India-born author Salman Rushdie opens up on horrific stabbing: 'It felt like...'

Novelist Salman Rushdie finally opened up about the horrific stabbing in which he lost the use of an eye. A US citizen of Lebanese origin stabbed him in August 2022 during a literary conference in the New York area.

"It felt like something coming out of the distant past and trying to drag me back in time, if you like, back into that distant past, in order to kill me," Rushdie said while speaking in his first television interview since the attack. The interview with CBS will be broadcast on Sunday (Apr 14).

The Booker Prize-winning author of The Satanic Versesand Midnight's Childrenspent 18 days in the hospital and three weeks in rehab after the knife attack. The Indian-born British-American author had received life-threatening injuries and underwent emergency surgery.

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The attacker, identified as Hadi Matar of Fairview, New Jersey, stabbed him multiple times while he was preparing to deliver a lecture on a stage at the Chautauqua Institution in New York State.

Rushdie's memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, which is based on the attack is all set to get published. The acclaimed author recalled his first thoughts when he saw the attacker.

While reading from his forthcoming memoir, he said "I was seated at stage right. Then, in the corner of my right eye – the last thing my right eye would ever see – I saw the man in black running toward me down the right-hand side of the seating area. Black clothes, black face mask. He was coming in hard and low. A squat missile."

"I confess, I had sometimes imagined my assassin rising up in some public forum or other, and coming for me in just this way. So my first thought when I saw this murderous shape rushing towards me was, 'So it's you. Here you are.'"

Why was Rushdie attacked?

The author was attacked 33 years after Iran's then-leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against him over the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988. A year later the ex-Iranian leader had called upon Muslims to kill the novelist and anyone involved in its publication for blasphemy.

It is believed that Rushdie was attacked because of his infamous novel The Satanic Verses, however, it'snot confirmed.

The author spent years hiding under death threats from Iran. The novel was banned in many countries with large Muslim populations. However, Iran denied any involvement in the New York attack.

(With inputs from agencies)