What Someone Did to Salman Rushdie
This evening I’m thinking of what someone did to Salman Rushdie; stabbing him frenetically because of the stories he writes. Severing the nerves to one of Rushdie’s arms. Destroying one of his eyes. Stabbing his liver. Perhaps killing him, eventually. Violating his body, cutting it because Rushdie writes and speaks. Cutting it because of what he says. Cutting the body of all people who believe that rational hope is found in the freedom of truthful speech, in the freedom to explore our world unfettered through story.
In the regressively medieval modern world in which we find ourselves, people increasingly treat as acceptable attacking those with whom they disagree. And who they disagree with is manipulated in a constant social media stream of distorted and untrue communication, intentionally expanding traditional religious, racial and tribal intolerance a hundred fold in the service of creating and maintaining — at any cost — power.
In this milieu, I keep choosing not to tell some stories I might. Things that might put me in the crosshairs. I imagine the people who could show up at my door. I imagine the people who might strike at me. I imagine too much. As someone who has always tried to see and prepare for eventualities in life, I am frozen in place. And so I don’t write some of the things I might, or should.
