What does not kill you…

At a quarter to eleven on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning in upstate New York, I was attacked and almost killed by a young man with a knife just after I came out on stage at the amphitheater in Chautauqua to talk about the importance of keeping writers safe from harm.

“To be born again,” sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, “first you have to die.”

Two first sentences, written more than thirty years apart by author Salman Rushdie, unfortunately, inextricably linked – the first from Rushdie’s memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder; the second from The Satanic Verses, the book at the center of a fatwa issued by Iran’s Ayotollah Khomeini, a death sentence Rushdie’s attacker apparently intended to carry out that August day.

During the twenty-seven-second knife attack, Rushdie was stabbed over a dozen times, in his abdomen, neck, chest, arms face and eye. The attack resulted in the loss of that eye and damage to the author’s left arm. Rushdie’s injuries were so severe even his surgeons weren’t sure he would live. The attacker, whom Rushdie refers to as A. throughout the book, pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Knife is written in two parts. Part One, “The Angel of Death,” begins with the attack – details Rushdie remembers in the minutes during and after the stabbing, his initial recovery and rehabilitation during his six-week hospitals stays. The second part, ‘The Angel of Life,” focuses more on meditations and moving forward. Interspersed throughout both parts are, as one would expect, extensive literary references, excerpts from Rushdie’s speeches, vivid descriptions of visions and dreams and as Rushdie calls it “my mind’s fondness for free association.” There are too many examples to cite here, but, a few captured my attention.

As he came to after surgery, in those initial days after the attack, Rushdie writes he had visions – visions of grand structures, forts, domes – from around the world, structures built entirely of letters – glittering, gold and diamond, stone and brick letters. The visions went away once he was taken off strong painkillers. A writer’s mind – so marvelous. I could almost see the letters and wondered what visions a librarian might have—call letters, endless bookshelves? Letters – a letter, the letter “I,” would reappear in violent, nightly nightmares some weeks later and continue several times a week as Rushdie wrote Knife; “I” being chased by an attacker with sharp weapons. Other dreams featured violent scenes from plays or paintings – there were murders and gouging out of eyes, sometimes Rushdie was the victim, sometimes the murderer.

The chapter “Rehab” describes not only Rushdie’s physical rehabilitation after the attack but rehabilitation of the mind and body, a process he writes, he had completed three times already.

When I left my family home for London, it was the first time I passed through the looking glass and had to re-discover and remake – rehabilitate – myself in another reality, and play a new role in the world. After the Khomeini fatwa, I had to do it again. When I left for New York, it was the third time.

And, now a fourth rehabilitation. Rushdie goes into each of his previous rehabs in some detail, a recap for those who may not be familiar with the author’s history. Similarly, later in the book, the author reflects on the different “Rushdies” in the world – the demon Rushdie post the fatwa, the arrogant Rushdie of the British tabloids, Rushdie the party animal in his New York City years and now a “good Rushdie.” I’ve returned to both sections a few times since finishing Knife (but, am trying to forget some of the ghoulish nightmares Rushdie describes).

The most quoted free association, not surprisingly, relates to knives, The book’s back cover jacket has an excerpt of “The Knife” as an idea, as a tool, language as a knife. Early in the book Rushdie also writes about knives in his favorite movies and books and a more “personal” knife – how his novel Shalimar the Clown, written twenty years earlier,was inspired by an image of a dead man on the ground assassinated by a man holding a bloodied knife. And, now another association –

For more than thirty years I have refused to be defined by the fatwa and insisted on being seen as the author of my books….I had just about managed it….And now here I am….I think now I’ll never be able to escape it. No matter what I’ve already written or may now write, I’ll always be the guy who got knifed. The knife defines me.

Knife is at its most personal and poignant when Rushdie writes about his family members – having his sons close, his wife’s strength – his friendships with literary luminaries and his fears, specifically his fear of blindness.

The worst thing in the world is different for every individual….For me, it always was, and still is, blindness.

The knife stab to Rushdie’s right eye went in deep and damaged the optic nerve, the eye was lost, a loss which, Rushdie writes, was still difficult emotionally. Eerily, in the first chapter, Rushdie, looking at the full moon on the night before the knife attack, recalled a scene in a movie – the image, included in the book, is of a space capsule landing on the moon, crashing into the right eye of the ‘man in the moon.’

For me, the weaker chapters were “Eliza” – part of the love story aspect of Knife as described in some reviews, and “A.” – Rushdie’s imaginary conversation with his attacker. Although core to any personal account of the attack, the placement of both chapters broke the spell, distracting from the otherwise gripping narrative.

In “A.” Rushdie imagines four in-person sessions with his would-be assassin. As he prepares for the first session Rushdie contemplates opening with examples of murders in literature but, he ultimately decides their fictional conversation isn’t going to be a literary one. (I can’t help it, I just have to insert a ‘d-uh’ here). For the most part, Rushdie stays the course regarding literature, but the conversations do veer off into religion, philosophy and even books. Of course, they would, and of course Rushdie – anyone – would have questions, want to know the ‘why’ of such violence. That said, Rushdie trying to read the mind of his attacker, asking and answering his own questions, was not as fascinating as the idea of these imaginary sessions.

Rushdie also reflects on religion in Knife – at times he sounds defensive, at others, frustrated he has to yet again explain his views.

Rushdie’s fiction hasn’t really been my cup of tea. I struggled through Midnight’s Children, because it seemed to be required reading at the time. I bought The Satanic Verses only after the fatwa was issued, my small act of support – how dare an author be sentenced to death for…writing. I tried but never finished that book. I prefer Rushdie’s non-fiction – his essays, excerpts from his speeches and ‘semi’ non-fiction (Joseph Anton). Knife as a memoir of the horrible attack doesn’t disappoint. It might have been shorter, tighter in the first half – I’m not sure each minute detail of the medical procedures Rushdie endured in those first weeks was essential – and the conversation with A. went on a bit long for this reader. Neither take away from the brilliance of Rushdie’s prose – thought-provoking, compelling, moving, deeply personal, witty – at times, all of these simultaneously.

Although Rushdie says writing is not a form of therapy and questions whether closure is possible, one hopes, at the very least, Knife accomplishes what he needs from it.

To write would be my way of owning what had happened, taking charge of it, making it mine, refusing to be a mere victim. I would answer violence with art.