‘Great pain and shock’: author Salman Rushdie testifies in the trial of his suspected attacker

Salman Rushdie described in graphic detail Tuesday the frenzied moments in 2022 when a masked man rushed at him on a stage in western New York and repeatedly slashed him with a knife, leaving him with terrible injuries and fearful he would die.

Rushdie took the stand on the second day of testimony at the trial of Hadi Matar, 27, who has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault in the attack that also wounded another man. It was the first time since the attack that the 77-year-old author found himself in the same room with the man accused of trying to kill him.   

Rushdie recalled feeling “a sense of great pain and shock, and aware of the fact that there was an enormous quantity of blood that I was lying in” after the attack.

“It occurred to me that I was dying. That was my predominant thought,” he said, adding that the people who subdued his assailant likely saved his life.

As he recounted the attack, his wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, cried from her seat in the courtroom’s second row.

“I only saw him at the last minute,” Rushdie said of the man who rushed across the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and stabbed him repeatedly with a 10-inch (25-centimetre) blade.

 “I was aware of someone wearing black clothes, or dark clothes and a black face mask. I was very struck by his eyes, which were dark and seemed very ferocious.”

Rushdie said he first thought his knife-wielding attacker was striking him with a fist.

“But I saw a large quantity of blood pouring onto my clothes,” he said. “He was hitting me repeatedly. Hitting and slashing.”

Rushdie said he was struck more times in his chest and torso and stabbed in his chest as he struggled to get away.   

“I was very badly injured. I couldn’t stand up any more. I fell down,” he said.

Weeks of recovery

Rushdie was blinded in one eye in the attack.   

He spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation centre, where he had to re-learn basic skills like squeezing toothpaste from a tube. He detailed his months of recovery in a memoir released last year.

Although he said he’s “substantially recovered,” he still doesn’t feel at “100 per cent.”

“I’m not as energetic as I used to be. I’m not as physically strong as I used to be,” he said. 

Matar, who was seated about six meters away from Rushdie in the courtroom, often looked down during his testimony.   

Cross-examination begins 

Lynn Schaffer, a public defender representing Matar, began the cross examination by asking the Booker Prize-winning author about his career. The questioning was brief, low-key and, for a moment, friendly. She asked Rushdie if he would be surprised that Bridget Jones’s Diary, in which he makes a cameo, was her favourite movie.

“I am surprised,” Rushdie said, joking that it was his “most important work.”

The only hint at a possible defence strategy was a question about whether trauma can affect memories.

Rushdie acknowledged that he has a false memory, that he thought he stood up when he saw the attacker approaching, but that wasn’t true.

Schaffer then challenged him to remember how many times he was struck.

“I wasn’t counting at the time. I was otherwise occupied,” Rushdie replied. “But afterward I could see them on my body. I didn’t need to be told by anybody.”

No one asked Rushdie to identify his attacker in court and he declined to be interviewed as he left the courthouse after about an hour of testimony.

Security was notably tighter ahead of Rushdie’s appearance, with several law enforcement vehicles parked outside the courthouse.

On Monday, staffers at the Chautauqua Institution — the non-profit art and education centre where the attack happened about120 kilometres south of Buffalo — testified about the attack.

Matar has been in custody since he was subdued by spectators after the attack.  

The trial is expected to last up to two weeks.

Jurors are unlikely to hear about a fatwa issued by the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for Rushdie’s death, according to district attorney Jason Schmidt. Rushdie, the author of Midnight’s Children and Victory City, spent years in hiding after Khomeini announced the fatwa in 1989 following publication of the novel The Satanic Verses, which was inspired by the life of the prophet Muhammad and which some Muslims consider blasphemous. 

‘Not a case of mistaken identity’

Schmidt has said discussing Matar’s motive will be unnecessary in the state trial, given the attack was seen by a live audience that was expecting to hear Rushdie present a lecture on keeping writers safe.   

“This is not a case of mistaken identity,” Schmidt said during opening statements Monday. “Mr. Matar is the person who attacked Mr. Rushdie without provocation.”

Schaffer, the public defender representing Matar, told jurors that the case is not as straightforward as prosecutors have made it out to be.

 “The elements of the crime are more than ‘something really bad happened’ — they’re more defined,” Schaffer said. “Something bad did happen, something very bad did happen, but the district attorney has to prove much more than that.”

In a separate indictment, federal authorities allege Matar was driven to act by a terrorist organization’s 2006 endorsement of the fatwa. A later trial on federal terrorism charges will be scheduled in U.S. District Court in Buffalo.