'So it's you. Here you are': Salman Rushdie reveals he thought fatal fatwa from ... trends now
Salman Rushdie has revealed he thought the fatal fatwa from Iran was being carried out when he was attacked with a knife at a New York book fair.
The 76-year-old author thought he was going to die during the assassination attempt on the stage of the literary festival on August 12, 2022.
Mr Rushdie lost sight in his right eye in the brutal 27-second assault that also left him with stab wounds to the face, neck, chest, abdomen, thigh and hand.
The publication of his fourth book, The Satanic Verses, drew heavy criticism for the suggested contradiction of the prophet Mohammed's infallibility and was banned in a number of countries.
Then in 1989, the then supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared a $3million fatwa contract on his life for the ‘blasphemy’ contained in the book, which sent the writer into hiding for 10 years.
Now, Mr Rushdie explained that his 'first thought' when he saw the would-be assassin approaching him was, 'So it's you. Here you are'.
Salman Rushdie described how his attacker slashed his throat during the assassination attempt that cost him an eye and nearly killed him in August 2022
It took 27 seconds for festival goers and festival staff to drag Rushdie's attacker off him
The author spent eight hours in surgery, 18 days in hospital, and three weeks in rehabilitation after being airlifted to hospital from New York's Chautauqua Amphitheater
‘I remember thinking that I was probably dying. And it was interesting because it was quite matter of fact,' Rushdie said
He also said the attack still ‘upsets me every day’ as he prepares to see his account of it published in ‘Knife’, his 22nd book, on Tuesday.
He said: ‘I confess, I had sometimes imagined my assassin rising up in some public forum or other, and coming for me in just this way,’ he wrote.
‘So my first thought when I saw this murderous shape rushing towards me was, "So it's you. Here you are".'
Before the 2022 knife attack, Mr Rushdie's police minders alerted him to half a dozen serious assassination attempts from state-sponsored terrorists before Iran called off its attempts in 1998.
But the fatwa remains in place and a lone wolf nearly claimed the prize after Rushdie accepted an invitation to speak at the Chautauqua Amphitheater in August 2022.
He nearly pulled out after having a dream two nights earlier in which he was being violently attacked.
Perhaps spurred unconsciously by the venue's name, he found himself dreaming that he was in a Roman gladiatorial arena.
‘It was just somebody with a spear stabbing downwards, and I was rolling around on the floor trying to get away from him,’ he told CBS.
The dream was so vivid he thrashed around in his bed trying to escape, waking his wife, the poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, who had to wake him in turn and reassure him.
‘I was quite shaken by it,’ he told the BBC, ‘and I said to Eliza, I don’t want to go.
'And then you wake up a bit more, and you think, it’s just a dream, and you’re not going to allow your life to be ruled by something that happened in a dream. And so I thought, I’ll go. It’s a gig.’
He brushed his fears aside but discovered that there was no security as he took to the stage to deliver a lecture on the importance of protecting writers whose lives are under threat.
‘In the corner of my right eye — the last thing
