FLASH
Shkruar nga Chris Harvey
Salman Rushdie has returned to the worst day of his life: August 12, 2022, when he was stabbed during a public event in New York. He describes the harrowing event in his book "The Knife."
Death, he says, was “very, very close.” “One of the doctors who came to my aid immediately at the scene told me later that for a few moments I had no pulse at all. My heart had stopped beating. That shows how close I was to crossing the line between life and death,” Rushdi recounts.
Today, at 78, the scars from the wound that cost him his right eye are hidden behind a dark lens. Since 1989, when Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his assassination over his novel The Satanic Verses, Rushdie has been perhaps the world's most famous living writer.
However, he insists that in recent years he had resumed a normal life in New York, and the sudden attack was experienced by him as a “blast from the past.” The assailant, a radicalized 24-year-old, appears to have read only a few pages of “The Satanic Verses.”
Rushdie describes the novel primarily as "a London novel", considered by many scholars to be one of his best works.
The new book and the writing process
Salman Rushdie has just published his 23rd book, “The Eleventh Hour,” a collection of short stories about a writer reconnecting with his talent. “I wanted the book to feel a little bit dynamic and not too tragic,” he says.
He writes differently than when he was younger. “When I was younger, I was much more aggressive. I wrote a lot more, but that required even more revisions. Now I treat writing like a job; I write every day. If I see that even one page has been done, I’m very satisfied.”
Personal life and public image
Rushdie dedicates his new book to his wife, the American poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths. When asked if he is a romantic man, he replies: “I think so... or maybe I am. In fact, I should be, given my complicated history…”
He has been married five times and has two sons. After a divorce, he thought he was done with love. "I was completely okay with that idea. But then I was taken aback," he says. Salman rejects the public image of a "literary playboy," once described in a newspaper.
"If you ask people who really know me, I'm not like that... I like to see people in very small groups," the British-Indian writer underlined.
Life under threat and the fight for freedom of speech
In the years following the fatwa against him, Rushdie's deliberate approach was to appear publicly to show that he was not afraid. He recalls that once, in a restaurant, an acquaintance asked: "Should we be afraid?"
This experience prompted him to attack the perception of the horror that surrounded him. His protection by the British police was hotly debated in the press, with many saying he did not “deserve it”. However, Rushdie says the authorities were clear in their stance: “Everyone was absolutely clear that they would not allow a foreign power to execute a British citizen in his own country”.
The writer even reveals a new detail: "From what I was told, at least 6 serious assassination attempts were prepared against me, which, as I was told, were prevented in time by MI6 agents."
Rushdie remains steadfast in his belief in free speech, seeing it as a core principle under attack. But he speaks with concern about a rise in book bans in the US, with a list of 23,000 banned titles, particularly those dealing with LGBTQ+ or black issues.
“This is definitely a project, but fortunately there is a strong reaction against it,” he declares. Faced with the strengthening of nationalism in Britain, Rushdie, who experienced racism when he himself studied in British schools, has this opinion: “It’s been so long that I don’t care.”
However, when it comes to figures like Nigel Farage, he says: “Maybe if he rose to the top I wouldn’t ignore him.” Despite all this, Rushdie feels free in his work.
“After 23 books, I don’t care what pressures are around me. I’m just doing what I want.” On the other hand, he is indifferent to the threat of Artificial Intelligence. A friend asked ChatGPT to write in his style and the result was “very bad.”
"Nobody would confuse it with something I would write. So I thought: Well, that's comforting. I think AI is incapable of originality. The very word 'novel' contains the idea of novelty," the writer concludes. / Prepared by Pamfleti
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