My eye was sticking out of my face, and I thought I was dying, Salman Rushdie

British author Salman Rushdie has shared horrifying details of the attack in an interview two years after his assassination attempt. It should be remembered that in August 2022, Salman Rushdie was attacked with a knife during an event in the American state of New York, in which he was stabbed in the neck and stomach. 

Salman Rushdie recounts that (as a result of the attack) his eye popped out and it hung in his face like a ‘soft-boiled egg.’ He said losing an eye haunts him every day. “I remember thinking (after the attack) that I was dying,” he said. Fortunately, I was wrong.

 Salman Rushdie said he is coping with what happened to him through his new book ‘Naif.’ (Knife). The attack on Salman Rushdie took place in August 2022 at an educational institution in the state of New York when he was on stage preparing to deliver a lecture to an audience. 

He recalled how the assailant came on stage ‘climbing the stairs’ and stabbed him 12 times in the neck and stomach during the 27-second attack. ‘I couldn’t fight him (the attacker). I couldn’t run away from him. Salman Rushdie recounts that after the attack, he collapsed on the stage, where his blood was spattered all around him. He was immediately airlifted to a hospital where he took about a month and a half to recover. 

Salman Rushdie, the 76-year-old Indian-born British-American writer, is considered one of the most influential writers of modern times, which is why the news of his attack made media headlines around the world. After the publication of his controversial book ‘The Satanic Verses’ in 1988, he received widespread death threats and spent several years in hiding.

He admitted that he had thought in the past that one day ‘someone in the audience might jump out’ in front of him. ( someone in the audience might attack them). It is funny that this (that I will be attacked) has never left my mind. He said he had had a nightmare about the attack two days before the event in New York and had not wanted to attend the event because of the dream. 

Then I thought it was just a dream. Also, the organizers of the event were paying me good money to attend, and people bought tickets to attend the event. So I must go. In this knife attack, Salman Rushdie’s liver and hands were damaged and the veins of his right eye were severed. 

He says his eye felt ‘very swollen’ after the attack. It (the eye) was hanging out of my face, stuck above my cheek, like a soft-boiled egg. Salman Rushdie says losing an eye ‘haunts me every day.’ He says that he has to take care of daily tasks like going up and down stairs, crossing streets, and even pouring water from a jug into a glass. 

(That is, due to the defect in the power of vision, they find it a little difficult to do this normally.) But he considers himself lucky that his brain was not damaged by the attack. About his book ‘Knife’, Salman Rushdie says that it is a love story as well as a horror story. He said that there are two conflicting forces. One force of violence, obsession, bigotry, and another love. And this force of love is embodied in the figure of my wife Eliza.

He said that in the end what I understand is that the force of love proved to be stronger than the forces of hate. Salman Rushdie said he would go to public events again but would be more careful in the future. (At such events) the question of future security will be the first question, and until I am satisfied with that, I will not go.