Sina Iravanian’s Reviews > Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder > Status Update

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I recalled thinking back then that there were two ways in which the fatwa could derail me, destroy me as an artist: if I started writing “frightened” books, or if I started writing “revenge” books. Both options would destroy my individuality and independence and make me no more than a creature of the fatwa. It would own me, and I would no longer be myself."

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[To the assasin] What if I said to you, at the heart of the book I wrote, which you hate even though you only read two pages of it, is an East London Muslim family running a café-restaurant, portrayed with real love? [...] What if I said to you, when plans for a mosque near the 9/11 Ground Zero site were opposed by some New Yorkers, I defended the mosque’s right to be there? [...]"

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Language was my knife. If I had unexpectedly been caught in an unwanted knife fight, maybe this was the knife I could use to fight back. It could be the tool I would use to remake and reclaim my world, to rebuild the frame in which my picture of the world could once more hang on my wall, to take charge of what had happened to me, to own it, make it mine."

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When Death comes very close to you, the rest of the world goes far away and you can feel a great loneliness. At such a time kind words are comforting and strengthening. They make you feel that you’re not alone, that maybe you haven’t lived and worked in vain."

“Chautauqua” is a word in the Erie language spoken by the Erie people, but both the people and the language are extinct, so the word’s meaning is unclear. It may mean “two moccasins” or it may mean “a bag tied in the middle” or it may mean something else entirely. It may be a description of the shape of the lake, or it may not. There are things that are lost in the past, where we all end up, most of us forgotten.

"Then, in the corner of my right eye—the last thing my right eye would ever see—I saw the man in black running toward me down the right-hand side of the seating area. Black clothes, black face mask. He was coming in hard and low: a squat missile. I got to my feet and watched him come. I didn’t try to run. I was transfixed."