Sir Salman Rushdie told Sky News he thought it would be “the end” for him after he was stabbed repeatedly during a public lecture in 2022.
British author of Indian origin suffered life-changing injuries including the loss of his right eye following the attack at the Chautauqua Institution in New York State.
Speaking to the world with Yalda Hakim, the author described the “unpleasant experience” where he recalled the attacker making “a clean run” towards him and that within 30 seconds, Sir Salman suffered more than a dozen different injuries.
“Half a minute with a knife… You can do a lot of things,” he said, adding that the knife maker was only subdued after the surprise attack.
The eminent novelist said he was lucky to escape the incident alive.
The 76-year-old said: “Luckily he missed a lot of places that would have been immediately fatal. Even though I had a big cut on my neck, he didn’t get the artery.
“Even though I had three wounds to my chest, it didn’t reach my heart. In that sense, it was an opportunity in the middle of an unpleasant experience.”
After the attack, Sir Salman said he remembered “lying on the ground in a large lake of blood, and I clearly remember thinking this was about to be the end” , adding: “Luckily, I was wrong. »
In 1989, Iran Then-leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the author’s death after the publication of his book, The Satanic Verses, which many Muslims consider blasphemous.
Sir Salman had held hundreds of public events before Chautauqua at which he was expected to speak about free speech and said there had “never been a hint of a problem before” and that this attack was ” out of nowhere.”
His alleged attacker – Hadi Matara 24-year-old New Jersey man, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.
“Fight” against fanaticism
The author, who has lived in the United States for 20 years, has rarely given in to extremism and firmly defends the principle of freedom of expression.
In his new book, Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder, Sir Salman talks about the attack.
He said: “If something this important happens in a writer’s life, it’s not unusual for me to tackle it. I wanted to take back control of the narrative. The book is my way to do it.”
When asked about the Batley High School incidentwhere a teacher who had shown a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad was forced into hiding, Sir Salman said the situation was “terrible”.
“It’s shameful that this could happen… Hopefully the government will take action to stop this kind of bigotry from spreading.”
Read more: Why is Salman Rushdie so controversial?
Some scenes from The Satanic Verses depict a character modeled on the Prophet Muhammad and the book has been burned worldwide and translators of the work have been attacked – Hitoshi Igarashi, who translated it into Japanese, was assassinated in 1991 .
Regarding the recent decision that a Muslim student loses legal challenge against the “ban on prayer” in schools, Sir Salman said: “School is a place where we learn and mosques are places where we go to pray and we cannot transform the ‘one into the other.’
In a message to young people, Sir Salman said: “Historically, Islam has not been like this. The Indian Islam I grew up in was Sufi, mystical and entirely peaceful.
“I recommend that people study a little more broadly the more traditional forms of Islam that don’t have these violent interests.”
On April 21, Sir Salman will discuss his latest book and the attack as part of a series of events for the Southbank Centre’s spring literature and spoken word season.
Sir Salman began his writing career in the early 1970s and won the Booker Prize in 1981 for his novel Midnight’s Children, about the birth of modern India.
