London:

Mumbai-born Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie has detailed the moment he was attacked with a knife by a man on stage in New York in 2022. He said he thought he was dying “like a soft-boiled egg” when his left eye dropped to his face.

In August 2022, the 76-year-old British-American writer was stabbed 12 times on stage by attempted murder defendant Hadi Matar.

This week, in The Knife: Musings After an Attempted Murder, the author gave an interview to the BBC before detailing the attack, admitting that losing an eye “distraught me every day” and This memoir is his way of fighting back against what happened.

“I actually thought he punched me hard. I didn’t realize he had a knife in his hand and then I saw the blood and I realized there was a weapon,” Rushdie recalled of the moment of the attack Shi said. Chautauqua Institute.

“I think he was just slashing like crazy at everything. So, I had a big gash in my neck, two stab wounds in the middle of my torso, two stab wounds in the side and then I had a gash in my eye, it It looked bad, I mean, it was very distended, swollen, and kind of hanging over my face, sitting on my cheek like a soft-boiled egg, and I went blind,” he recalled.

“I remember thinking I was going to die. Fortunately, I was wrong,” he said.

Rushdie told how the attacker “charged up the stairs” and stabbed him 12 times in an attack that lasted 27 seconds.

“I couldn’t fight him. I couldn’t run away from him,” he told the BBC.

He collapsed to the ground covered in “a lot of blood” and was flown by helicopter to hospital, where he spent six weeks recovering.

Rushdie went into hiding for several years after the publication of the controversial “The Satanic Verses” in 1988 prompted threats to his life and Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him.

The New York novelist, who was knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature, admitted he thought one day someone might “jump out of the audience.”

“Obviously, it would be ridiculous if I didn’t think of that,” he admitted.

The attack damaged Rushdie’s liver and hands and severed the nerves in his right eye. He found he had to be more careful when going down stairs, crossing the street, and even pouring water into a glass. But he considers himself lucky not to have suffered brain damage.

“It means I’m actually still able to be myself,” he shared, adding that his new book about the horrific events, which will be officially released on Tuesday, is dedicated to “the men and women who saved my life.”

In “The Knife,” the author has an imaginary conversation with the attacker: “In America, many people pretend to be honest, but they lie behind masks. Would that be a reason to kill them all?” He never has met the defendant but is likely to face him in court when the trial begins later this year.

He recalled that as he lay in a pool of blood, he found himself “foolishly thinking” that his personal belongings, including his Ralph Lauren suit, had been destroyed and that his house keys and credit cards might have been stolen from his pocket. Fall out.

“Of course, it was ridiculous at the time. But looking back now, what it says to me is if there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to die. There’s a part of me that says, ‘I’m going to need those house keys, and I Still need those credit cards.” He added that it was a “survival instinct” that said to him: “Stay alive. Stay alive.” Since the attack, Rushdie has spoken out around the world. Freedom is under increasing pressure and reiterated his concerns in interviews this week.

“I’m sorry to say that a lot of people, including a lot of young people, think that restricting free speech is often a good idea. Of course, the whole point of free speech is that you have to allow speech that you disagree with,” he said.

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