Salman Rushdie Considers Visiting Attacker in Prison

Salman Rushdie, the Booker Prize-winning author, has contemplated visiting Hadi Matar, the man who stabbed him 15 times in August 2022. The attack, which occurred as Rushdie was about to give a lecture on artistic freedom, left him with severe injuries, including the loss of an eye and damage to his liver and hand.

Four years prior to the attack, Rushdie had been living under threat after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, issued a fatwa calling for his death. This mandate, stemming from Rushdie's 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses," which Khomeini deemed blasphemous, forced Rushdie into hiding for nearly nine years. During this period, he adopted the pseudonym Joseph Anton and traveled with security.

The new documentary "Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie," directed by Alex Gibney, chronicles Rushdie's experience, from the fatwa to the attack and his subsequent recovery. The film incorporates intimate footage filmed by Rushdie's wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, who began documenting his journey to survival and care shortly after the assault.

Griffiths described her camera as a diary, a way to focus on Rushdie's resilience and avoid feeling like a powerless victim. "It wasn't a situation where we were, like, 'we're going to make a documentary,'" she told The Post. "The camera became my diary, and I did not need to burden anyone with the complicated feelings I was having."

Rushdie, who has since designed distinctive eyeglasses with one dark-tinted lens, has largely moved past the fear that once defined his life. He had been living in New York since 2000 and had participated in hundreds of public events without incident, leading him to believe that chapter was closed. However, the attack on August 12, 2022, at the Chautauqua Institution in New York dramatically reopened it.

Ironically, Rushdie's attacker, Hadi Matar, admitted in the documentary that he had never read "The Satanic Verses," and Rushdie expressed doubt that Khomeini had either. Rushdie refers to his assailant as "A," short for "Ass," in the film and has imagined confronting him in prison. Despite this, he ultimately decided against seeking a meeting, agreeing with Griffiths that it was a "terrible idea" and that Matar would likely not be receptive.

Matar was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Rushdie, meanwhile, is continuing his recovery and working on his next book. He expressed that the documentary is not solely a story of an attempted murder but also a love story, highlighting the bond and resilience he and Griffiths shared throughout the ordeal. "This is not just [an attempted] murder story. It's also a love story," Rushdie said.