On the Knife's Edge: Salman Rushdie returns to the violent attack in which he lost his eye
The author reconstructs the 27 terrible seconds that changed his life at 75, and reflects on the past, the future, fate, and death.
Salman Rushdie does not remember the knife that caused him to lose his right eye four years ago and nearly killed him. "I didn't see the knife at all," he writes in "Knife," the document in which he chronicles his attack and his return to life, "or at least I don't remember it. I don't know if it was long or short, a hunting blade or a common kitchen knife. I don't care. That invisible weapon was functional enough, and it did the job."
Unlike his previous memoir from 2012, "Knife" is written in the first person. "When someone stabs you fifteen times, it is a strong first-person feeling," Rushdie explains. "And now, it is also a 'my eye' story."
The act of writing was not simple. "It is always difficult to write about post-traumatic stress disorder," he details. "It is harder when you are doing it with one eye and one and a half hands, because the physicality of writing reminds you with every press on the keyboard of the reason for your pain. The eye is an absence with a very strong presence."
Rushdie takes us into the heart of those 27 seconds that changed his life. "A gunshot is a remote action, but a knife attack is a kind of intimacy. A knife is a close-quarters weapon. 'Here I am,' the knife whispers to the victim. 'I've been waiting for you. I'm right in front of your face, plunging the sharpness of my assassin into your neck.'"
He muses on the symbolism of knives in culture, from Polanski's "Knife in the Water" to Kafka's "The Trial." Having lived under the shadow of a fatwa since 1988, Rushdie hoped the world had moved on. Yet at 75, on stage in Chautauqua, he was confronted by a past that "rose from the dead to drag me back in time."
"That morning, I experienced the worst and the best of human nature," he reflects. "The capacity to murder an old man for no reason, and the antidote — the courage of those who risked themselves to help me."
Rushdie says goodbye to a generation of peers, yet believes he has been granted a second chance. While his declarations on the power of love may strike some as banal, and his dismissal of his past relationships as petty, one thing remains clear: a living Rushdie is a victory over darkness. May he live a long life.
