Salman Rushdie spoke calmly and with occasional dry humor as he testified on Tuesday against the man accused of trying to murder him, the first time the two have been in the same place since the 2022 knife attack on the novelist onstage at a New York arts institute.

Salman Rushdie appeared in court on Tuesday to testify in the trial of the man who is accused of trying to murder him on stage at a talk in western New York in 2022. “It occurred to me that I was dying.

In his own words, author Salman Rushdie describes the moments when a stranger rushed at him on stage in western New York and began attacking him.