I Will Persevere

All about Rushdie and Dala: A chilling account of religious persecution and the fight for freedom of expression.

- Zainab Priya Dala

I AM GRIPPED WITH PARALYSIS as I put pen to paper to record the events leading up to my assault : an attempt on my life following my expression of admiration for the writer Salman Rushdie that I survived.

A few days ago, a writer colleague approached me for advice. Her close friend, a writer from Palestine, was not allowed to enter her country for a literary festival. My response to them was studied and academic: That was when I knew I had been trying for three years to delete my experiences following the assault—by taking on an air of clinical coldness. There is nothing on earth that a writer abhors more strongly than the act of silencing.

The Rushdie and Dalasaga began with my debut novel, What About Meera.

It was March 2015 and my first novel was being published by Penguin Random House South Africa. Invited to be a participant in one of the bestknown literary festivals in the country, The Time of the Writer, I found myself on a panel. This talk on literature was organized for a group of high-school children and I sat on the panel with a crime writer from Germany and a screenwriter from Uganda. The banter was stimulating; the children eager and full of questions.