Salman Rushdie took the stand in the trial of the man accused of attempting to kill him at a literary gathering in western New York in August 2022, and described the shocking attack more than 35 years after he was first placed under a death warrant by Iranian religious leaders.

Rushdie, 77, is testifying for the prosecution against Hadi Matar, 27, the man accused of assaulting him with a knife as he was about to address an open-air audience on a theme of shelter and home.

The encounter in Judge David Foley’s courtroom brought Rushdie and Matar together for the first time since, prosecutors say, Matar dropped a bag containing assorted knives as he approached the stage at the Chautauqua Institution amphitheater, and stabbed the author more than a dozen times with a 10in knife.

Speaking in a clear voice, Rushdie described how he was sitting in a chair on the stage, facing co-speaker Henry Reece and the audience, when “this assault began”.

“I was aware of this person rushing at me from my right-hand side. I was aware of someone with dark hair and dark clothes … I was struck by his eyes which seemed dark and ferocious to me.”

Rushdie added: “He hit me very hard around my jawline and neck. Initially I thought he’d punched me with his fist, but very soon afterwards I saw a large quantity of blood pouring on to my clothes. He was hitting me repeatedly. Hitting and slashing.”

He continued: “Everything happened very quickly. I was stabbed repeatedly, and most painfully in my eye. I struggled to get away. I held up my hand in self-defense and was stabbed through that.”

Asked how many times he was stabbed, Rushdie said: “I wasn’t keeping score.”

Rushdie described getting up from his seat to get away from his attacker but fell. “He was trying to strike me as many times as possible.

“I was very badly injured. I couldn’t stand up any more. I fell down,” Rushdie testified, estimating that he had been struck 15 times by his assailant.

“I was screaming because of the pain,” he said, describing the wound to his right eye that took his sight on that side. Rushdie showed jurors the empty socket beneath an eye patch he now wears.

While lying on the stage, Rushdie continued: “I became aware of a great quantity of blood I was lying in. My sense of time was quite cloudy, I was in pain from my eye and hand, and it occurred to me quite clearly I was dying.”

Rushdie described how he was put on a gurney and later wheeled to an emergency medical helicopter. “I was dimly aware of what was going on until the helicopter landed, then I don’t remember anything until much later.”

Rushdie was hospitalized for more that two weeks, and described how, while on a ventilator, he communicated by wiggling his feet.

Under a brief cross-examination, Rushdie was asked about his recollection. He agreed that false memories exist. He pointed to his initial recollection “that I stood up to face him (Matar), but that was not true. I was sitting down.”

Rushdie agreed with Matar’s defence proposition that freedom of expression, the right to a jury trial and due process were valuable rights and said he had had no contact with Matar before the alleged assault. Asked if Matar had spoken to him at all during the alleged incident, Rushdie said: “He did not.”

The author was then excused from the witness box.

Matar, a dual US-Lebanese citizen, is accused of attempted murder and assault. He has pleaded not guilty. Matar muttered: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as he was brought into court. Rushdie’s wife, Rachel Griffiths, and his agent, Andrew Wylie, sat in the gallery flanked by security.

In opening statements, jurors had heard from prosecutors that Matar “almost succeeded in killing Mr Rushdie”.

“Without hesitation, this man, holding his knife … forcefully and efficiently in its speed, plunged the knife into Mr Rushdie over and over and over and over again,” prosecutor Jason Schmidt said.

Assistant public defender Lynn Schaffer told jurors that prosecutors would be unable to prove Matar’s guilt, even using video recordings and photos.

“The elements of the crime are more than ‘something really bad happened’ – they’re more defined,” Shaffer said. “Something very bad did happen, but the district attorney has to prove much more than that.”

A series of witness were called on Monday by prosecutors looking to place Matar at the crime scene. The Chautauqua employee Jordan Steves said he saw a “violent interaction with someone swinging their arms at an onstage guest …”

Absent from the case so far is any reference to the fatwa that called for Rushdie’s death, issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini, then supreme leader of Iran. Prosecutors say they can secure a conviction without reference to it.

Matar is set to be tried on federal terrorism charges, where the issue of motivation will be hard to exclude. The charges allege Matar was motivated by an endorsement of the fatwa by the Iran-backed group Hezbollah. On Monday, Matar said “Free Palestine” as he entered the courtroom.

A later trial on the federal charges – terrorism transcending national boundaries, providing material support to terrorists and attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization – will be scheduled in US district court in Buffalo.

In an account published last year, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Rushdie recounted how he had a premonition in a dream of of being attacked in an amphitheater.

The trial will last up to two weeks, the lawyers said.