As Henry Reese prepared to interview 75-year-old author Salman Rushdie at an event on Aug. 12, 2022, in Chautauqua, New York, an assassin attacked Rushdie. Reese, who was 73, intervened, tackling Hadi Matar, 24, and saving Rushdie’s life.
Rushdie was stabbed in the abdomen and neck, losing sight in one eye and sustaining nerve and liver damage. He was airlifted to UPMC Hamot hospital in Erie for emergency surgery. Reese also had to be hospitalized for injuries to his face.
In 1989, Iran’s ayatollah sentenced Rushdie to death for blasphemy. Matar, reportedly under investigation for being motivated by radical Islam, has been charged with attempted murder. On Tuesday, August 8, Matar had a hearing in Chautauqua County Court in Mayville, New York.
At a literary gala in May when Rushdie accepted PEN America’s Centenary Courage Award, he recognized and thanked Reese, who co-founded Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum with his wife, artist Diane Samuels, to grant sanctuary to writers exiled under threat of persecution.
During this interview, Reese sought to share credit for defending Rushdie with other members of City of Asylum who attended the 2022 event, including two doctors and a neighbor who had been in the Secret Service.
“When it happened, this community rose up, which said, in effect, what we’re doing here actually has become part of people’s lives,” Reese said. “They get what we do.”
“I don’t know that people would have acted had this [writers’ refuge and charity] not been so present in their lives. So that part of it — the recognition of what Salman started back in 1989 came around to rise up and protect him when he needed it. It’s strangely rewarding to know that; if bad’s gonna happen, we are there to stop it. It’s a strange irony — seeing this person who inspires our mission and to be connected with the worst thing that ever happened to him.”
After graduating from Johns Hopkins University, Reese did graduate work in English literature and cognitive linguistics at the State University of New York in Buffalo. He has received honorary degrees from Seton Hill University and Chatham University.
The interview, conducted at City of Asylum at Alphabet City on the North Side, has been edited for space.
NEXT: What are some contributing factors that go into what makes someone intervene and step up to defend a victim of a violent crime?
Reese: I think that’s too complicated to know. I mean, I can talk about how I was raised and [having] a sense of responsibility. I can talk about what this organization is — what it does — and that it’s an organization based on hospitality and caring for one another. I can talk about empathy and reading — whether as a child or as an adult, but [there’s] this idea of others’ imagination, people being important in life, that there’s an obligation to exist in common and protect one another.
When you think of [writer and author Herman] Melville, I always think of the phrase isolato, where he talks about these characters who are isolated on islands in the sea. And, in fact, the character that sort of stands out, that kind of runs through “Moby Dick,” is Queequeg, right? He’s the [1851 novel’s central] character, and he has this relationship to Ishmael. They become bonded, though they’re initially strangers and Ishmael’s afraid of him. All of a sudden, they’re bonded through a journey.
That’s been the paradigm — for my wife and for myself — and this is a story that I’ve told before. There’s a scene at the beginning of “Moby Dick” in which Ishmael goes into the Spouter-Inn. The innkeeper, Peter Coffin, says to him: “You’re gonna be sharing beds with a guy named Queequeg,” who comes in later, after Ishmael’s in bed. And Ishmael wakes up and there’s this guy with a tomahawk, chopping tobacco and smoking it in a pipe on the ground. And he’s covered with tattoos. Ishmael begins this kind of, “Cannibal, cannibal! Help, help!” So the innkeeper comes up and says, “Queequeg is the kindest, gentlest, nicest guy in the world.” And then this chapter ends with — they go to bed and he says, “I never slept better in my life.”
So there’s always been a feeling that engaging with other imaginations brings you closer to them and makes you responsible for one another in a way you didn’t understand before. It’s nothing that is mandated. The more we can do that, the more, I think, it begins to happen.
All these things began to make me realize that this project can have impact. Can it have the same impact on one another, in this community — not just on a stage when something bad happens? You can’t compel people to act. You can’t say, “You should act.” What you can do is create the [sense] that acting [to protect and defend the innocent] is an extension of wanting someone else to do the same for you. It has to be natural.
NEXT: Was that the sensibility in the venue before the attacker charged the stage?
Reese: Well, we hadn’t actually started at that point. I mean, Salman Rushdie talks to people in public in big forums, right? So we’re up on this giant stage that holds an orchestra, right? It’s that big. The two of us are [up there] and I’m looking out into this huge audience. This is not what I [usually] do; I mean, I’m pleased that he’s there because he’s a good talker. So basically, no matter how bad I am, it’s gonna come off OK. I was pretty anxious [anyway]. I’m sitting there, looking out, trying to get accommodated to it.
NEXT: You hadn’t attuned yourself to the moment, really — you were still getting your bearings?
Reese: Yeah. They did a preliminary prayer opening. Then, the moderator did an introduction and that’s basically all that had happened. Part of the topic was to be about City of Asylum and Rushdie’s founding of the organization, and what was happening in Pittsburgh. So we were part of the topic.
NEXT: Pittsburgh was topical to the theme of Rushdie’s presentation and so was America as the last bastion or safe haven for the exiled or marginalized writer, correct?
Reese: The reason for [City of Asylum Pittsburgh] being on the stage is that Salman Rushdie had inspired us to start. He did so in a talk he gave here in Pittsburgh in 1997. Subsequently, he came to our first fundraiser.
Well, the Chautauqua Institution contacted me and said, “We’d be interested in this program. Would you contact Salman Rushdie?” I said, “Sure.”
What he was interested in talking about that day was, in part, the influence of newcomers to the United States and their influence on the writer’s imagination. He’d call it “hybrid imaginations.” And what he saw, probably in England when he was first going there, is resistance to the empire’s striking back. He saw that in his own life, with hybrid writing. And he saw that what was happening here [in America] now, living here for so long, is enriching the literary imagination of the writing and changing it. He wanted to talk about that.
We were gonna talk about protecting writers, obviously, as part of that — and what imagination means to a writer in exile.
NEXT: Had anyone anticipated that an assassination attempt might happen?
Reese: You’d better talk to Chautauqua Institution about their security. There were New York state troopers there. The fear had been that [an assassination attempt on Rushdie, which had been decreed in the name of blasphemy by Iran’s dictator, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989] would be a random somebody, somewhere, at some point. At one point, [the threat had been made by the Iranian] government, and [had been] structured. There was a feeling that the structured part of that had kind of eased, particularly here [in the United States].
I don’t know how you live your life that way. I mean, speaking of courage, to be so public as Rushdie was, for so many years, knowing that there’s [a death threat] all the time — and to write, to be publicly engaged — it’s hard to imagine. A short-term event or reacting is one thing to do. But living a life [under those conditions]?
NEXT: Rushdie refers to you as the person who saved his life. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Reese: I wish I had reacted quicker. Maybe it wouldn’t have been saving his life. Maybe it would have been preventing [an assassination attempt].
NEXT: What was it was like for you and Diane Samuels to be in the audience in 1997 when you were listening to Salman Rushdie speak here in Pittsburgh? Why was your passion ignited?
Reese: Well, we were both readers, even though Diane is a visual artist, and we both tremendously admired his work. We just thought we were going to a talk by Salman Rushdie. It had nothing to do with City of Asylum. He mentioned this program to protect writers.
At the time, we owned the house that’s now House Poem. It had been a crack house at one point. It had been partly rehabbed. We’d finished the rehab. We were renting it as an artist’s [studio] as a source of income. When people didn’t pay the rent, Diane would loan money. So, it wasn’t exactly profitable.
But we looked at each other and we both at the same time had the same thought — like that house would be better used for a writer in exile. At the time, we had a small Queequeg Foundation, which we had started with this idea of welcoming a stranger. Eventually, we made a connection. I had to learn on the job after the first writer showed up. Over the years, I learned about everything from immigration to medical issues. At the beginning, it seemed kind of simple. I was a little naive. It wasn’t that it was that hard. It seemed like something simple that the individual could do.
NEXT: You’re influenced by literature. What was your favorite book while growing up?
Reese: “Moby Dick” is my favorite novel. As a college student, it was one of those experiences I remember because of the circumstances. I was supposed to come home for Thanksgiving. It was my senior year and I started reading in the beginning of that week. I couldn’t stop reading it. I called [my parents] and said, “I’m not coming home.” I stayed all week because it’s one of those books you have to read every page a couple times. It’s like reading a couple of books. And it’s big. I spent the week reading that book. While growing up, [my favorite book was] the biography of Clarence Darrow by Irving Stone. I used to read that every summer. That and “Freddy the Pig” as a kid — he was like a detective pig. There’s a whole series.
NEXT: So you were interested in justice and literature. Had you read “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky?
Reese: I read the comic book [version]. As an adult, there was also Paul Celan’s poetry. He’s a German poet. Well, Romanian, actually. But he wrote [poetry] in German. And Walt Whitman.
NEXT: Where’d you grow up?
Reese: In Munhall, near Homestead. Mom was a housewife. My father is a doctor. Originally, a general practitioner. He went back and became a general surgeon. When he was a GP, he was making a [decent] living. When he went back to do his residency, back then, they didn’t pay [as much]. So, for three years, he was doing insurance exams at night because he wanted to make [more] money. Later, he went back into practice. He practiced medicine at Homestead Hospital.
NEXT: To the extent he was at liberty to discuss his work, did you hear stories about his medical cases?
Reese: [Laughing] Oh, yeah. That made it easier not to be squeamish. One day, as a kid, I wanted to know why he was paid so well for surgery. So I asked him, “Why do doctors get paid what they get paid?” He said: “Anybody can cut you up. That’s not hard. Taking responsibility for that is what I’m paid for.” So, I always thought taking responsibility is important in life.
NEXT: Why should someone contribute to City of Asylum Pittsburgh?
Reese: We’ll soon have six writers in exile. And we have the staff to support them and all the stipends to keep them living, provide medical insurance, counseling, help with translating and publishing — things like that. Basically, we’re supporting six exiled writers and their families, in some cases with children.
NEXT: Yours is the only City of Asylum that primarily thrives on individual donations?
Reese: Yes. For years, 100% of the funding for the writer campaign was from private, individual donations — 100%. Now, one or two of the positions are funded, for the first time, by some foundations. The Writer’s Sanctuary campaign is still primarily [based upon] individual [donations].
NEXT: If someone writes a donation check for $25, or $2,500 or $150, what percentage of that donation goes directly to support the marginalized writer?
Reese: For this campaign, 100%. There’s no siphoning off. There’s no fundraising cost or anything.
NEXT: Are you concerned about any threats or your safety?
Reese: No. There are times when we are more sensitive to it, like after the Salman Rushdie attack. For a while, we were more careful. When we did a program with Indian writers talking about him, we were a little more concerned for a few days.
NEXT: Have you received any jihadist threats?
Reese: No.
NEXT: Is Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum the world’s largest sanctuary for the persecuted international writer?
Reese: Yes [though] it is strange to think of [a place] here on a North Side street that’s like a center for the world.