这攻击只持续了27秒,但作家萨尔曼·拉什迪说在这么短的时间里他经历了人性中最糟糕和最美好的一面。
周一,在接受美国广播公司新闻频道(ABC News)《早安美国》(Good Morning America)联合主持人乔治·斯特凡诺普洛斯(George Stephanopoulos)采访时,这位76岁的《撒旦诗篇》(The Satanic Verses)作者讲述了2022年在纽约肖托夸的一次演讲中对他的袭击,据称袭击者是一名24岁的男子,他一心要执行伊朗前最高领导人鲁霍拉·霍梅尼(Ruhollah Khomeini
拉什迪说,他相信自己要死了,但后来目睹袭击的人急忙赶来保护他。他说,他写的一本新书记录了拯救他生命的医生以及他的妻子伊莱扎如何成为他护理他恢复健康的故事的女主角。
“毫无疑问,”他告诉斯特凡诺普洛斯。“我的意思是,躺在这片血湖中,这片血湖是我的,而且还在不断扩大,我记得当时我非常平静地想,哦,是的,我想我要死了。然后,幸运的是,我错了。”
在漫长的康复之路中,拉什迪说他觉得有必要写一本关于这段可怕经历的回忆录——《刀:谋杀未遂后的沉思》,该书将于周二在书店上市。他说写这本书是他“收回权力”的方式。"
“如果你愿意的话,这成了我控制叙事的方式,”拉什迪说。“我觉得这本书本身,我的意思是,它是关于一把刀的,但它也是一把刀。我没有枪或刀,所以这是我使用的工具。我想我会用它来反击。”
2022年8月12日,拉什迪在肖托夸学院就针对作家的暴力行为发表演讲时,涉嫌持刀的嫌疑人哈迪·马塔尔冲向舞台,刺了作家十几刀。马塔尔对与袭击有关的二级谋杀未遂和袭击指控不服罪。
三十多年前,拉什迪因其小说《撒旦诗篇》受到死亡威胁,这部小说的灵感来自伊斯兰先知穆罕默德的生平,于1988年出版。霍梅尼认为这本书亵渎了神灵,是对伊斯兰教的侮辱。霍梅尼对拉什迪发出了死刑判决。
拉什迪星期一说,他相信对他生命的威胁已经消失,几乎被遗忘。他承认他放松了警惕。
“乔治,我在纽约市已经住了将近25年,在这段时间里,我参加了数百次公共活动,你知道,巡回售书、文学节、阅读、讲座,”拉什迪告诉斯特凡诺普洛斯。"在此之前,从来没有任何问题的迹象."
虽然他的书主要是关于对他的暗杀企图,但他说这也是一个爱情故事。
“我一直以为这本书里有三个人。有我,有他,我拒绝使用他的名字,”他说的嫌疑人。“这是我的妻子,伊莱扎。我们在这次袭击发生的五年前见过面。”
拉什迪将他的婚姻描述为“我一生中最幸福的关系”,他说他的妻子一直是他的磐石,是他康复背后的指导力量。
拉什迪说,“她照顾我,照料一切,掌管一切,把我带了回来,真是令人吃惊。”
在“GMA”的采访中,拉什迪说他在一个“噩梦”中预感到了这次袭击
“你可以解释这个噩梦,因为我演讲的地方叫做圆形剧场。所以我做了一个梦,梦见自己在一个圆形剧场里,除了在梦里它就像罗马圆形大剧场一样。这就像一部雷德利·斯科特电影,”拉什迪说。“有一个角斗士拿着长矛向下刺,我在地上打滚。我从梦中惊醒,起初,我想,哦,我不想去。然后我就觉得这是个梦。”
拉什迪脸上带着袭击留下的伤疤,右眼失明,他回忆说,在被刺期间和紧接着的后果中,时间“变得非常奇怪”。
“它有时似乎走得很快...而在其他时候,对我来说就像永恒一样,”拉什迪说。“在那种极端的情况下,我有一种非常怪异的时间体验。”
作为一名长期的无神论者,拉什迪说濒死体验让他短暂地相信了超自然现象。
拉什迪说:“有一分钟是这样,然后就没有了,也许它应该这样。”
至于他的健康状况,他告诉斯特凡诺普洛斯,“我很好。出乎我的意料,也出乎所有人的意料,我觉得我过得很好。”
新泽西州的马塔尔原定于1月受审,但他的律师获准延期审阅拉什迪的手稿。
拉什迪说,他计划在审判发生时出庭作证。
“我相信地方检察官希望我作证,所以我会作证,”拉什迪说。“没事。我在证人席上说的话,没有一句是我在这本书中没有说过的。”
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Theattacklasted just 27 seconds, but writer Salman Rushdie said in that short amount of time he experienced the worst and best of humanity.
In an interview Monday with ABC News' "Good Morning America" co-host George Stephanopoulos, the 76-year-old author of "The Satanic Verses" recounted the 2022 attack on him at a lecture in Chautauqua, New York, allegedly by a 24-year-old man bent on carrying out a Fatwa imposed on Rushdie in 1989 by Ruhollah Khomeini, the former supreme leader of Iran.
Rushdie said he believed he was going to die, but then people who witnessed the attack rushed to protect him. He said a new book he has written chronicles the doctors who saved his life and how his wife, Eliza, became the heroine of his story for nursing him back to health.
"No question," he told Stephanopoulos. "I mean, lying there in this lake of blood, which was mine and was expanding, I remember thinking in a completely calm way, Oh yeah, I think I'm dying. And then, fortunately, I was wrong."
In his long road to recovery, Rushdie said he felt compelled to write a memoir about the horrific experience -- "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder'' -- which will be available in bookstores on Tuesday. He said writing the book was his way of "taking the power back."
"It became my way of controlling the narrative if you'd like," Rushdie said. "What I felt is that the book itself, I mean, it's about a knife but it also kind of is a knife. I don't have any guns or knives, so this is the tool I use. And I thought I would use it to fight back."
On Aug. 12, 2022, Rushdie was speaking at the Chautauqua Institution about violence against writers when the alleged knife-wielding suspect, Hadi Matar, charged the stage and stabbed the writer more than a dozen times. Matar has pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges in connection with the attack.
It had been more than three decades since Rushdie faced death threats over his novel "The Satanic Verses," which was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and was published in 1988. The book was deemed blasphemous by Khomeini and an insult to Islam. Khomeini issued a fatwa, or death sentence, against Rushdie.
Rushdie said Monday that he believed threats against his life had faded and all but forgotten. He conceded that he had let his guard down.
"I've been living here, George, close to 25 years in New York City and in that time, I've done hundreds of public events, you know, book tours, literary festivals, reading, lectures," Rushdie told Stephanopoulos. "And there's never been a hint of a problem until this time."
While his book is largely about the assassination attempt on him, he said it is also a love story.
"I always thought there were three people in this book. There's me, there's him, who I refuse to use his name," he said of the suspect. “And there’s my wife, Eliza. We had met five years before this attack took place."
Describing his marriage as the "happiest relationship of my life," Rushdie said his wife has been his rock, the guiding force behind his recovery.
"She was just astonishing in taking care of me and then looking after things and taking charge of things," said Rushdie, adding, "and bringing me back."
In the "GMA" interview, Rushdie said he had a premonition of the attack that came to him in a "bad dream."
"You can explain the bad dream because the place I was giving the lecture was called an amphitheater. So I had a dream about being in an amphitheater, except in my dream it was like the Colosseum. It was like a Ridley Scott movie," Rushdie said. "And there was a gladiator with a spear stabbing downwards and I was rolling around on the ground. And I woke up from the dream quite alarmed and, at first, I thought, Oh, I don’t want to go. And then I thought it was a dream."
Rushdie, who bears scars from the attack on his face and is blinded in his right eye, recalled how time "became a very weird thing" during the stabbing and its immediate aftermath.
"It seemed to go very fast at moments ... and to me like an eternity at other times," Rushdie said. "I had a very weird experience of time in that extreme situation."
A longtime atheist, Rushdie said the near-death experience made him briefly believe in the supernatural.
"For a minute it did, and then it didn't, and maybe it should have," Rushdie said.
As far as his health goes, he told Stephanopoulos, "I'm alright. I think I'm, to my surprise and I think to everybody else's surprise, pretty well."
Matar, of New Jersey, was initially scheduled to go on trial in January, but his attorney was granted a delay to review the manuscript of Rushdie's book.
Rushdie said he plans to testify at the trial whenever it occurs.
"I believe the DA wants me to testify and so I will," Rushdie said. "That's OK. There's nothing I will say on the witness stand that I haven't already said in this book."