Salman Rushdie's wife had tragic reaction to injuries as he 'confronts' attacker

07 May 2024 , 18:55

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Salman Rushdie was knifed more than a dozen times on stage (Image: Getty)

Sir Salman Rushdie's wife was in 'complete panic' after her husband was attacked on stage.

The Indian-British author lost his sight in one eye after he was horrifically stabbed more than a dozen times while speaking at a literary event in Chautauqua, New York, on August 12, 2022. The 76-year-old, whose novel The Satanic Verses prompted calls for his death, was knifed repeatedly in the neck and torso.

The 27-second attack left Salman blind in his right eye and thinking he was going to die. His wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, an American novelist and poet, feared her husband wouldn't survive the ordeal and described it as the 'worst day' of her life.

He was left with one eye which his wife Eliza says she 'loves even more' (Getty Images for PEN America)

Tonight, a BBC Two documentary, titled Salman Rushdie: Through A Glass Darkly, covers in detail the savage knife attack. Speaking to The Times ahead of the programme, Eliza, 46, said of the moment she found out about her husband's life-threatening injuries: "This was the worst day of my life. I just started screaming. I had to get there."

Eliza rushed to the hospital to be by Salman's side and never left. She added: "I love his eyes. He left home with two of them and now I love his single eye even more because of how he sees the world." The couple describes the ordeal as a "love story" that brought them closer together - "not an attempted murder story".

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Eliza described it as the 'worst day' of her life and said she couldn't hold her screams (Getty Images)

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.

Nia Dalton