2024-04-16 02:08:56
On August 12, 2022, moments before beginning his presentation at the Chautauqua Institute, in New York, Salman Rushdie He was stabbed by a man who invaded the stage with a knife in hand. The writer had to be transported by helicopter to receive medical attention.
Days later, his agent declared The country that Rushdie had completely lost the sight in one eye, the mobility of one hand and that the injuries to his neck, chest and torso had been serious. But he was going to live, he stressed, and so he did.
Almost two years away and days after the publication of Knife (Random House)a book that collects his “meditations after an assassination attempt”, the writer born in Bombay and later naturalized British-American had a conversation with the journalist Anderson Cooper. This is the first interview in almost two years.
“One of the surgeons who saved my life told me: “First you were very unlucky and then you were very lucky”, and I replied: “What is the part where I was lucky?”, then the doctor replied: “Well, the lucky part is that the man who attacked you didn’t have the foggiest idea how to kill a man with a knife.“, narrates the writer, while smiling and looking directly at the interviewer with the only eye he has visible.
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In a video, published exclusively with the English newspaper The Guardianthe author of midnight children He reads out loud one of the fragments where he describes the seconds before the unfortunate event:
“The last thing my right eye could have seen was the man dressed in black running directly towards me from the right wing of the waiting area. Black clothes, a black mask. He came strong and crouched, like a squatting missile.
“I confess that at times I had imagined my killer rising up in some public forum and coming for me like this. So my first thought when I saw this murderous form running towards me was: “so it’s you, here you are.”
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It was with his fourth novel, satanic verseswho earned the almost total admiration of his contemporaries and, at the same time, the total contempt of the Muslim community, to the point that he was sentenced to death through a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, where he accused him of being a blasphemer in against Islamism due to the content expressed in the novel cited at the beginning.
In addition to demanding his murder, he requested that of anyone who had been involved in the publication of the novel. Rushdie, of course, was not murdered. Yes, it was Hitoshi Igarashi, the translator of his book into Japanese. Likewise, Ettore Capriolo, his Italian translator, was attacked, although not killed.
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The book was published in the United Kingdom in September 1988, through the publishing label Viking. But it was banned in India, South Africa, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Qatar, Malaysia, Somalia, Sudan and Saudi Arabia. Despite this, in other countries such as Germany or France, it was published only after pressure. In other latitudes such as Türkiye and Iran, however, only smuggled, through pirated versions.
Since February 14, 1989, when the fatwa was issued, despite the subsequent death of Ayatollah Khomeini, the breaking of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Iran, the public burning of books, the temporary withdrawal of them in Canada and the United States , the dozens of demonstrations, the murder of religious leaders and countless attacks against him, Salman Rushdie resists, although now without sight in one eye and without mobility in one of his hands. His life, however, seems like it will never stop being in danger.
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2024-04-16 02:08:56