Blitz Bureau
MAYVILLE, NY: In 2022, Salman Rushdie was about to deliver a lecture before a live audience in western New York when a man ran towards him and plunged a knife into the author’s hand as he raised it in self-defence, said an AP report.
“After that there are many blows, to my neck, to my chest, to my eye, everywhere,” Rushdie recalled in a memoir that followed. “I feel my legs give way, and I fall,” it added. In the coming weeks, Rushdie is expected to return to the same New York countyto recount the experience as one of the first witnesses in the trial of the man charged with wielding the knife that day, HadiMatar, according to the report by Associated Press. . Matar, 27, of Fairview, New Jersey, has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault, it said further.
Under different circumstances, Rushdie’s book, which details his account of that day and his recovery, might offer important evidence in the August 12, 2022, attack that left the 77-year-old blind in his right eye and his hand permanently damaged. But “this isn’t a back alley event that occurs unwitnessed in a dark alley,” said Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt following a pretrial hearing. “This is something that was recorded, it was witnessed live by thousands of people.”
