Salman Rushdie gives first interview since 2022 stabbing

NEW YORK (AP) — Months after being repeatedly stabbed while preparing to give a lecture, Salman Rushdie is blind in his right eye, struggles to write and sometimes has “scary” nightmares.

But, he said during his first interview since the attack, he still has a sense of gratitude.

“Well, you know, I got better,” he told The New Yorker’s David Remnick during an interview published Monday. “But considering what happened, I’m not that bad.”

“The major injuries have essentially healed,” Rushdie continued. “I have feeling in my thumb and forefinger and in the bottom half of my palm. I do a lot of hand therapy and have been told I’m doing very well.”

Remnick, who spoke to Rushdie both in person at his agent’s Manhattan office and via Zoom, wrote that the Booker Prize-winning author has lost more than 40 pounds (18 kilograms) and primarily reads through an iPad so he can Lighting can adjust and font size.

“There is scar tissue on the right side of his face,” Remnick wrote. “He speaks as fluently as ever, but his bottom lip hangs down to one side. The ulnar nerve in his left hand was severely damaged.”

Rushdie, 75, has been in hiding for years after Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for his death over the alleged blasphemy of the novel The Satanic Verses. But he had long since moved freely and with minimal security, and felt no risk performing at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit educational and retreat center in western New York, last August.

Rushdie was on stage when a young man in black approached him with a knife. The alleged attacker, Hadi Matar, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and attempted murder. During his New Yorker interview, Rushdie called Matar an “idiot,” but otherwise said he didn’t feel any anger.

“I’ve tried very hard during those years to avoid reproach and bitterness,” he said. “I just think it doesn’t look good. One way I’ve dealt with this whole thing is to look forward, not backward. What happens tomorrow is more important than what happened yesterday.”

The interview came out on the eve of the publication of Rushdie’s new novel, Victory City, which he was completing a month before his attack. With a protagonist who lives to be 247, “Victory” is a characteristically surreal and exuberant tale of an imagined ancient poem that has received extremely positive reviews, with Ron Charles of The Washington Post writing that “Rushdie’s magical style works wonders.” .

Rushdie has been silent on social media for months, but now occasionally tweets, even responding to insults. When a tweeter told him he was living a “disgraceful life” last week, Rushdie replied: “Oh another fan! So happy.”

During his interview, he ruefully remarked that sales of his book skyrocketed after the stabbing, as if it would be more popular if it were in danger.

“Now that I’ve almost died, everyone loves me,” he said. “It was my mistake at the time. I not only lived, but also tried to live well. Big mistake. Got 15 stab wounds, much better.”

On Monday he has tweeted a picture of himself, staring straight into the camera lens – his face narrower than in pre-stab photos, his right eye hidden by a dark lens in his glasses frame.

Otherwise he is still trying to recover. Rushdie has written that after the fatwa he initially struggled writing novels and now has a hard time saying he’ll set to work and “nothing happens,” just a “combination of emptiness and rubbish.” .

One project he might try his hand at: a sequel to his 2012 memoir Joseph Anton, which he wrote in the third person.

“It doesn’t feel like a third-person perspective to me,” Rushdie said of a potential sequel. “I think if someone sticks a knife in you, it’s a first-person story. It’s a ‘me’ story.”

Hillel Italy, The Associated Press

Source