Sir Salman Rushdie has spoken in chilling detail to the BBC about what he remembers of the attack two years ago, in which he was stabbed on stage.
The Booker Prize-winning author said his eye was left hanging down his face “like a soft-boiled egg”, and that losing the eye “upsets him every day”. I remember thinking I was dying,” he said. “Fortunately, I was wrong.”
Sir Salman said he is using his new book, Knife, as a way of fighting back against what happened.
The attack took place at an education institute in New York state in August 2022, as he was preparing to give a lecture.
He recalled how the assailant came “sprinting up the stairs” and stabbed him 12 times, including in his neck and abdomen, in an attack lasting 27 seconds.
“I couldn’t have fought him,” the author said. “I couldn’t have run away from him.”Sir Salman said he fell to the floor, where he lay with “a spectacular quantity of blood” all around him. He was taken to a hospital by helicopter and spent six weeks recovering there.
The Indian-born British-American author, 76, is one of the most influential writers of modern times. The attack dominated news headlines across the world.Sir Salman previously spent several years in hiding after the 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses triggered threats against his life.He admitted he had thought someone might “jump out of an audience” one day.
“Clearly it would’ve been absurd for it not to cross my mind. The attack damaged Sir Salman’s liver and hands, and severed nerves in his right eye.
His eye looked “very distended, swollen,” he said. “It was kind of hanging out of my face, sitting on my cheek, I’ve said like a soft-boiled egg. And blind.”
Sir Salman said losing one eye “upsets me every day”. He finds he has to take greater care when walking down stairs, or crossing a road, or even when pouring water into a glass.Sir Salman Rushdie speaks about the knife attack which almost ended his life in 2022, in an interview with Alan Yentob ahead of the publication of a new book about the aftermath of the incident.
Source: BBC
