Booker Prize winning Bombay-born author Salman Rushdie posted a photograph of himself months after a near death experience. He said that he felt “fortunate and grateful” to have survived the brutal attack in New York on August 21 last year.
“I’m lucky,” Rushdie said to the New Yorker adding “What I really want to say is that my main overwhelming feeling is gratitude.”
The 75 year-old was stabbed in the neck and stomach as he stepped on stage for a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution. Ironically, he was to talk about the importance of the US giving asylum to exiled writers.
After the release of the much acclaimed Satanic Verses in 1989 Rushdie spent years in hiding and endured numerous death threats under the cover of MI6. The author has lost vision in one eye as well as the use of one hand.
The attacker, one 24-year-old Hadi Matar, was arrested soon after the incident was charged with attempted second-degree murder and attempted second-degree assault. He pleaded not guilty.
The photo in @NewYorker is dramatic and powerful but this, more prosaically, is what I actually look like. ???? pic.twitter.com/ydrV7WvWgE— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) February 6, 2023
Matar was trying to carry out the the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini.
David Remnick on the defiance of Salman Rushdie https://t.co/MgD6ieG1Ne— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) February 6, 2023
While speaking to the New Yorker to author David Remnick, Rushdie said he solely blamed Matar for the stabbing. “I blame him,” Rushdie said and declined to place any blame on those in charge of security.
“I’ve tried very hard over these years to avoid recrimination and bitterness. I just think it’s not a good look. One of the ways I’ve dealt with this whole thing is to look forward and not backwards. What happens tomorrow is more important than what happened yesterday,” he added.
He added that his sons Zafar and Milan have helped him cope after the traumatic experience.
He added that it was difficult for him to get much writing done these days for his fingertips have no feeling anymore.
“I’m able to walk around. I mean, there are bits of my body that need constant checkups. It was a colossal attack. I’ve been better. But, considering what happened, I’m not so bad,” he added.
Rushdie’s Victory City is being promoted as an abridged translation of a fictitious Sanskrit verse saga.
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