The British writer of Indian origin Salman Rushdie has reappeared publicly several months following being stabbed during a presentation in the American city of New York at the hands of a young Lebanese follower of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
After the attack last August, where he received up to twelve stab wounds to the face, neck, liver, thorax and abdomen, Rushdie, 75, was left blind in his right eye, has difficulty writing and, at times, has “terrifying” nightmares, according to the writer in an interview with The New Yorker.
“Well, you know, I’ve been better. But considering what happened, I’m not so bad,” Rushdie said following being asked how he was feeling, confessing that he has sensitivity in his thumb and index finger and that he does hand exercises in an effort to return to writing.
However, since the attack, the writer who spent years living under threat from Iran for his novel ‘satanic verses‘ — published in 1998 and considered blasphemous by the Iranian authorities, who issued a decree calling for his death — has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I sit down to write and nothing happens”
“I sit down to write and nothing happens. I write, but it is a combination of emptiness and garbage, things that I write and delete the next day”, says Rushdie, who has never had a block like this despite suffering years of threats and complaints.
About his nightmares, they have been decreasing over time and have not been exactly regarding the incident, although they have been “terrifying”, a trance that has not always been easy for him, as he has confessed.
Meanwhile, he has sadly noted that sales of his book “The Satanic Verses” soared following the stabbing, as if the author was more popular when he was in danger.
“Now that I almost died, everyone loves me,” he lamented. “That was my mistake, back then. I not only lived but tried to live well. bad mistake. Receiving 15 stab wounds, much better, ”he ironized during his interview with the aforementioned magazine.
The attack on Rushdie
Rushdie was on stage when he was approached by a young man dressed in black with a knife. The alleged attacker, Hadi Matar, 24, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and attempted murder. About his aggressor, the writer has assured that he is “an idiot”, although he has confessed that he did not feel anger.
“I have tried very hard during these years to avoid recriminations and bitterness (…) One of the ways I have dealt with all this is to look forward and not back. What happens tomorrow is more important than what happened yesterday ”, she has asserted.
Suspicion falls on Matar that he sympathized on social networks with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a country that declared a ‘fatwa’ in 1989 to kill the writer for his book.The Satanic Verses‘, published a year earlier and considered an act of heresy in the Islamic republic.
