There are, writes Sir Salman Rushdie, “three important characters” in “Knife”, a new memoir of his near-fatal stabbing in August 2022 and his arduous recovery.
Sir Salman was about to speak at a festival in upstate New York when a black-clad man charged the stage.
Only after a few weeks did Sir Salman see his disfigured face in the mirror.
Omitting his name—he is “My Assailant”, then “the A”—Sir Salman wavers over whether he wants to confront him.
Standing outside the jail where the real man was awaiting trial, Sir Salman had an urge to dance.
Above all, however, the counterbalance to evil is the love and devotion of Eliza, with whom Sir Salman salvaged “a wounded happiness”.
“Knife” is a love story about an assault, a paradox captured in the skewed symmetry between the attack and another central scene.
On the night he met Eliza, Sir Salman walked klutzily into a glass door; he lay on the floor, blood streaming down his face, until she ministered to him.
In his new memoir, “Knife,” Sir Salman Rushdie describes “three important characters” that he encountered during his near-fatal stabbing in August 2022 and his difficult recovery. The first two—the writer and his attacker brandishing a blade—are obvious. A surprisingly tender and redemptive story emerges from this violent chronicle thanks to the third character.
A man dressed in black charged the stage as Sir Salman was set to speak at an upstate New York festival. “So it’s you,” was his initial thought. Here you are. It had been 33 years since Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini demanded his execution over the book “The Satanic Verses”‘ purported blasphemy. After receiving police protection in Britain for several years, he moved to America more than twenty years ago. He was now being approached by the somewhat anticipated yet still surprising killer. I extend my left hand to defend myself. He cuts into it with the knife. “.
And into his face, neck, belly, and eye—15 wounds in a furious 27 seconds. Violence disorients its victims, he observes: “Reality dissolves and is replaced by the incomprehensible.”. But he was aware enough to believe that this was it. He makes it quite evident that there was no out-of-body experience in a book that is both impassioned and devoid of illusion: “My body was dying and so was I.”. He was stapled and stitched together, but it didn’t seem likely that he would live. His blinded eye swelled up “like a big soft-boiled egg” in its socket.
It was only a few weeks later that Sir Salman looked in the mirror and saw his deformed face. There were additional treatments, scares, and nightmares after he was discharged from the hospital. He dreamed of the knife that kills Kafka’s protagonist in “The Trial” and the blinding of Gloucester in “King Lear.”. The knife itself is one of the supporting characters in “Knife”; it serves as a metaphor for hate, fanaticism, and life’s breaks in addition to being a cold, sharp object.
Thoughts of the second character, the young American Lebanese who has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault, flash through his mind every now and then. Usually, he had hardly opened “The Satanic Verses.”. Sir Salman hesitates to confront him, omitting his name—he is first addressed as “My Assailant,” then as “the A.”. He instead crafts a lighthearted yet somber conversation between them, asking the fictitious suspect about loneliness, failure, and faith. The suspect tells me that you can’t understand me. Sir Salman felt like dancing as he stood outside the jail where the real man was awaiting trial.
His only dream was to become a novelist, but instead of that, the knife and the ayatollah turned him into a global free speech advocate. Its value is here reaffirmed by him. He states, “Our ability to think, to see fresh, and to renew our world would wither and die without art.”. He champions dialogue and transparency while denouncing the “false narratives” of bigots and dictators. He claims that “language was my knife,” the instrument he would employ to reconstruct and retake his world. “.
However, “Knife’s” third central character—American writer and photographer Rachel Eliza Griffiths, who happens to be Sir Salman’s fifth wife—offers the main counterargument to the film’s brutality. His account of their meeting and subsequent love story, complete with his giddy infatuation and eventual proposal, is given in forensic detail. All of this goes beyond being a sentimental tribute—it is crucial to his overarching ideas.
Time is one of those things. Up on that stage, he thought to himself, “Why now?” The knifeman was “a murderous ghost,” trying “to drag me back in time.”. He perceives the past as both unavoidable and fixed. He raises several queries and hypothetical scenarios regarding the attack, such as the reason behind his “piñata-like” demeanour. He was on the verge of leaving the conversation, but he needed the money for an air conditioning bill. But he is aware that there are no second chances with time. Not that he ultimately wants it to because of Eliza: “Without the tragedies of our pasts, we would not be the people we are today.”. “.
He also addresses the difficulty of surviving in a depressing world, or, alternatively, the enigma of human nature. He was saved from his attacker by onlookers, and as a result, he “saw both the worst and the best.”. But above all, Eliza’s love and devotion serve as a counterbalance to evil, helping Sir Salman to restore “a wounded happiness.”.
The distorted symmetry between the attack and another key scene in “Knife” conveys the paradox that the film is a love story about an assault. Sir Salman staggered into a glass door the night he met Eliza; he lay on the ground with blood running down his face while she attended to him. He rose then, and he has triumphantly risen once more. ◠.
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