Find it difficult to write, says Salman Rushdie after attack

Months after a near-lethal attack that left him debilitated and without vision in one eye, Sir Salman Rushdie says that he is “lucky” and has been told that he is “doing very well”. But he still finds it difficult to type or write.

I was “lucky … my main overwhelming feeling is gratitude. I’ve been better. But, considering what happened, I’m not so bad,” he said in an interview with journalist-author David Remnick in ‘The New Yorker’, the BBC reported.

The award-winning novelist was attacked on stage at an event in New York state last August and spent many weeks in hospital. He subsequently lost vision in one eye.

“The big injuries are healed, essentially. I have feeling in my thumb and index finger and in the bottom half of the palm. I’m doing a lot of hand therapy, and I’m told that I’m doing very well,” he said.

Rushdie said it was difficult to type and to write due to a lack of feeling in some of his fingertips. He also said that he has barely been out since the attack, other than to go for hospital appointments.

“I’m able to get up and walk around. When I say I’m fine, I mean, there are bits of my body that need constant check-ups. It was a colossal attack,” Rushdie said.

He said he also has mental scars from the attack and that he is having to rethink his approach to security. Rushdie has lived without security for more than two decades.

“There is such a thing as PTSD, you know,” he said. “I’ve found it very, very difficult to write. I sit down to write, and nothing happens. I write, but it’s a combination of blankness and junk, stuff that I write and that I delete the next day. I’m not out of that forest yet, really.”

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