More Fascinating Than a Novel

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The other day I saw a headline on the AP news site. It was about Sir Salam Rushdie, the renown author who was nearly killed last year when appearing in western New York. The news blurb said that Rushdie had made a couple of appearances, his first since the attack. In one appearance, he received a PEN America Centenary Courage Award. In his acceptance speech he said, “Terrorism must not terrorize us.” Later, he was awarded the Companion of Honour from Anne, the Princess Royal in London. Rushdie is now wearing glasses that have a darkened right lens, hiding the worst wound he suffered in the attempted assassination last August. Among the multiple stab wounds he lost his right eye. Doing a little reading online I came across an article from The New Yorker from February of this year that was, to me, more fascinating than a novel. It was a very detailed account of Rushdie’s career, focusing on the attack and the 1988 novel that prompted the attack, The Satanic Verses. It’s a long read, the article. And yet, it’s amazing. Reading of Rushdie’s defiance in the face of the fatwa issued by Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini, I must say he’s quite an inspiration. I wonder if I’d have that kind of courage. (We all think we would, then we’d probably end up like the apostle Peter, who after boldly proclaiming his unending loyalty to Jesus, denied knowing Him.) Rushdie admits to having PTSD after the attack (duh!), and says it’s been hard to get back to his craft, but heh is writing again. I hope he recovers emotionally (“when someone sticks a knife into you,” he said in The New Yorker interview about the possibility of writing a novel about the attack, “that’s a first-person story”) and continues for years to come. And I hope the person who stabbed him gets convicted, and that maybe our government will add “terrorism” charges to the state attempted murder charges. If I don’t like something, I won’t read it (or watch it or listen to it). I won’t go attack the person who made it. Here’s a brief article about Rushdie’s British honor: