"I was aware that the person was rushing towards me from my right. I was aware of someone in dark clothing... I was struck by his eyes, which seemed dark and fierce," Rushdie said of his confrontation with his attacker, Hadi Matar.
Renowned writer Salman Rushdie testified on Tuesday against Hadi Matari, who is accused of stabbing him in August 2022.
Speaking in a clear voice, Rushdie described how he was sitting in a chair on stage, facing interlocutor Henry Rees and the audience, when "the attack began."
"I was aware that the person was rushing towards me from my right. I was aware of someone in dark clothing... I was struck by his eyes, which seemed dark and fierce," Rushdie said, adding: "He hit me hard in the jaw and neck. At first I thought he had punched me, but very soon I saw blood on my clothes." According to him, everything happened very quickly.
"I was stabbed several times, the most painful being the shot in the eye. I fought to escape. I raised my hand in self-defense and was stabbed," he said. Asked how many times he had been stabbed, Rushdie said: "I haven't counted."
He said he had gotten up from his seat to escape the attacker, but he did not fall.
"He taught me to hit him as hard as I could. He was badly injured and I couldn't get up anymore," Rushdie testified, estimating that the attacker stabbed him 15 times.
"I was screaming in pain," he said, describing the wound to his right eye that left him blind in that side. Rushdie showed jurors the empty socket behind the patch he has worn ever since.
"I was aware of the great quantity of blood in which I lay. My sense of time was quite blurred, my eye and arm ached, and I clearly thought I was dying," Rushdie said.
Rushdie described how he was placed on a stretcher and later taken to the ambulance helicopter. "I was barely aware of what was happening until the helicopter landed and then I don't remember anything," he said.
Rushdie was in the hospital for more than two weeks and described how, while intubated, he communicated by shaking his legs.
Matar, a Lebanese-American citizen, has been charged with attempted murder. He pleaded not guilty. Matar muttered, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" as he was led into court.
Rushdie's wife, Rachel Griffiths, and his agent, Andrew Wylie, were in the courtroom surrounded by security. In opening statements, jurors heard from prosecutors that Matar "almost left Mr. Rushdie dead."
If convicted of attempted murder, Matar faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.
He has also been indicted on federal charges that treat the attempted assassination of Rushdie as an act of terrorism, as well as providing material support to the armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the US has designated a terrorist organization.
Matar will face these charges in a separate trial in Buffalo. The trial is expected to last up to two weeks.
Rushdie spent years in hiding after a fatwa was issued in 1989 following his book "The Satanic Verses," but began to resurface in the late 1990s.
Radical Islamists have threatened to kill Rushdie for years over "The Satanic Verses," published in 1988, considering it an insult to Muslims.
