NEW YORK – Writer Salman Rushdie, stabbed to death by a Muslim fanatic last August, feels unable to write at the moment, apart from having one hand that is nearly paralyzed, preventing him from typing on a computer.
In the first interview he has given since the attack and which is published this Monday by the weekly The New Yorker in 20 pages, Rushdie (75 years old) says that his creativity, which never faltered even after writing “The Satanic Verses” – the novel that gave him earned a death sentence by the Iranian regime – is now deeply affected.
“I have what’s called post-traumatic stress disorder. I’m having very, very difficult to write. I sit down to write, and nothing happens. I write, but it’s a combination of emptiness and debris, things that I write and delete the next day” .
The sensation of sitting and waiting for inspiration seems “depressing”, although thanks to the therapist he had been dealing with since before the attack, it is very clear to him that he does not intend to “adopt the role of victim”.
Rushdie’s latest novel – “Victory City”, which was already finished before the attack – goes on sale worldwide on Tuesday, and this time there will be no launch campaign on his part, but he doesn’t rule out going to London soon for the premiere of a still pending play titled “Helen”, about the character of Helen of Troy.
The writer, as described by the author of the long article-interview, David Remnick, has lost vision in one eye and the full-page photo that illustrates the article shows him wearing dark glasses to hide the affected eye, which does not prevent appreciate the long scar that runs across one side of his face from top to bottom.
The more than ten stab wounds that the attacker inflicted on him have also left his left hand almost useless, since the ulnar nerve is severely damaged and he has lost sensation in two fingers and part of the palm of his hand. All this prevents him from typing, and when it comes to doing it by hand, he says that he writes “slower.”
They reveal the image of the alleged attacker of the writer Salman Rushdie
HE CANNOT WRITE, BUT HAS NOT LOST HIS ELOQUENCY
Not only has he lost 20 kilos after the attack and one of his eyes, and he suffers from mobility problems in his left arm, but now he has an involuntary movement in one lip that luckily does not prevent him from “speaking as eloquently as always”. insists the author.
Rushdie has put aside a project he had for a future novel inspired by Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann at the same time, and although at first he was “irritated” by the idea of writing about the attack itself, now he does not rule it out, and he thinks it should be a story written in the first person.
As for his safety, Rushdie, who all but gave it up after moving to New York nearly two decades ago, now admits he’s going to have to think about it. For the moment, and after the first six weeks of hospitalization, he has lived in seclusion in her own house, with the only exception being frequent visits to different doctors.
The writer Salman Rushdie, stabbed to death last Friday, is evolving positively and no longer needs assisted breathing, although he remains hospitalized and in critical condition.
“I have suffered from nightmares, which tend to diminish. I am fine, I am able to get up and walk. When I say I am fine, I mean that there are parts of my body that need constant monitoring. It was a colossal attack,” says the writer.
The trial against her attacker, Hadi Matar, is expected to begin next year. He risks 25 years in jail for attempted second-degree murder, plus another 7 years for stabbing Henry Reese, another writer who tried to stop his attack on Rushdie (and probably saved his life by doing so).
