‘I Was Dying’: Salman Rushdie Testifies About Terrifying Stabbing Attack

In the moments after the stabbing attack that left him blind in one eye, the author Salman Rushdie lay in a pool of blood, certain that he would not survive. “It occurred to me quite clearly, that I was dying,” he said.

Mr. Rushdie testified on Tuesday in the trial of the man accused of attacking him, giving a vivid account of the stabbing and coming face to face with the man accused of attempting to murder him.

At the Chautauqua Institution on an August morning in 2022, Mr. Rushdie was preparing to give a lecture on asylum for exiled writers to an audience of more than 1,000 people. Suddenly, he said, he became aware of a man rushing toward him.

“I was very struck by his eyes which were dark and seemed very ferocious to me,” Mr. Rushdie said.

At first, he said, he thought he was being punched. But then he became aware of “a very large quantity of blood pouring out onto my clothes.”

The assailant was holding a knife and struck Mr. Rushdie with it five or six times around his head and face, including “most painfully and most dangerously a stab wound in my right eye,” Mr. Rushdie said.

“That’s what’s left of it,” he said, lifting the distinctive eyeglasses he has worn in public since the attack. One lens is clear, and the other is black. Behind the black lens, his ruined eye appeared mostly closed.