3 hinge moments in the storied life of Salman Rushdie
'The clock's ticking for all of us,' says the novelist, who survived a near-fatal knife attack
*Originally published on April 30, 2024.
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder is author Salman Rushdie's 22nd book. It's a memoir of physical and psychological recovery following a brutal 2022 knife attack at the hands of an assailant, during a public literary event in Chautauqua, New York.
Rushdie has recovered well from most of his critical injuries, but lost sight in one eye.
As with much of Rushdie's writing, Knife explores dramatic events — personal and historical — framed by time.
IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed spoke with Salman Rushdie about his interest in time and history, and about watershed moments in his own life.
Here are excerpts from their conversation.
Nahlah Ayed: You talk about dates and hours, the day after, the day before — [time is] everywhere in your work. Why do you tend to think and see things through that lens?
Because the clock's ticking for all of us. And time is a strange creature, because it doesn't behave itself. There are moments in life — intense moments — when time either goes very, very fast or very, very slowly. The time expands, almost frame by frame, because that has to do with how we perceive. If you're a writer, you're interested in how people perceive reality, and our relationship with time is complicated, in the way in which we see and experience. So that makes it interesting to write about.
Does it have anything to do with your history as a student of history?
I think that's very important in my life.
You've written before about what you call hinge moments in history. I wonder if you think of hinge moments as happening in personal history as well?
Well, this is one.
August 12, 2022: Rushdie is stabbed by an assailant onstage
What is your sense of how the mind and memory work after such a major trauma?
There are parts of my memory that are clearly wrong. The way I remember things is not the way in which they were witnessed by other people who were there. So there's a kind of delirium. And then the other part of it, about the memories: astonishingly clear. You see things in hyperfocus. I did what research I could into what was written and reported about the event. This figure of 27 seconds that I've used as the duration of the attack: obviously, I wasn't timing it, but that's how it was reported afterwards.
You expressed it in terms of being as long as a Shakespearean sonnet.
Yeah. Or the Lord's Prayer. Which is, you know, not my team. But, yeah, it's actually quite a long time, if you have a knife and the other person doesn't, and you mean him harm.
April 16, 2024: Publication of Knife, his memoir of surviving the attack
You say in the book that you returned [to Chautauqua] to face up to "the unbearable knowledge…that it would never be yesterday again"?
Yeah. I really miss August the 11th, when I was just a man in love, looking at the full moon in a very beautiful place, having just had a nice dinner with friends, and everything was good.
One cruel morning stands between Salman before, and Salman after. What's the fundamental difference between those two men?
I don't think there's a huge difference, for the simple reason that the knife which penetrated my eye did not reach my brain.
As a result, I'm still able to be myself. But I think the real difference — as I've been able to understand it so far anyway — is that if you have such a close encounter with death, it doesn't ever quite leave you. I'm not saying that it depresses me or anything, but it's just it's there. And that's a change.
WATCH | Interview with Nahlah Ayed and Salman Rushdie for CBC's The National
February 14, 1989: Iran's fatwa against Rushdie, prompts a decade out of public view
(Iran's religious ruler, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa decreeing the killing of Rushdie as the novelist behind The Satanic Verses, a book that he and other fundamentalists saw as insulting "the sacred beliefs of Muslims.")
You write that it felt like your attacker [in Chautauqua] was "a time traveller coming, dragging back an ugly past." How successfully had you left the 1990s behind?
Completely. I've been living in New York City for almost 25 years, and during that time I've lived a perfectly regular writer's life. I've been sitting at home writing my books, and going out and doing readings — hundreds of public events, lectures, readings, literary festivals. And there's never been an iota of a problem before.
You reveal that there had been six previous actual attempts or attempted attempts on your life.
That was in the old days, when the Iranian state was employing professionals. Those were not like this. This is a random kid.
You know, you've had a few dozen hinge moments.
I've had a few. Apart from moments of violence or threat, the fact that in my life I have made two migrations, that I decided after graduating from university to live in England rather than going back East.
And then 25 years ago, making a second decision to leave London and come and see what it was like in New York. Those two were certainly transformative moments. And then yes, the attack on The Satanic Verses, and actually, the success of Midnight's Children was a very important moment, because it allowed me to live as a writer, and do the only thing I've ever wanted to do.
You say that writers own the future.
Yeah, because books are what survives of us. Writers have no armies, no physical power. And the actual physical bodies of writers are often sacrificed to power. But the work ends up defining the human race.
The books of this time will tell the future who we were.
Listen to the full conversation by downloading the IDEAS podcast from your favourite app.
*This episode was produced by Lisa Godfrey.