Durban - “Being hit on the face with a brick and having permanent facial scarring is certainly not a way to sell a book. It must be read for what it is!”
This was Zainub Priya Dala’s Sunday night tweet after calls by some of her supporters for people to buy her debut novel, What About Meera, in defiance of the religious fundamentalists who attacked her.
The Durban author, 40, is recovering from soft-tissue trauma and a hairline and cheekbone fracture after she was assaulted by three men in Overport last Wednesday who called her “Rushdie’s b***h”.
The attack came a day after she expressed her admiration for Salman Rushdie’s writing style while talking to school pupils in Chatsworth.
The visit was part of the outreach programme managed by the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts as part of its Time of the Writer festival.
On Monday, the South African Muslim Network (Samnet) and the Muslim Judicial Council condemned the attack, saying there was no justification for her assault.
“We are concerned by the perception that has been created that her attackers might be sympathetic to the Islam religion. The matter of Salman Rushdie’s book is over 20 years old and long forgotten by the Muslim community,” said Samnet’s Dr Faisal Suliman.
Provincial police spokes man Thulani Zwane said a case of assault had been opened at the Mayville police station and no arrests had been made.
The problems for Rushdie began in 1988 when his book The Satanic Verses was published.
Some Islamic leaders said it was blasphemous.
Attempts to get comment from Dala were unsuccessful.
The Mercury