movies above have been initially revealed on April 14, 2024.
