Salman Rushdie says he can still see it before his eyes. In August 2022, the world-famous writer was giving a talk in the USA when a man with a black hood over his head suddenly burst onto the stage. He pulled out a knife, rushed at the author and started stabbing him. “I raise my left hand in a self-defense gesture. A man plunges a knife into her. What follows is a shower of stab wounds, in the neck, in the chest, in the eye, everywhere,” describes Rushdie.
In less than half a minute, the attacker stabbed him fifteen times. At that time, he tore the tendons and nerve fibers of the 75-year-old man of letters with deep cuts. “And then there was a knife in the eye. The most cruel blow, a deep wound. The blade penetrated up to the optic nerve, the sight could not be saved. The eye was gone,” writes the British novelist of Indian origin Salman Rushdie in the book called The Knife, which in the Czech translation by Martina Neradová recently published by Pasek publishing house.
It is a testimony that few people get the chance to give. After all, Rushdie himself admits that at that moment he expected death. And he found nothing supernatural about her. “No feeling of leaving my body. In fact, I have rarely felt such an intense connection with my body as I did then. My body was dying and taking me with it. It was a strong physical sensation,” he describes.
Nevertheless, he almost miraculously survived. An initially shocked audience at a debate in the US state of New York woke up and pacified the bomber, preventing him from carrying out the deed. The writer, lying in a pool of blood, was transported by helicopter to the hospital. And there, doctors saved his life with a series of complex procedures. After a painful recovery, Salman Rushdie is now in a state where he can write again with difficulty. Or join the debate via telemost, as he did this month in Prague’s Václav Havel Library. “Almost two and a half years have passed since the attack. During that time, among other things, I discovered that the human body has an amazing ability to regenerate, even if some injuries cannot be healed,” he said.
The consequences are obvious at first glance. Rushie lost an eye in the attack, which he now hides under one darkened pair of prescription glasses. In the hospital, he lost a lot of weight, according to his words almost two dozen kilograms. His lip droops a little on one side of his face. And he only partially regained feeling in his left hand. “Obviously in some way I think about the attack every day. Losing my eye and feeling in my left hand are things that affect my everyday life, how I move around the house, how I write. Writing is more difficult now because I have feeling in my left hand just in the thumb and index finger,” he explains.
The most necessary context
Unlike everything Salman Rushdie has written to date, the reader of Knives does not need to know the context. He may not know that the Booker Prize winner, with 1.1 million followers on the X social network, belongs to a generation of British writers who rose to prominence in the early 1980s. However, unlike his peers Martin Amis or Ian McEwan, Rushdie processed his experience as a migrant from a foreign country, opening the door to another wave of novelists.
=https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0,https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0,https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/1559,1169_resize=24https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0,18https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0_.jpg?hash=7c33d3https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/077fc78ca7e2234aab36aahttps://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0ca3 1x, https://cdn.xsd.cz/resize/dfa8714cb4c73189b325c158aeehttps://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/01a3https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0_extract=https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0,https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0,https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/1559,1169_resize=36https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0,27https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0_.jpg?hash=1649c18643f5535cd299627b2bd7dfe9 1.5x, https://cdn.xsd.cz/resize/dfa8714cb4c73189b325c158aeehttps://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/01a3https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0_extract=https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0,https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0,https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/1559,1169_resize=48https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0,36https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/https://magazin.aktualne.cz/0_.jpg?hash=567eb8dac6ab9dbd1fb44bbb
His best-known novel The Satanic Verses is about migration, but its complex story also includes a dreamlike passage about the beginnings of Islam. Because of her, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini imposed a fatwa, or religious death sentence, on the writer in 1989 ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie for allegedly defaming Islam.
There were demonstrations against the book, even copies of it were burned in Britain. Terrorists murdered a Japanese translator, stabbed an Italian, shot a Norwegian publisher or set fire to a hotel where dozens of Turkish intellectuals died. There were bombings of bookstores and the editorial office of a New York newspaper that defended Rushdie. The author hid in Britain throughout the 1990s, strictly guarded by state security. “In the years after the issuing of the fatwa, thanks to its experienced experts, British intelligence thwarted at least six plans for the physical liquidation of my person,” he now also writes in the book Knife, where he recapitulates the story only briefly. Explaining that he had already been described in Joseph Anton’s extensive autobiography from 2012. Including the decision to move to New York at the beginning of the millennium, start showing up again in society, go without security and hope that the risk has subsided. it took more than three decades after the fatwa was issued to find an executor of the will of the long-dead Ayatollah.
Live as best you can
In the pages of The Knife, Rushdie now wonders if it was a mistake to live free again. But he rejects such a conclusion. “For almost twenty-three years, I have led a colorful, fulfilling life in New York. During that time, I have made mistakes, and there have been many, some things I could have done better, and I am sorry that I did not, but as far as my life as whole? I’m glad I lived through it, I tried to live as best I could,” he states.
While Joseph Anton invented the autobiography several years later, the novel, which has less than 250 pages, is deliberately uncomplicated, hastily written and simple for the author of typical games with language or narrative structure. It depicts the medical procedures that a 75-year-old man had to go through in order to function after a brutal attack. He describes his return from the hospital to New York, where he first lived anonymously in a stranger’s apartment. Later, he describes the improvement of the security system in his own house. Or a trip to London, which, just like in the 90s, is preceded by contact with the police, who once again provide the writer with fully armed security.
Rushdie, who was married four times and became a celebrity through his marriage to the model Padma Lakshmi, at the same time continuously describes his last love story throughout the book, ending with his marriage to the American poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, who took care of him after the assassination.
On a different level, The Knife depicts the death of friends, writers Martin Amis or Paul Auster. Czech readers will be delighted by the mentions of novelist Milan Kundera and President Václav Havel, whom Rushdie knew personally and was grateful for their support. He recalled it again remotely in the Havel Library. “I was honored when last year in New York I was presented with the Václav Havel Award, which is awarded by the local foundation. I knew Havel a little, I am proud to say this. I have even been to Prague a few times and I am looking forward to seeing him there again, ” said the author, who arrived in 1993 and 2001, for the second time at the invitation of the Prague Writers’ Festival.
There is no point in comparing The Knife with his other books. It is not, nor should it have been, a masterpiece of thought or style, but a raw testimony. “When something like this happens to you, the most interesting thing is that you really experienced it. It would not make sense to embellish it artistically, on the contrary, it would reduce the power of the testimony,” says Rushdie.
He felt that he had to write the publication because he couldn’t think of anything else anyway and everyone was asking him about the assassination. So he wanted to “gain control over what happened and reject the role of a mere victim”. At the same time, he was coping with post-traumatic stress disorder, hallucinations caused by strong painkillers, and nightmares that haunted him after the attack through writing.
“Even when the physical wounds were basically healed, I was troubled by a dramatic loss of physical strength. I couldn’t stand anything at all. Somehow I knocked until six in the evening that day and I was completely destroyed. It took a long time for my strength to slowly return, but today I really I feel almost the same as before. I just write more slowly, which can be good for my books after all,” he joked in the library.
He thought for a long time about what to take away from the assassination. In the book, he blames himself for freezing at a crucial moment and not running. “There are days when I’m embarrassed, even ashamed, that I didn’t even try to defend myself. Other times I think, don’t be an ox, what do you think you could have done,” he reflects.
He expresses regret that no sooner had people stopped mentioning the Satanic Verses about him than he was now forever an assassination attempt survivor. “I’m not going to run away from that for the rest of my life. No matter what I’ve written and what I might write, I’ll always be the guy
He does not name the 24-year-old assassin even once in the entire book. After all, in an interview with a tabloid, the radical admitted that he had not read Rushdie and had only played a video on YouTube. In the weakest part of The Knife, the writer conducts an imaginary dialog with him, but does not care about a real meeting. As in the entire publication, he does not generously criticize the organizers of the discussion, who neglected security measures.
“I can’t draw a thick line behind the whole story yet, because the last thing left is the trial. I’ve learned a lot about American justice in recent years, and I find it unbelievable that a crime committed in 2022 will not go to trial until 2025. It’s frustrating ,” declares the writer.
He concluded the incident for himself by experiencing both the worst and the best of human nature that August morning. “This is who we are as an animal species: we carry within us the ability to murder a stranger’s old man, even if we don’t have a single valid reason to do so, but also an antidote to this disease - courage, selflessness, a willingness to take personal risk and lend a helping hand to a stranger’s old man lying on the floor, ” writes Rushdie.
His new novel Victorious City, which was enthusiastically received in the USA and whose Czech translation will be published by Pasek next year, will perhaps be more interesting in terms of literature. The knife is a personal matter, a testimony to the will to live, a story about something that most assassination victims don’t get the chance to tell.
And the reader can also take something away from it. Like what made Rushdie most sad when he thought he was dying. “That I would die far away from those I love, in the company of strangers. My strongest feeling was deep loneliness,” he recalls. At the end, he admits that he made it up. “And I have a fairly clear idea of what to focus on in my second chance at life: love and work,” he adds.
Salman Rushdie: The Knife – Reflections after an attempted murder
(Translated by Martina Neradová)
Publishing house Paseka 2024, 240 pages, 399 crowns.
I’m sorry, but it seems that the article you intended to provide is missing. Please provide the text you’d like me to work on, and I’ll be happy to assist you.
How does “The Knife” reflect the themes of resilience and the importance of storytelling in challenging times?
Rangers,” he reflects. “I would no longer be able to tell them how much they meant to me, how grateful I was for their love and support throughout my life.”
Rushdie’s journey since the fatwa and the subsequent assassination attempt has been a complex tapestry of fear, resilience, and a determination to embrace life despite the odds. His writing continues to be a dialog not only with his past but also with the present, allowing readers to explore the intricacies of identity, faith, and the human condition.
“The Knife” serves as a poignant reminder of the power of storytelling in the face of adversity and the importance of keeping the dialog open, regardless of the challenges one may face. As Rushdie continues to navigate his world, he leaves an indelible mark on literature and a legacy of courage that inspires others to speak their truths.