Author Sir Salman Rushdie says he came face-to-face with death during his horror attack.
The Indian-British novelist was stabbed repeatedly on stage at a literary event in Chautauqua, New York, on August 12, 2022, and lost sight in his right eye. The 76-year-old, whose novel The Satanic Verses prompted calls for his death, was knifed in the neck and torso more than a dozen times.
Tonight, a BBC Two documentary, titled Salman Rushdie: Through A Glass Darkly, covers in detail the 27-second knife attack that left the author blind in one eye and thinking he was going to die. Salman recalls the exact moment he felt and witnessed his body receive the stab wounds.
The author said of the moment he felt like he was dying on stage: 'It never leaves you' (Getty Images)Of the moment Salman got "up close and personal with death", he said: "It never leaves you." To this day, the author can remember the very last thing he saw with his right eye before he was stabbed. He said he raised his hand to acknowledge the audience's applause as a figure came towards him.
Speaking to The Times ahead of the doc, Salman said: "I saw this murderous shape running towards me, a sort of time traveller, a ghost from the past. I didn't try to run. I was transfixed." The author was lying on the floor watching the pool of blood spreading out from his body as he thought: "I'm dying".
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He said it felt very "matter of fact" as opposed to a "religious experience". "There was no tunnel of light, no pearly gates, no fires of hell, nothing," Salman explained. He described himself as a man "lying on a stage, bleeding", and said the ordeal has left a lasting impression on him, as he now wakes up thankful for each living day.
Hadi Mata is charged with attacking the writer in New York in August 2022 (Chautauqua County Sheriff's Offi)Elsewhere in the documentary, Salman is confronted with an artificial intelligence (AI) version of the man who stabbed him. Hadi Matar, 24, is currently charged with attempted murder and is due to stand trial. In his new memoir, titled Knife, Salman asks a digital avatar the questions he would like to put forward to Matar.
As reported by The Telegraph, Salman says in the doc: "I had this idea that I wanted to go and meet him and ask, 'Why?' And then I thought, well, that's not going to happen. First of all, if I was his lawyer I wouldn't allow it. And then I thought, you know, I could learn more by making him up than by meeting him."
In his only interview since the attack, Matar told the New York Post that he stabbed Salman because he deemed him to be "disingenuous". When Salman asked the digitally created version of Matar what he meant by that, the robot replied: "It means you pretend to be telling the truth when you're not."
- Salman Rushdie: Through A Glass Darkly airs on BBC Two at 9pm tonight.
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