Has Salman Rushdie changed after his stabbing? Well, he feels about 25, the author tells AP

NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly two years after the knife attack that nearly killed him, Salman Rushdie appears both changed and very much the same.

Interviewed this week at the Manhattan offices of his longtime publisher, Random House, he is thinner, paler, scarred and blind in his right eye. He speaks of “iron” in his soul and the struggle to write his next full-length work of fiction as he concentrates on promoting “Knife,” a memoir about his stabbing that he took on if only because he had no choice.

But he remains the engaging, articulate and uncensored champion of artistic freedom and the ingenious deviser of “Midnight’s Children” and other lauded works of fiction. He has been, and still is an optimist, helplessly so, he acknowledges. He also has the rare sense of confidence one can only attain through surviving one’s worst nightmare.

“In ‘Midnight’s Children’ I wrote about optimism as a disease. People get infected by it and I think I got a lifetime infection,” he says.

Chronologically, he is nearly 77, the age his father was when he died, an age he sees a kind of milestone in his own quest to beat expectations.

Internally, he feels about 25.

A self-described nice child, one who did not see himself as destined to get in trouble, Rushdie has had a life well beyond even his own boundless dreams. The 1981 Booker Prize win for “Midnight’s Children” established him as a dynamic voice of post-colonial literature. Nearly a decade later, he would reach a terrifying level of fame with “The Satanic Verses,” and the call for his death issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Rushdie was driven into hiding. But by August 2022, he had thought himself safe enough to address a conference in western New York with minimal security: No one was on hand to stop a young assailant, Hadi Matar, from rushing the stage and stabbing him repeatedly. Matar, then 24, has been charged with attempted murder and assault.

Rushdie spoke to The Associated Press about why he wrote the explicit account of his attack, what he has learned about himself and what he might do next. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

AP: When you started working on “Knife,” were you frightened at all?

RUSHDIE: I was worried about retraumatization, that was the worry. And the first chapter, in which the actual attack is described in great detail — that was very goddamn hard to write.

AP: You just got right to the point.

RUSHDIE: Yeah. You know, don’t beat about the bush. Because the reason this book exists is because that happened.

AP: Writers talk a lot about they don’t know how they really felt about something ...

RUSHDIE: ... Until you write it down.

AP: And is that how it was for you?

RUSHDIE: Yeah. Also, I have a very good therapist and actually this is a book written also with the help of a therapist. I was talking to him every week, and discussing what I was doing. And he was helpful, actually. Very clear thinking and helped me clear my thinking. So that was something I had not done before.

AP: You’ve discovered that you’re tougher than you thought you were.

RUSHDIE: If you had told me that this was going to happen and how would I deal with it, I would not have been very optimistic about my chances.

AP: Was there that fear in the back of your mind? You might not be able to handle this?

RUSHDIE: I’m not good with fear. I’m not good with pain. You know, I’m just an ordinary guy hoping those things don’t happen, that you don’t have to deal with fear and pain.

AP: I remember you writing about how, after the fatwa, there was a period where fiction was a struggle. Where are you in that place now?

RUSHDIE: I don’t have the next novel. I hope I will, but the only fiction I’ve written since finishing this book is a kind of story. It’s a thing I don’t know quite what to do with. It’s a story that’s about 60 pages, 65 pages long. And I’m not sure whether to think it’s like a novella or whether I want to add to it and make it more, or that I want to cut it in half and make it a story.

AP: So much of “Knife” is about reclaiming your life. Is one measure of being all the way back “I’ve got the next novel”?

RUSHDIE: That will feel good. I’m always happiest when I have a book to write.

AP: I would imagine there are a hundred different ways to look at the attack and the damage. But one way is, has it intruded upon your imagination?

RUSHDIE: Well, it did. For six months after the attack, I couldn’t even think about writing. I wasn’t physically strong enough. And when I did sit down to write, initially, I didn’t want to write this book. I actually wanted to get back to fiction, and I tried and it just seemed stupid. I just thought, “Look, something very big happened to you.” And to pretend that it didn’t and just go on telling fairy tales would seem like — I would have felt like I was avoiding the subject.

AP: Something that strikes me in this book is when the moment comes, there’s a voice inside you saying, “Well, here it is.” Even as you had gotten back to pretty much a normal life.

RUSHDIE: I did think about it in the early years, obviously, when the danger level was very high. I did think about how somebody could come out of a crowd, and, I had had dreams about it before.

AP: Was there ever that fear that maybe this was just your fate?

RUSHDIE: No, I don’t believe in fate.

AP: What do you believe in?

RUSHDIE: Well, anti-fate.

AP: Coincidence?

RUSHDIE: Taking charge of your life is what I believe in.

AP: One of the things I remember thinking when I first heard the news of the attacker was how young the attacker was. He wasn’t born when you wrote “Satanic Verses.”

RUSHDIE: No, not for 10 years or something.

AP: It’s as if you and that book are somehow fixed in the subconscious.

RUSHDIE: And it’s not even the book because nobody takes the trouble to read it. It’s just the name of that book associated with me, me demonized as a bad guy. But I don’t know this man, you know? I mean, I know the little bits that we have been told — that his mother said after he came back from visiting his father in Lebanon that he was very different, much more religion oriented, critical of her for not having taught him properly about religion. And then for four years, in a basement.

AP: It’s like you’re some kind of abstraction out there.

RUSHDIE: I don’t know why it became me that after all this very long time in the basement, playing computer games and watching videos. Why it became me that he fixated on.

AP: When you were growing up, did you imagine yourself as the type of person who would get in trouble?

RUSHDIE: Not at all. I was a very quiet kid. I was really well behaved. My sister, who’s one year younger than me, she was the naughty one. She would beat people up for me and I would get her out of trouble.

AP: You talk about you happy childhood, you’re a nice boy. But “Midnight’s Children,” so much of your work, you’re trying to get some kind of reaction.

RUSHDIE: You’re trying to write a big book, you know?

AP: And a book you probably knew might make somebody unhappy.

RUSHDIE: Oh, yeah, but who cares, you know?

AP: Where does that comes from?

RUSHDIE: I had it as a child. I had the confidence of being loved and supported by my parents. And I’ve always been kind of academically excellent. So you grow up in that way. You give yourself permission to do things. Because you’ve been treated in that way. And also, of course, remember, I was 21 in 1968. I’m a child of the '60s.

AP: How changed, if at all, do you think you are compared to two years ago?

RUSHDIE: I’m still myself, you know, and I don’t feel other than myself. But there’s a little iron in the soul, I think. And I also think the thing that happens when you get really a close up look at death — that’s as close as you can get without actually doing the dance of death and heading off to nowhere — it stays with you.

AP: What does that mean?

RUSHDIE: It means there’s a shadow. It means the presence of the ending.

AP: How old do you feel? Internally.

RUSHDIE: (laughing) About 25.

AP: You do?

RUSHDIE: I think one of the great things about writing — you need a kind of youthfulness to do it, because it requires energy, imagination, dreaming. It’s a young man’s game. I’ve said somewhere that when you’re young and you’re writing, you have to fake wisdom. When you’re older and you’re writing, you have to fake energy.

AP: Can you fake energy?

RUSHDIE: Well, I’ve tried.

Salman Rushdie poses for a portrait to promote his book "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder" on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Salman Rushdie poses for a portrait to promote his book "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder" on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Salman Rushdie poses for a portrait to promote his book "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder" on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Salman Rushdie poses for a portrait to promote his book "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder" on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Salman Rushdie poses for a portrait to promote his book "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder" on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Salman Rushdie poses for a portrait to promote his book "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder" on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Salman Rushdie poses for a portrait to promote his book "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder" on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Salman Rushdie poses for a portrait to promote his book "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder" on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

NEW YORK (AP) — While much of the globe is focused on the Paris Olympics, a movie filmed from ancient Olympia starring mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato premiered this week that uses music to spark contemplation of creation and carnage.

“Eden in Olympia” opens by posing a pair of questions as day breaks over a river: “In the heart of Olympia, the sun ignites the flame and humanity joins as one. Here, music and nature together demonstrate the power of existing in a world that thrives in harmony and balance. Will we answer the call? Will we return to Eden?”

In a series of scenes set to music from Baroque to Mahler’s “Rückert-Lieder” through “The First Morning of the World” by Academy Award-winner Rachel Portman, director Olivier Simonnet visualizes DiDonato’s audio recording released two years ago, a call to action on climate change.

“I find it comforting to know that this isn’t the first time we’ve been facing difficult things as a species on the planet, but we do have the power to set things right,” DiDonato said this week. “You join hands and you raise your voices together. You create something harmonious. You appreciate the beauty. You say thank you to everything has been given to you.”

Her first appearance is leaning against a leafy tree, wearing an earth-tone Zeus+Dione dress with a dream-like gaze and holding branches. Children emerge from woods with looks of astonishment to Charles Ives’ “The Unanswered Question,” carrying paper lanterns as darkness turns to dawn.

DiDonato sets off across a field, silhouetted by streaks of sunlight, a drone camera shooting from overhead. She stops in temple ruins, surrounded by idyllic trees with pink and green leaves, as the soundtrack switches to Portman’s 2022 composition.

Musicians gather, DiDonato sings as children bring her boughs but later walks away with tears after she collects flowers and is met with looks of disillusionment. At dusk, the musicians play savagely during the dance of furies from Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice,” wearing tiny flashlights on arms that made them resemble fireflies.

“The audience is aware that this is an ancient ground that that really gave birth to Olympic ideals and called up the best of humanity,” DiDonato said. “I think that presence, that energetic presence in the show, is very strong.”

DiDonato started to conceive “Eden” in 2019, and the recording with conductor Maxim Emelyanychev and Il Pomo d’Oro was released in 2022. It earned the 11th Grammy Award nomination for the 55-year-old singer, a three-time Grammy winner.

A subsequent tour included about four dozen concerts with more in South America and Europe scheduled this summer.

World Human Forum President Alexandra Mitsotaki and artistic/creative director Myrto Vounatsou suggested the film after hearing DiDonato’s interview during an Athens performance in May 2023. Mitsotaki used her contacts to gain approval to film in Olympia a week ahead of the flame lighting on April 16.

Most of the vocal music was re-recorded the night before filming started. DiDonato arrived at 3:30 a.m. for makeup and shooting began two hours later at sunrise.

“It was a huge leap of faith because we were completely dependent on the weather,” DiDonato said. “We filmed that all in two days and we were on such a tight schedule, and we couldn’t afford to ever even go over 10 minutes on any scene, and we didn’t.”

Simonnet's 59-minute movie was released in Europe on ARTE last weekend, on Greece’s ERT2 on Thursday and on Carnegie Hall+ on Friday.

“The story Joyce wanted to tell the audience in the theater was very, very connected with the texts of the songs,” Simonnet said. “Of course you can read the meaning of the songs, talking about harmony and peace and things like that. But, at the end of the day, maybe you can forget the meaning of the songs and just be comfortable and happy with what you see, the landscape, this beautiful singer.”

Three children’s choruses appear: the Children’s Choir of the Greek National Opera, the Choeurs ECLATS choir from France and El Sistema Greece. DiDonato joins them in the uplifting “Seeds of Hope" and the Olympic anthem that closes the film, sung in Greek, French, and English.

“What is causing us to experience so much division, what is causing us not to be taking care of ourselves, of each other, of our planet? What is that disconnect within us as a society that is allowing this kind of destruction to happen?" she said. "I always turn to music when I’m looking for the big answers. Even if I don’t find them, it certainly offers me comfort.”

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato appears on April 8, 2024 at Ancient Olympia, Greece, during the recording of "Eden in Olympia." The film, directed by Olivier Simonnet, will be released on ARTE, ERT2 and Carnegie Hall+. (Cate Pisaroni via AP)

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato appears on April 8, 2024 at Ancient Olympia, Greece, during the recording of "Eden in Olympia." The film, directed by Olivier Simonnet, will be released on ARTE, ERT2 and Carnegie Hall+. (Cate Pisaroni via AP)

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato appears on April 8, 2024 at Ancient Olympia, Greece, during the recording of "Eden in Olympia." The film, directed by Olivier Simonnet, will be released on ARTE, ERT2 and Carnegie Hall+. (Cate Pisaroni via AP)