Rushdie

[BansheeOne]

On 8/14/2022 at 3:07 PM, rmgill said:

U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin was attacked on Thursday night by a man wielding a sharp object at a campaign event near Rochester, New York, officials said.

Zeldin, the Republican candidate for New York governor, was uninjured, and no other injuries were reported. 

 

In video of the attack, a man can be seen onstage with Zeldin, grabbing his arm before they fall to the ground. 

"You're done," the man can be heard repeating in the assault, which unfolded at around 8 p.m. at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Perinton. 

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office identified the suspect as David Jakubonis, 43. 

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Jakubonis, of Fairport, is charged with attempted assault in the second degree, a felony, and was arraigned at Perinton Town Court and released on his own recognizance, the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-rep-lee-zeldin-attacked-stage-new-york-campaign-event-witnesses-say-rcna39493

So is he getting prosecuted for the state charges of attempted second degree assault? Separately from the federal charges of assaulting a member of congress with a dangerous weapon on which he was arrested a day after being first released, that is.

I also find it's being pointed out that the district attorney for the state case is a vice-chair of Zeldin's gubernatorial campaign and could easily have chosen a more serious charge which wouldn't have meant automatic release without bail under NY law. Which I guess could indicate either that she was trying to avoid the impression of partisanship for getting extra tough on someone who attacked her co-partisan with a plastic self-defence keychain shaped like a cat's head; or she was setting the stage for said co-partisan attacking said state law as part of their "get tough on crime" campaign.

[rmgill]

1 hour ago, BansheeOne said:

So is he getting prosecuted for the state charges of attempted second degree assault? Separately from the federal charges of assaulting a member of congress with a dangerous weapon on which he was arrested a day after being first released, that is.

The notable thing is that he was released ROR. 

 

1 hour ago, BansheeOne said:

I also find it's being pointed out that the district attorney for the state case is a vice-chair of Zeldin's gubernatorial campaign and could easily have chosen a more serious charge which wouldn't have meant automatic release without bail under NY law. Which I guess could indicate either that she was trying to avoid the impression of partisanship for getting extra tough on someone who attacked her co-partisan with a plastic self-defence keychain shaped like a cat's head; or she was setting the stage for said co-partisan attacking said state law as part of their "get tough on crime" campaign.

Interesting line of thinking.  

[BansheeOne]

Quote

Mother Of Man Who Stabbed Salman Rushdie Says He Changed After Trip To Lebanon

Hadi Matar rushed onto stage in New York when Salman Rushdie was about to give a lecture on Friday and stabbed him multiple times.

Edited by Amit Chaturvedi

Updated : August 15, 2022 2:49 pm IST

The mother of the New Jersey man, who stabbed author Salman Rushdie at a literary event, has said that the 24-year-old "changed" after visiting Lebanon in 2018. Hadi Matar was arrested after stabbing Mr Rushdie 10 times, including in the neck and the abdomen on Friday. He rushed onto the stage as the author was about to give a lecture in New York. Matar is facing charges of attempted murder and assault, according to the New York Police Department (NYPD).

Speaking to Daily Mail, Matar's mother Silvana Fardos said that her outgoing son turned into a moody and introvert person following a visit to see his father.

"I was expecting him to come back motivated, to complete school, to get his degree and a job. But instead he locked himself in the basement. He had changed a lot, he didn't say anything to me or his sisters for months," she told the outlet. Matar was born in the US to Lebanese parents.

Ms Fardos, 46, said Matar had banned her from entering the basement where he had locked himself up. He would sleep during the days and was awake during the night.

"One time he argued with me, asking why I encouraged him to get an education instead of focusing on religion. He was angry that I did not introduce him to Islam from a young age," she said.

The woman further told Daily Mail that she had never heard of Mr Rushdie before getting a frantic call from her daughter on Friday.

"I never read any of his books. I didn't know that such a writer even exists. I had no knowledge that my son ever read his book," said Ms Fardos.

She, however, said that the family will be moving on "without him".

"As I said to the FBI I'm not going to bother talking to him again. He's responsible for his actions. I have another two minors that I need to take care of. They are upset, they're shocked. All we can do is try to move on from this, without him."

[...]

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/hadi-matar-mother-of-man-who-stabbed-salman-rushdie-says-he-changed-after-trip-to-lebanon-3256055

[BansheeOne]

Quote

Date 18.08.2022

Salman Rushdie assailant pleads not guilty

The accused attacker entered a not guilty plea during his first court appearance since the stabbing. He earlier gave a media interview where he said he had read only two pages of Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses."

The man accused of stabbing renowned author Salman Rushdie pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault on Thursday.

The 24-year-old is accused of wounding Rushdie in New York state last week just before the novelist was due to give a lecture. The writer was rushed to the hospital with severe injuries, and had to be temporarily placed on a ventilator.

In an interview with the New York Post tabloid, the alleged stabber said that he thought Rushdie had "attacked Islam," though he said he had only read two pages of the award-winning novel "The Satanic Verses."

He also expressed admiration for Iran's former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who 33 years ago called on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie over the novel, which partly fictionalizes the life of their religion's founder Mohammed.

[...]

https://www.dw.com/en/salman-rushdie-assailant-pleads-not-guilty/a-62859457

 

Quote

Date 19.08.2022

Salman Rushdie: Authors, friends rally in support after attack

Friends and writer colleagues of author Salman Rushdie have rallied in New York, a week after he was attacked. The novelist has lived under death threats for decades.

Salman Rushdie's friends and writer colleagues spoke out against extremists and in support of his life and work during a rally on the steps of the central branch of the New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan Friday.

The rally was held a week after he was attacked in a rural part of the US state.

Rushdie was hospitalized and placed on a ventilator following the stabbing attack. His agent, Andrew Wylie, has said his condition has improved since then.

What happened at the rally for Rushdie?

Writers so famous they are celebrities, including Paul Auster, Gay Talese, Jeffrey Eugenides and Kiran Desai, were joined by editor Tina Brown in rallying to Rushdie's cause and sharing their well wishes and reminisces of all Rushdie stood for as a writer and symbol of free expression.

[...]

https://www.dw.com/en/salman-rushdie-authors-friends-rally-in-support-after-attack/a-62873220

[BansheeOne]

Quote

Salman Rushdie has lost sight in one eye and use of one hand, says agent

Full extent of injuries from ‘brutal attack’ on Satanic Verses author in New York state in August revealed

Sam Jones in Madrid

Sun 23 Oct 2022 11.53 BST

Salman Rushdie has lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand after the attack he suffered while preparing to deliver a lecture in New York state two months ago, his agent has confirmed.

The 75-year-old author, whose received death threats from Iran in the 1980s after his novel The Satanic Verses was published, was stabbed in the neck and torso as he came on stage to give a talk on artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Institution on 12 August.

Until now, the full extent of Rushdie’s injuries had been unclear. But in an interview with Spain’s El País, Andrew Wylie explained how serious and life-changing the attack had been.

“[His wounds] were profound, but he’s [also] lost the sight of one eye,” said Wylie. “He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso. So, it was a brutal attack.”

The agent declined to say whether Rushdie was still in hospital, saying the most important thing was that the writer going to live.

Wylie also said he and Rushdie had talked about the possibility of such an attack in the past. “The principal danger that he faced so many years after the fatwa was imposed is from a random person coming out of nowhere and attacking [him],” he said.

[...]

Two weeks before the attack, Rushdie had told an interviewer that he felt his life was “very normal again” and that fears of an attack were a thing of the past.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/23/salman-rushdie-has-lost-sight-in-one-eye-and-use-of-one-hand-says-agent

[Tim the Tank Nut]

the attack has been "memory-holed" in the United States; an event about which none shall speak.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Poor bugger. Still I guess he can write via speech activation. It seems unlikely they have shut him up.

[BansheeOne]

32 minutes ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

the attack has been "memory-holed" in the United States; an event about which none shall speak.

Yeah, to hear something about it you have to go to fringe alternate news outlets like these:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/23/salman-rushdie-eye-hand-attack-00063063

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/23/world/salman-rushdie-attack-lost-sight/index.html

https://www.voanews.com/a/salman-rushdie-lost-sight-in-one-eye-following-attack-agent-says/6801973.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/10/23/salman-rushdie-can-no-longer-use-an-eye-and-a-hand-after-onstage-attack-agent-says/

https://www.axios.com/2022/10/23/salman-rushdie-lost-eye-hand-use-knife-attack

https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/report-salman-rushdie-lives-loses-eye-hand-91957389

https://fox56news.com/news/trending/report-salman-rushdie-lives-but-loses-use-of-eye-and-hand/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/salman-rushdie-stabbing-attack-lost-sight-one-eye-use-one-hand-agent-says/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/agent-says-salman-rushdie-lost-use-eye-hand-august-attack-rcna53613

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-10-23/report-salman-rushdie-loses-use-of-eye-and-hand

[NickM]

2 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

Yeah, to hear something about it you have to go to fringe alternate news outlets like these:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/23/salman-rushdie-eye-hand-attack-00063063

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/23/world/salman-rushdie-attack-lost-sight/index.html

https://www.voanews.com/a/salman-rushdie-lost-sight-in-one-eye-following-attack-agent-says/6801973.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/10/23/salman-rushdie-can-no-longer-use-an-eye-and-a-hand-after-onstage-attack-agent-says/

https://www.axios.com/2022/10/23/salman-rushdie-lost-eye-hand-use-knife-attack

https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/report-salman-rushdie-lives-loses-eye-hand-91957389

https://fox56news.com/news/trending/report-salman-rushdie-lives-but-loses-use-of-eye-and-hand/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/salman-rushdie-stabbing-attack-lost-sight-one-eye-use-one-hand-agent-says/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/agent-says-salman-rushdie-lost-use-eye-hand-august-attack-rcna53613

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-10-23/report-salman-rushdie-loses-use-of-eye-and-hand

Wow they all scrambled to get the report done for 10/23. Did these outlets beat on about it for weeks like January 6 or the overturn of roe v wade or Rittenhouse?

Edited October 24, 2022 by NickM

[Mikel2]

2 hours ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

the attack has been "memory-holed" in the United States; an event about which none shall speak.

 

It once again proves that making fun of mormons is much safer.

[BansheeOne]

43 minutes ago, NickM said:

Wow they all scrambled to get the report done for 10/23. Did these outlets beat on about it for weeks like January 6 or the overturn of roe v wade or Rittenhouse?

From "memory-holed" to "they didn't report as much as on other stuff" is quite a leap of goalposts.

[Colin]

5 minutes ago, BansheeOne said:

From "memory-holed" to "they didn't report as much as on other stuff" is quite a leap of goalposts.

Let's just say the MSM is not as enthusiastic on reporting and regurgitating such stories done by Islamist as they would be if such horrific acts are done by a mostly white, western based Christian group.  

[rmgill]

Wrong Memory Hole....

Edited October 24, 2022 by rmgill

[BansheeOne]

31 minutes ago, Colin said:

Let's just say the MSM is not as enthusiastic on reporting and regurgitating such stories done by Islamist as they would be if such horrific acts are done by a mostly white, western based Christian group.  

Let's then say that TankNetters ain't either, as evidenced by the meagre response to this thread compared to those about Rittenhouse, 6 January etc. In fact the only reason that it made it to page 2 was a semi-private discussion whether it could somehow be used to attack Democrats. Clearly that must mean TN at best doesn't care about, and possibly condones violent acts by Islamist nutters.

Edited October 24, 2022 by BansheeOne

[rmgill]

The question is the consistency. 

If every attack is political then by all means, lets treat the left's attacks as grossly political as they treat anything with a whiff of what might have been done by the right. 

From the perspective of consistent issues of widespread issue, the left in the US has been beating a drum about a widespread police racism against black people, telling them that they'll be murdered by police which exacerbates nearly every black citizen encounter with police. If they've been told that the police will kill them, breathlessly for a decade, they tend to react with a great deal of unreasonable fear.

If the left had the same level of unreasonable fear about muslims based on victimizations as they do about police, they'd have interred all the muslims by now. Instead they're a protected group so they quite literally ignore even gross examples of malfeasance by folks who are part of that block. They do the same thing about illegal immigrants, getting quite upset when it looks like the illegals will be in their neighborhoods. 

[Colin]

The gays are only just realizing how quick the Left will throw them under the bus in order to appease the hard core Islamists. People fear pissing off the hardcore Islamists for good reason. The moderate Muslims in the west are happy to ignore/avoid the hardcore ones till they can't, and then will submit to their will for the most part. The hardcore types will use Western laws and processes to their advantage and with a generally higher birthrate, know that demographics is their long term friend. At which point they get politicians in that they control, who will then start making the laws more sympathetic to Islam.

[Tim the Tank Nut]

I'm not referring to the "lose an eye" coverage.  I am referring to the in depth coverage of the motivation of the attacker.

but then you probably had a good idea of that already

realistically speaking which person is higher profile Rushdie or Floyd?

[NickM]

1 hour ago, BansheeOne said:

From "memory-holed" to "they didn't report as much as on other stuff" is quite a leap of goalposts.

Darn! I was hoping you answered my Arabic slang question 

[lucklucky]

It is absolutely memory holed. Media only make the minimum necessary to not being said to make full blown censorship. 

How many opinion articles the media asked for about Rushdie?

How many "specialists" "activists" "ONG"  the media called for regarding Rushdie?  journalists are very adept of calling lots of "experts" when they want...

 

This reminds me of:

When a Brazilian leftist government send the army to favelas: the media asks opinion of security specialists.

When a Brazilian rightist government send the army to favelas : the media asks opinion of social experts on poverty.

 

Btw how many streets have been named in memory of a victim of Islamic terrorism?

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by lucklucky

[BansheeOne]

7 hours ago, lucklucky said:

It is absolutely memory holed. Media only make the minimum necessary to not being said to make full blown censorship. 

How many opinion articles the media asked for about Rushdie?

How many "specialists" "activists" "ONG"  the media called for regarding Rushdie?  journalists are very adept of calling lots of "experts" when they want...

If that is so, I'd suggest it's due to a lack of interest not only within media, but the general audience, including the parts who complain that there's not enough coverage. Again, looking at the 28 replies to this topic before I pulled it up with the current news, four were other news updates by me, three were Doug Richards, Ssnake and Stuart expressing sympathy for the victim, and one was Stuart musing about the background of such incidents.

The rest were dark mutterings that the motive might never be officially established, debates about guns, and whether this could be used to attack Democrats. After that and the last two news updates, there was no further interest by anyone before the recent one. Which indicates that most people anywhere only care about victims of islamist attacks if and as long as they can be used to further their personal political agenda.

[rmgill]

6 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

The rest were dark mutterings that the motive might never be officially established, debates about guns, and whether this could be used to attack Democrats. After that and the last two news updates, there was no further interest by anyone before the recent one. Which indicates that most people anywhere only care about victims of islamist attacks if and as long as they can be used to further their personal political agenda.

If attacks and crimes are part of a larger trend pattern, wether from criminals being released, immigrants who are at odds with the local culture or mentally ill being released, it matters. 

What if there were Russian operatives setting off bombs in Germany. Do you think a policy of not being racist against Russians would sit well with you? Keep the border open with Russia. Don't ask immigrants/visitors from Russia what their intentions are. Just let them in, you don't want to be mean do you? 

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by rmgill

[NickM]

14 hours ago, lucklucky said:

It is absolutely memory holed. Media only make the minimum necessary to not being said to make full blown censorship. 

How many opinion articles the media asked for about Rushdie?

How many "specialists" "activists" "ONG"  the media called for regarding Rushdie?  journalists are very adept of calling lots of "experts" when they want...

 

This reminds me of:

When a Brazilian leftist government send the army to favelas: the media asks opinion of security specialists.

When a Brazilian rightist government send the army to favelas : the media asks opinion of social experts on poverty.

 

Btw how many streets have been named in memory of a victim of Islamic terrorism?

 

 

 

Speaking of Brazilian leftist government,  is the Amazon still being burned down?

[sunday]

3 hours ago, rmgill said:

What if there were Russian operatives setting off bombs in Germany. Do you think a policy of not being racist against Russians would sit well with you? Keep the border open with Russia. Don't ask immigrants/visitors from Russia what their intentions are. Just let them in, you don't want to be mean do you? 

Especially if Soros and Schwab say so.

[NickM]

On 10/24/2022 at 6:41 AM, BansheeOne said:

Yeah, to hear something about it you have to go to fringe alternate news outlets like these:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/23/salman-rushdie-eye-hand-attack-00063063

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/23/world/salman-rushdie-attack-lost-sight/index.html

https://www.voanews.com/a/salman-rushdie-lost-sight-in-one-eye-following-attack-agent-says/6801973.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/10/23/salman-rushdie-can-no-longer-use-an-eye-and-a-hand-after-onstage-attack-agent-says/

https://www.axios.com/2022/10/23/salman-rushdie-lost-eye-hand-use-knife-attack

https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/report-salman-rushdie-lives-loses-eye-hand-91957389

https://fox56news.com/news/trending/report-salman-rushdie-lives-but-loses-use-of-eye-and-hand/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/salman-rushdie-stabbing-attack-lost-sight-one-eye-use-one-hand-agent-says/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/agent-says-salman-rushdie-lost-use-eye-hand-august-attack-rcna53613

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-10-23/report-salman-rushdie-loses-use-of-eye-and-hand

 

Gotta quote the 'Peck' doing 'The Melville':

From HELL'S HEART, I STAB AT THEE! FOR HATE'S SAKE, I SPIT MY LAST BREATH AT THEE!

[BansheeOne]

Quote

February 13 & 20, 2023 Issue

The Defiance of Salman Rushdie

After a near-fatal stabbing—and decades of threats—the novelist speaks about writing as a death-defying act.

By David Remnick

February 6, 2023

When Salman Rushdie turned seventy-five, last summer, he had every reason to believe that he had outlasted the threat of assassination. A long time ago, on Valentine’s Day, 1989, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” blasphemous and issued a fatwa ordering the execution of its author and “all those involved in its publication.” Rushdie, a resident of London, spent the next decade in a fugitive existence, under constant police protection. But after settling in New York, in 2000, he lived freely, insistently unguarded. He refused to be terrorized.

There were times, though, when the lingering threat made itself apparent, and not merely on the lunatic reaches of the Internet. In 2012, during the annual autumn gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, I joined a small meeting of reporters with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, and I asked him if the multimillion-dollar bounty that an Iranian foundation had placed on Rushdie’s head had been rescinded. Ahmadinejad smiled with a glint of malice. “Salman Rushdie, where is he now?” he said. “There is no news of him. Is he in the United States? If he is in the U.S., you shouldn’t broadcast that, for his own safety.”

Within a year, Ahmadinejad was out of office and out of favor with the mullahs. Rushdie went on living as a free man. The years passed. He wrote book after book, taught, lectured, travelled, met with readers, married, divorced, and became a fixture in the city that was his adopted home. If he ever felt the need for some vestige of anonymity, he wore a baseball cap.

Recalling his first few months in New York, Rushdie told me, “People were scared to be around me. I thought, The only way I can stop that is to behave as if I’m not scared. I have to show them there’s nothing to be scared about.” One night, he went out to dinner with Andrew Wylie, his agent and friend, at Nick & Toni’s, an extravagantly conspicuous restaurant in East Hampton. The painter Eric Fischl stopped by their table and said, “Shouldn’t we all be afraid and leave the restaurant?”

“Well, I’m having dinner,” Rushdie replied. “You can do what you like.”

Fischl hadn’t meant to offend, but sometimes there was a tone of derision in press accounts of Rushdie’s “indefatigable presence on the New York night-life scene,” as Laura M. Holson put it in the Times. Some people thought he should have adopted a more austere posture toward his predicament. Would Solzhenitsyn have gone onstage with Bono or danced the night away at Moomba?

For Rushdie, keeping a low profile would be capitulation. He was a social being and would live as he pleased. He even tried to render the fatwa ridiculous. Six years ago, he played himself in an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in which Larry David provokes threats from Iran for mocking the Ayatollah while promoting his upcoming production “Fatwa! The Musical.” David is terrified, but Rushdie’s character assures him that life under an edict of execution, though it can be “scary,” also makes a man alluring to women. “It’s not exactly you, it’s the fatwa wrapped around you, like sexy pixie dust!” he says.

[...]

On August 11th, Rushdie arrived for a speaking engagement at the Chautauqua Institution, situated on an idyllic property bordering a lake in southwestern New York State. There, for nine weeks every summer, a prosperous crowd intent on self-improvement and fresh air comes to attend lectures, courses, screenings, performances, and readings. Chautauqua has been a going concern since 1874. Franklin Roosevelt delivered his “I hate war” speech there, in 1936. Over the years, Rushdie has occasionally suffered from nightmares, and a couple of nights before the trip he dreamed of someone, “like a gladiator,” attacking him with “a sharp object.” But no midnight portent was going to keep him home. Chautauqua was a wholesome venue, with cookouts, magic shows, and Sunday school. One donor described it to me as “the safest place on earth.”

Rushdie had agreed to appear onstage with his friend Henry Reese. Eighteen years ago, Rushdie helped Reese raise funds to create City of Asylum, a program in Pittsburgh that supports authors who have been driven into exile. On the morning of August 12th, Rushdie had breakfast with Reese and some donors on the porch of the Athenaeum Hotel, a Victorian pile near the lake. At the table, he told jokes and stories, admitting that he sometimes ordered books from Amazon even if he felt a little guilty about it. With mock pride, he bragged about his speed as a signer of books, though he had to concede that Amy Tan was quicker: “But she has an advantage, because her name is so short.”

A crowd of more than a thousand was gathering at the amphitheatre. It was shorts-and-polo-shirt weather, sunny and clear. On the way into the venue, Reese introduced Rushdie to his ninety-three-year-old mother, and then they headed for the greenroom to spend time organizing their talk. The plan was to discuss the cultural hybridity of the imagination in contemporary literature, show some slides and describe City of Asylum, and, finally, open things up for questions.

At 10:45 a.m., Rushdie and Reese took their places onstage, settling into yellow armchairs. Off to the side, Sony Ton-Aime, a poet and the director of the literary-arts program at Chautauqua, stepped to a lectern to introduce the talk. At 10:47, there was a commotion. A young man ran down the aisle and climbed onto the stage. He was dressed all in black and armed with a knife.

[...]

On the night of August 11th, a twenty-four-year-old man named Hadi Matar slept under the stars on the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution. His parents, Hassan Matar and Silvana Fardos, came from Yaroun, Lebanon, a village just north of the Israeli border, and immigrated to California, where Hadi was born. In 2004, they divorced. Hassan Matar returned to Lebanon; Silvana Fardos, her son, and her twin daughters eventually moved to New Jersey. In recent years, the family has lived in a two-story house in Fairview, a suburb across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

In 2018, Matar went to Lebanon to visit his father. At least initially, the journey was not a success. “The first hour he gets there he called me, he wanted to come back,” Fardos told a reporter for the Daily Mail. “He stayed for approximately twenty-eight days, but the trip did not go well with his father, he felt very alone.”

When he returned to New Jersey, Matar became a more devout Muslim. He was also withdrawn and distant; he took to criticizing his mother for failing to provide a proper religious upbringing. “I was expecting him to come back motivated, to complete school, to get his degree and a job,” Fardos said. Instead, she said, Matar stashed himself away in the basement, where he stayed up all night, reading and playing video games, and slept during the day. He held a job at a nearby Marshall’s, the discount department store, but quit after a couple of months. Many weeks would go by without his saying a word to his mother or his sisters.

Matar did occasionally venture out of the house. He joined the State of Fitness Boxing Club, a gym in North Bergen, a couple of miles away, and took evening classes: jump rope, speed bag, heavy bag, sparring. He impressed no one with his skills. The owner, a firefighter named Desmond Boyle, takes pride in drawing out the people who come to his gym. He had no luck with Matar. “The only way to describe him was that every time you saw him it seemed like the worst day of his life,” Boyle told me. “There was always this look on him that his dog had just died, a look of sadness and dread every day. After he was here for a while, I tried to reach out to him, and he barely whispered back.” He kept his distance from everyone else in the class. As Boyle put it, Matar was “the definition of a lone wolf.” In early August, Matar sent an e-mail to the gym dropping his membership. On the header, next to his name, was the image of the current Supreme Leader of Iran.

Matar read about Rushdie’s upcoming event at Chautauqua on Twitter. On August 11th, he took a bus to Buffalo and then hired a Lyft to bring him to the grounds. He bought a ticket for Rushdie’s appearance and killed time. “I was hanging around pretty much,” he said in a brief interview in the New York Post. “Not doing anything in particular, just walking around.”

In Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth,” a radicalized young man named Millat joins a group called kevin (Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation) and, along with some like-minded friends, heads for a demonstration against an offending novel and its author: “ ‘You read it?’ asked Ranil, as they whizzed past Finsbury Park. There was a general pause. Millat said, ‘I haven’t exackly read it exackly—but I know all about that shit, yeah?’ To be more precise, Millat hadn’t read it.” Neither had Matar. He had looked at only a couple of pages of “The Satanic Verses,” but he had watched videos of Rushdie on YouTube. “I don’t like him very much,” he told the Post. “He’s someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.” He pronounced the author “disingenuous.”

Rushdie was accustomed to events like the one at Chautauqua. He had done countless readings, panels, and lectures, even revelled in them. His partner onstage, Henry Reese, had not. To settle his nerves, Reese took a deep breath and gazed out at the crowd. It was calming, all the friendly, expectant faces. Then there was noise—quick steps, a huffing and puffing, an exertion. Reese turned to the noise, to Rushdie. A black-clad man was all over the writer. At first, Reese said, “I thought it was a prank, some really bad-taste imitation attack, something like the Will Smith slap.” Then he saw blood on Rushdie’s neck, blood flecked on the backdrop with Chautauqua signage. “It then became clear there was a knife there, but at first it seemed like just hitting. For a second, I froze. Then I went after the guy. Instinctively. I ran over and tackled him at the back and held him by his legs.” Matar had stabbed Rushdie about a dozen times. Now he turned on Reese and stabbed him, too, opening a gash above his eye.

A doctor who had had breakfast with Rushdie that morning was sitting on the aisle in the second row. He got out of his seat, charged up the stairs, and headed for the melee. Later, the doctor, who asked me not to use his name, said he was sure that Reese, by tackling Matar, had helped save the writer’s life. A New York state trooper put Matar in handcuffs and led him off the stage.

Rushdie was on his back, still conscious, bleeding from stab wounds to the right side of his neck and face, his left hand, and his abdomen just under his rib cage. By now, a firefighter was at Rushdie’s side, along with four doctors—an anesthesiologist, a radiologist, an internist, and an obstetrician. Two of the doctors held Rushdie’s legs up to return blood flow to the body. The fireman had one hand on the right side of Rushdie’s neck to stanch the bleeding and another hand near his eye. The fireman told Rushdie, “Don’t blink your eye, we are trying to stop the bleeding. Keep it closed.” Rushdie was responsive. “O.K. I agree,” he said. “I understand.”

Rushdie’s left hand was bleeding badly. Using a pair of scissors, one of the doctors cut the sleeve off his jacket and tried to stanch the wound with a clean handkerchief. Within seconds, the handkerchief was saturated, the blood coming out “like holy hell,” the doctor recalled. Someone handed him a bunch of paper towels. “I squeezed the tissues as hard as I possibly could.”

“What’s going on with my left hand?” Rushdie said. “It hurts so much!” There was a spreading pool of blood near his left hip.

E.M.T.s arrived, hooked Rushdie up to an I.V., and eased him onto a stretcher. They wheeled him out of the amphitheatre and got him on a helicopter, which transferred him to a Level 2 trauma center, Hamot, part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, in Erie, Pennsylvania.

[...]

Just before Christmas, on a cold and rainy morning, I arrived at the midtown office of Andrew Wylie, Rushdie’s literary agent, where we’d arranged to meet. After a while, I heard the door to the agency open. Rushdie, in an accent that bears traces of all his cities—Bombay, London, New York—was greeting agents and assistants, people he had not seen in many months. The sight of him making his way down the hall was startling: He has lost more than forty pounds since the stabbing. The right lens of his eyeglasses is blacked over. The attack left him blind in that eye, and he now usually reads with an iPad so that he can adjust the light and the size of the type. There is scar tissue on the right side of his face. He speaks as fluently as ever, but his lower lip droops on one side. The ulnar nerve in his left hand was badly damaged.

Rushdie took off his coat and settled into a chair across from his agent’s desk. I asked how his spirits were.

“Well, you know, I’ve been better,” he said dryly. “But, considering what happened, I’m not so bad. As you can see, the big injuries are healed, essentially. I have feeling in my thumb and index finger and in the bottom half of the palm. I’m doing a lot of hand therapy, and I’m told that I’m doing very well.”

“Can you type?”

“Not very well, because of the lack of feeling in the fingertips of these fingers.”

What about writing?

“I just write more slowly. But I’m getting there.”

Sleeping has not always been easy. “There have been nightmares—not exactly the incident, but just frightening. Those seem to be diminishing. I’m fine. I’m able to get up and walk around. When I say I’m fine, I mean, there’s bits of my body that need constant checkups. It was a colossal attack.”

More than once, Rushdie looked around the office and smiled. “It’s great to be back,” he said. “It’s someplace which is not a hospital, which is mostly where I’ve been to. And to be in this agency is—I’ve been coming here for decades, and it’s a very familiar space to me. And to be able to come here to talk about literature, talk about books, to talk about this novel, ‘Victory City,’ to be able to talk about the thing that most matters to me . . .”

At this meeting and in subsequent conversations, I sensed conflicting instincts in Rushdie when he replied to questions about his health: there was the instinct to move on—to talk about literary matters, his book, anything but the decades-long fatwa and now the attack—and the instinct to be absolutely frank. “There is such a thing as P.T.S.D., you know,” he said after a while. “I’ve found it very, very difficult to write. I sit down to write, and nothing happens. I write, but it’s a combination of blankness and junk, stuff that I write and that I delete the next day. I’m not out of that forest yet, really.”

He added, “I’ve simply never allowed myself to use the phrase ‘writer’s block.’ Everybody has a moment when there’s nothing in your head. And you think, Oh, well, there’s never going to be anything. One of the things about being seventy-five and having written twenty-one books is that you know that, if you keep at it, something will come.”

Had that happened in the past months?

Rushdie frowned. “Not really. I mean, I’ve tried, but not really.” He was only lately “just beginning to feel the return of the juices.”

How to go on living after thinking you had emerged from years of threat, denunciation, and mortal danger? And now how to recover from an attack that came within millimetres of killing you, and try to live, somehow, as if it could never recur?

He seemed grateful for a therapist he had seen since before the attack, a therapist “who has a lot of work to do. He knows me and he’s very helpful, and I just talk things through.”

The talk was plainly in the service of a long-standing resolution. “I’ve always tried very hard not to adopt the role of a victim,” he said. “Then you’re just sitting there saying, Somebody stuck a knife in me! Poor me. . . . Which I do sometimes think.” He laughed. “It hurts. But what I don’t think is: That’s what I want people reading the book to think. I want them to be captured by the tale, to be carried away.”

Many years ago, he recalled, there were people who seemed to grow tired of his persistent existence. “People didn’t like it. Because I should have died. Now that I’ve almost died, everybody loves me. . . . That was my mistake, back then. Not only did I live but I tried to live well. Bad mistake. Get fifteen stab wounds, much better.”

[...]

When we picked up the subject a couple of weeks later, in a conversation over Zoom, he said, “I’ve got nothing else to do. I would like to have a second skill, but I don’t. I always envied writers like Günter Grass, who had a second career as a visual artist. I thought how nice it must be to spend a day wrestling with words, and then get up and walk down the street to your art studio and become something completely else. I don’t have that. So, all I can do is this. As long as there’s a story that I think is worth giving my time to, then I will. When I have a book in my head, it’s as if the rest of the world is in its correct shape.”

It’s “depressing” when he’s struggling at his desk, he admits. He wonders if the stories will come. But he’s still there, putting in the time.

Rushdie looked around his desk, gestured to the books that line the walls of his study. “I feel everything’s O.K. when I’m sitting here, and I have something to think about,” he said. “Because that takes over from the outside world. Of course, the interior world is connected to the exterior world, but, when you are in the act of making, it takes over from everything else.”

For now, he has set aside the idea for a novel inspired by Kafka and Mann, and is thinking through a kind of sequel to “Joseph Anton.” At first, he was irritated by the idea, “because it felt almost like it was being forced on me—the attack demanded that I should write about the attack.” In recent weeks, though, the idea has taken hold. Rushdie’s books tend to be imax-scale, large-cast productions, but in order to write about the attack in Chautauqua, an event that took place in a matter of seconds, he envisions something more “microscopic.”

And the voice would be different. The slightly distanced, third-person voice that “Joseph Anton” employed seems wrong for the task. “This doesn’t feel third-person-ish to me,” Rushdie said. “I think when somebody sticks a knife into you, that’s a first-person story. That’s an ‘I’ story.” 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/13/salman-rushdie-recovery-victory-city