“I’m lucky”: Salman Rushdie on surviving “huge” knife attack

Salman Rushdie told ‘The New Yorker’ magazine, “I am able to get up and walk.”

London:

Mumbai-born author of the Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie on Monday said he felt lucky to have survived the brutal stabbing at a literary event in the US last year when he first spoke about it. It was “Giant Attack”.

The 75-year-old British-American novelist was giving a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York on August 12 last year when a man approached the stage and stabbed and punched him several times.

In his first interview since the attack, the author told The New Yorker magazine that his main emotion was to express his gratitude to those who showed their support and to his family, including sons Zafar and Milan.

Rushdie told the magazine, “I’m lucky. I really want to say that my greatest emotion is gratitude.”

He said, “I am able to get up and walk. When I say I am fine, I mean parts of my body need constant checks. It was a massive attack.”

Years after Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to assassinate the author over the allegedly “blasphemous” novel ‘The Satanic Verses’, New York has a tendency to lower its guard. was a mistake, he replied: “Well, I’m asking myself that question, and I don’t know the answer. I’ve had over 20 years of my life. So, is it a mistake?” “Besides that, I wrote a lot of books. ‘The Satanic Verses’ was my fifth published book – my fourth published novel – and it [‘Victory City’] I am twenty one. So, three-quarters of my life as a writer has happened since the fatwa. In a way, you can’t regret your life.”

The famed author told the magazine that he has been touched by the tributes that his near-death inspired and is determined to look forward to more.

“It’s great that everyone was so touched by it, you know? I never thought about how people would react if I was murdered, or nearly murdered,” he said.

“I’ve tried very hard over the years to avoid recrimination and bitterness. I think that’s not a good look. One of the ways to deal with this whole thing is to look forward and not back.” And. What happens tomorrow is more. Important than what happened yesterday,” he said.

He said of his wife, poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, “She kind of took over when I was helpless.”

His latest novel, ‘Victory City’, completed before the attack, traces a visit decades earlier to Hampi, the site in Karnataka of the ruins of the medieval Vijayanagara Empire.

“The first kings of Vijayanagara declared, quite solemnly, that they were descended from the moon… It is like saying, ‘I come from the same family as Achilles.’ Or my first play. And so, I thought, well, if you can say that, I can say anything,” the author said.

Mr Rushdie’s attacker, Hadi Matar, is being held at the Chautauqua County Jail in the village of Mayville, charged with attempted murder in the second degree and facing a lengthy prison sentence.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)