Rushdie returns to the fatwa that nearly cost him his life

Rushdie argues that fiction should not be treated as a literal statement of reality. If a novelist writes that a horse can fly, he says, it is an act of imagination and does not mean that a horse is actually flying.

The documentary traces the decades-long consequences of the fatwa, from the controversy surrounding The Satanic Verses and the years Rushdie spent in hiding to the 2022 knife attack that nearly killed him.

Directed by Alex Gibney and based on Rushdie’s bestselling memoir Knife, Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie includes previously unseen footage of his recovery and reflections on a threat that appeared to have receded after Iran publicly distanced itself from efforts to kill him in 1998.

Among the most affecting images are those filmed by Rushdie’s wife, poet and writer Rachel Eliza Griffiths, as he lies in hospital after the attack. When he regains consciousness, despite his condition, Rushdie gives permission for the filming to continue.

“This isn’t just about me; it’s about freedom,” he says.

The documentary returns repeatedly to Iran, showing archival footage of Khomeini’s fatwa being announced on Iranian radio and demonstrations in London where protesters carried photographs of the Iranian leader.

It also recalls the multimillion-dollar reward offered for Rushdie’s killing. The man who attacked him in 2022 later told a court that he admired Khomeini.

Rushdie reflects on people who condemned a book they had barely read and remarks that many devils pretend to believe in God.

He also places the fatwa in the political circumstances of Iran at the time, saying the revolution had not gone well and that the war with Iraq had left the government in a difficult position. He says he ultimately became a casualty of that situation.

For years, Rushdie lived under protection and in hiding. That appeared to change in 1998, when Iran and Britain reached an understanding that paved the way for improved relations.

Iran’s foreign minister publicly declared that the government would neither threaten Rushdie’s life nor encourage others to do so. Two years later, Rushdie moved to the United States and gradually began leaving behind the security arrangements that had defined much of his life.

Looking back after the attack, he asks: “Did I make a mistake?”

The documentary also shows how the 2022 stabbing was received in Iran, including a front page of the newspaper Jam-e Jam depicting Rushdie in the form of the Devil.

The attack itself is initially reconstructed, with the actual footage appearing only near the end. Rushdie was repeatedly stabbed while preparing to speak at an event in New York state, leaving him blind in one eye and with severe injuries.

Rushdie later returns with Griffiths to the site of the attack and stands where he was nearly killed.

“Now I am standing in the place where I once fell,” he says, adding that he does not believe in miracles but describes his survival as “miraculous.”

The contrast with his attacker is one Rushdie also reflects on: he has continued to live and write, while the man who attacked him at the age of 24 is now in prison.

More than three decades after Khomeini’s fatwa transformed his life, the documentary finds Rushdie still defending the freedom at the heart of the original controversy: the freedom of a novelist to imagine.