A Life Almost Taken, Mine Forever Changed
Processing the trauma caused by an attempted murder at my place of work
GraciAnn Hicks
Print illustrations by Erin Morgan
A red brick-paved path leads the way to the covered outdoor amphitheater where hundreds of people sat in anticipation of award-winning author Salman Rushdie’s lecture. On the way there, audience members could catch glimpses of Chautauqua Lake as they passed by well-maintained Victorian-style houses with lush flowers lining their perfectly decorated porches — porches that often hosted audience members animatedly discussing the events they attended that day.
With green Chautauqua Institution seat cushions in place, hearing aids adjusted and children or grandchildren handed over to the boys’ and girls’ club, audience members could settle in to enjoy the 10:45 a.m. Friday lecture.
Rushdie and Henry Reese, founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, a non-profit organization supporting exiled writers, were introduced to the audience. Before Reese could begin the interview, a man from the audience rushed on stage.
While those sitting higher up in the amphitheater couldn't see what had happened, those who sat closer could see the man pummeling Rushdie.
Police detained the attacker. Rushdie lay on his back, blood pooling under his head. News that something terrible had happened began to spread through the grounds.
Meanwhile, I was a few buildings over, sitting at my desk in the newsroom of The Chautauquan Daily, the newspaper that serves the Institution. A photographer entered the newsroom and announced to the group that someone had attacked the morning lecturer. Things like this didn’t happen at Chautauqua.
***
Last summer, I interned as one of The Daily's copy editors. All I knew was that Chautauqua Institution was in western New York on a lake. I supposed it was part summer retreat and part educational conference. Academic and religious speakers and musicians performed there often.
Once I arrived, it felt slightly like the setting of a Jordan Peele movie, with its lakeside location, beautiful houses and families of multi-generational “Chautauquans.”
On my second night there, a group of interns sat on a dock and watched the sunset, chatting and getting to know each other. One of them was Arden Ryan, whose family owned a house on the grounds. He shared an anecdote about the worst criminals from the previous summer: A cowboy-hat-wearing man stole an Institution golf cart, which was later found and returned.
Friday, August 12, was the last day most interns were in the office before returning home or to their respective universities. We expected an easy day that would end in simple, bittersweet goodbyes.
Salman Rushdie was scheduled to give a lecture in the amphitheater that morning. He’s best known for his 1988 book “The Satanic Verses,” which was criticized by many Muslims as blasphemous. An Iran-based foundation had placed a bounty on Rushdie of $3 million, and in 1989, someone made a failed attempt to assassinate him.
I was sitting at my desk editing articles for the weekend paper when one of the photographers covering the event returned to the office early. Because I was immersed in my work, I didn’t pay much attention until the conversation coming from the other photographers rose above its normal level. It was typically the loudest section of the newsroom, but I could hear a difference in everyone’s tone.
I looked up, and suddenly they were rushing for the door. It was only then that I heard why the photographer had returned: Someone had rushed on stage during the lecture with Rushdie. I quickly joined a group of interns streaming out the door.
The amphitheater was a two-minute walk from the newsroom. We made it in maybe 30 seconds and saw hundreds of people spilling onto Bestor Plaza, frightened and crying. For 150 years, children had laughed and played on the plaza; musicians had performed here, and people had lingered to discuss the lectures they'd just heard. But today was different.
I had never seen anyone cry at Chautauqua.
As I took in the scene, it began to sink in that something terrible had happened. The amphitheater was blocked off with police tape when we reached it. As we stood around trying to find more information, we saw our Editor-In-Chief, Sara Toth, sprinting across the plaza back toward the newsroom.
More than a dozen of us followed her and crowded onto the porch of the office. Sara had her signature coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other by the time we caught up. We stood in silence, awaiting her guidance.
The Chautauquan Daily is not an average newspaper. It’s owned by the Chautauqua Institution; it’s a house organ. In the off-season, Sara and her husband Dave Munch, who acts as photo editor for the paper during the summer, work for Chautauqua in different roles.
Sara was candid with us, sharing that she was struggling against two different instincts. As a reporter, she wanted to tell us to get after the story as soon as possible. As an employee, she didn’t know what was safe or what the Institution would allow us to report.
As we talked on the porch, Sara confirmed that Rushdie had been attacked.
Sara told us we could always report on the community reaction later. At this point, the Institution was under lockdown, and she wanted us inside the office. During this conversation, the first outside news report poured in from Associated Press. A writer happened to be in the audience, not even to cover the event, and less than 15 minutes after the amphitheater was evacuated, they posted the first article covering the incident.
The air on the porch was heavy with defeat. For another news source to report on the story first felt like failing as journalists.
We accepted what Sara said and spilled back into the office. I sat at my desk in “editors’ island” and tried to return to my work. I didn’t get far before I began writing a reflection on the day to process and record my experience. I only wrote 98 words before more updates came in from another photographer.
He had also been covering the event and had charged the stage as soon as the man attacked Rushdie. A group of interns crowded around a computer to look at his pictures.
I hesitated. Then I eventually went over to look for myself. I had seen powerful photos before, including several that showed war refugees and national crises, but I had never been so close to a tragedy, then viewed it through a camera lens.
In the pictures, I saw blood spilled around Rushdie’s body, confirming our fears that he had been stabbed.
The attacker had brought a knife into the amphitheater and tried to kill an internationally renowned author in front of an audience of hundreds of people.
I couldn’t look at the pictures for very long.
Because the photographer was a Chautauqua employee, the Institution technically owned the pictures. He couldn’t send them to major news sources until he had Chautauqua’s OK. If he’d had permission, his pictures likely would have been on the front page of The New York Times the next day. He might have even won awards for them. But all he could do was stare at the screen.
I became overwhelmed with feelings of uselessness, and I asked the other intern from Miami University, Skyler Black, to talk with me outside.
We both felt that as journalists we should do something. We could not accept sitting in the office while a tragedy that was making international news unfolded in our place of work. Still, we didn’t know what would get us in trouble.
We also didn’t know if we would be safe to report. I worried that the man who attacked Rushdie might not have been working alone.
As we stood outside the office, Arden sprinted toward us.
“My mom just called and told me the Everett Jewish Life Center is on fire!”
I froze. Reporters and photographers began to run toward the building, one of the many religious spaces on campus.
If it was on fire, then this was a calculated attack on all of Chautauqua, which prided itself on being an interfaith safe haven. I was afraid and stayed back in the newsroom. I once again felt as if I were failing as a journalist, and I reasoned with myself that others could get the details.
I called my dad. I had been texting my mom and dad updates the whole time, but I couldn’t tell them over text that there was possibly a literal terrorist attack happening where I worked. Shortly after I got off the phone with him, the interns returned to the office. The “fire” was a false alarm.
What terrible timing.
After confirming that the Institution wasn’t under attack, I returned to my conversation with Skyler, and a few others joined us. We all agreed that waiting around wasn’t an option, but we didn’t know where Sara was, as she had been running around trying to find more information.
I decided to take charge. We walked back into the office, and I approached Dave.
“I’m going to level with you, Dave,” I said. “You have a room filled with journalists who want to report on this story.”
He seemed flustered and scared, but I pushed him because we felt we had a duty to fulfill.
“I don’t want my wife to get fired. I don’t want to get fired,” he said as concern wrinkled his eyebrows.
I assured him that we didn’t want that either and asked if he knew what we could do. He eventually conceded and said we could go talk to people but not bother them too much.
So, we headed out to report on the community's reaction as a team. We passed the main entrance to the grounds; the line of cars trying to leave and return was longer than we had ever seen. The Institution had been on lockdown, but it now allowed people to enter and exit.
Vans with reporters were already positioned outside the gates. I felt disgusted that they could bother a community processing trauma, even as we were about to do the same thing.
As we walked through the grounds, talking with employees and residents, the scene felt apocalyptic. The roads were normally filled with people on their way to events, leisurely strolling as grandkids rode ahead on bikes and their dogs stopped for bathroom breaks. That day, the roads were empty, except for several visitors walking or driving toward an exit with suitcases in tow, with no intention of returning to Chautauqua.
Meanwhile, the art vendors who occupied Bestor Plaza every Friday sold their products as usual.
“I don’t understand how they can act like nothing happened,” Skyler said angrily.
After talking to people milling about the plaza, we returned to the office and were instructed to put everything we had gathered from reporting into a shared document. Sara told us that we would not publish a news story about it until the following day, when it would appear in the weekend paper. The Chautauquan Daily is foremost a print publication with a mostly graying or grayed audience, so articles are never published exclusively online.
Instead of returning to editing, I began searching through our massive bound archive with all newspapers from the summer of 2010 when Rushdie had visited Chautauqua before. I eventually found an article that Sara had written when she was an intern.
In 1989, Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, which is a legal ruling from an Islamic leader, that called for Rushdie’s death. This fatwa resulted in previous attempts to assassinate the author. Mere months later, though, the Ayatollah died.
During his first lecture at Chautauqua, Rushdie had been asked about the fatwa, and he responded: “One of us is dead. … You know what they say about the pen being mightier than the sword? Do not mess with novelists.”
Though Rushdie’s own life had been at risk, he felt confident enough in 2010 to boast of his own survival over the Ayatollah’s. According to Sara’s article, he made this statement on the very stage where an attacker had tried to kill him today.
My chest sank under the horrible irony.
Around dinner time, we ordered food from a local pizza place, which was a Friday tradition, but the tradition felt stale. Most of us didn’t have much appetite even though we hadn’t eaten in hours. The food didn’t offer the normal chance for casual lunchtime conversations; it was purely fuel to keep us moving forward. I placed over half of my wings into our shared newsroom fridge and returned to work.
After editing the remaining pieces for the weekend paper, I left twelve hours after I arrived. Twelve-hour days weren’t uncommon for a copy editor, but that day felt infinitely longer.
I returned to the house I shared with six other interns. With heavy footsteps, I climbed the stairs, walked into my shared bedroom and burst into tears, feeling thankful my roommate wasn’t there.
It was a primal release of emotions that had been building the entire day. I hadn’t properly processed any of the shock, hurt or anger that a man being stabbed at your place of work brings.
I called my mom and talked through my feelings. While on the phone, I received an invitation from girls in the other intern house to come over and drink. I didn’t think it would be a wise decision for me. I told my mom, and she agreed and told me to go to bed.
The moment the call ended, I contemplated going to sleep. I truly felt as if I had been awake for 24 hours. I knew it would be a bad decision to go, but my friends — the only other people who had experienced the day’s events as staff of The Chautauquan Daily — wanted me to come.
So I drove to the other interns’ house anyway because I didn’t want my last memories with my co-workers to be of us scrambling about the grounds to report on a tragedy. I didn’t want my bittersweet goodbye stolen from me.
When I arrived at the other house, people were partying as if nothing had happened. There were four strangers there: out-of-town friends of one of the designers who had planned to visit that day. They hadn’t worked at Chautauqua the whole summer. They didn’t understand what an event like the stabbing meant for a place like that, or what it meant for us. They just wanted to get drunk with their friend.
So I tried to join them. If everyone else could have fun, I thought I could as well.
I don’t remember the exact moment things changed, but one moment we were laughing, the music was blaring and I was enjoying myself, and then I was in a friend’s bed having a panic attack.
As I lay under her quilt, a tsunami of tears flooded from my eyes, and my shallow breathing came fast.
I was inconsolable. I kept repeating, “I just don’t know how someone could do something like this.”
Skyler and some of her roommates tried to comfort me, to calm me down. They did everything they could imagine from having me talk to a crisis hotline to calling my mom at 3 a.m. I’d have moments where my breathing would slow enough for me to croak out a few sentences, but I couldn’t stop hyperventilating.
While I shattered under the pressures of the day, people continued to party out in another room. I felt like an embarrassment: a pitiful story they would tell their real friends when they returned to their university in a few days.
I reassured them I was fine and tried to sleep as they returned to the party. But I couldn’t shake the panic attack; it was unlike any I’d had before, which usually didn’t last longer than 20 minutes.
It was one thing to read about terrible, violent events in the news, but to have one happen in such close proximity, in my place of work where parents had never before worried about letting their children walk around or ride bikes alone and where they thought nothing bad could happen — it wrecked me.
I have always been an idealist in denial. I’ll say that I’m a realist, but it always broke my heart to expect anything other than good from people. It wasn’t that I had never dealt with terrible people or been hurt badly; I just needed to remain optimistic because the alternative left me unable to function. My worldview had been shattered, though. If someone could try to kill somebody they didn’t know in front of hundreds of other strangers, maybe people aren’t generally good.
As I wept, I felt every ounce of idealism exit my body.
After three hours of what felt like fighting for my life, I screamed out for help, but nobody couldn’t hear me over the music. Since my friends had left me, I had become convinced that I would die.
The worry that I would die was a sick psychological trick my brain was playing on me, compounded by my fears, a shortage of oxygen and an abundance of alcohol in my blood.
Eventually, my friends returned, and I conveyed my concerns to them. They tried to convince me that I didn’t need to go to a hospital and talked me out of calling an ambulance. However, I couldn’t be bargained with.
Before we walked out to the car, they cleared the kitchen of the partiers and helped me put on my shoes while I kept my head down sheepishly.
A friend who hadn’t had a drink in hours drove me to the local emergency room. They gave me anxiety pills, Vistaril. I began to calm down, and at about 5 a.m. I went home.
The following day, all I did was lay in bed, hardly moving or eating, and I kept checking all the news sources.
I had to go into the office on Sunday like normal to edit articles for Monday’s paper, and I was supposed to leave Monday, so I thought about not going in at all. I couldn’t fathom walking back onto the Institution's grounds. I joked about getting to the entrance and breaking down, but I really thought it was a possibility.
I forced myself to go anyway because the other copy editor was out of town, and I couldn’t let Sara edit the paper alone.
Sunday was another 10-plus hour day. The office was mostly empty except for a couple designers, Sara and myself. I asked one of the designers what her favorite Disney movie was and proceeded to put on “Tangled” while we worked.
We needed the comfort of something that brought us joy as children. We needed to be reminded of a time when nothing like this could happen to us.
I left on Monday as planned and returned home with only four full days until I would move into the house I would live in during my junior year at Miami.
I wanted to hide from the world. I didn’t want to return as a broken person to my Miami friends who I hadn’t seen in months. I was damaged, and it wasn’t their problem. I already felt like I had burdened my fellow interns and my parents enough with my grief.
I felt weak. Stupid. Pathetic.
Nobody else broke down the way I did.
People told me that everybody processes things differently, but I couldn’t believe it.
Before leaving for Miami, my mom and I went to Walmart to purchase a few last-minute items. As we walked through the store, I felt more anxious than ever in public. It was a busy place filled with strangers who might do anything.
I felt completely out of control, just like I was at Chautauqua — like anyone could hurt me and there was nothing I could do about it.
I have always struggled with control but seeing how very little I actually had made me feel unsafe going to places that normally wouldn’t be a problem.
I talked with a pastor from my home church, and I cried. A lot. I left feeling a little lighter, but I still felt as if nobody understood exactly what I was going through.
I didn’t understand it myself. I wasn’t attacked. I wasn’t even in the amphitheater when it happened. Yet I was entirely robbed of any sense of security I felt in completing day-to-day tasks.
I understand now that my reaction was valid. But I will never understand how people are capable of such evil. I still carry the trauma with me in unexpected ways, like when I drove to Columbus, Ohio, for fall break and saw that a car had flipped over the median and was upside down.
As I drove past it, my eyes welled with tears. I didn’t know those people and couldn’t see any blood. Yet anxiety crept in. Pressure built in my chest, and my knuckles turned bright white as I gripped the steering wheel harder.
That could have been me. That could have been anyone I knew.
Weeks after I drove past the crash, while I was on a phone call with my mom, she told me that my aunt and cousin had been in a bad car accident. Both situations only reaffirmed what the attempted Rushdie murder has taught me: We have no control over the bad things in life. I’m still in the process of mourning this fact.
I’ll likely always carry the trauma, but I’m moving forward.
