This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. The day that writer Rachel Eliza Griffith, married writer Salman

Rushdie, was expected to be one of the best, perhaps the best day of her life. But her dearest friend

Aisha, who was set to speak at the wedding, never arrived because she suddenly, shockingly died. That triggered Griffith's dissociative identity disorder.

She'll explain what that means a little later. It was only 11 months after the wedding that Rushdie

was stabbed multiple times while being interviewed on stage at the Chautauqua Festival near Buffalo, New York.

Griffith was home in New York City at the time

and had to figure out how to get to her husband, not knowing whether she'd find him still alive,

what their future would be, what her future would be. When she got to the ICU, he was hanging

on to his life. His face was so disfigured from the wounds, the stab that

blinded him, and the swelling that she refused to allow him to look in a mirror. Griffith's new

memoir, the flower bearers, covers this period, as well as her childhood, which pretty much ended when

she was 11 or 12, and her mother was diagnosed

with kidney disease. She also writes about her relationship with Aisha, and how they

initially connected over being black female poets, trying to find their voices as writers, and a place

in the literary world. Rachel Eliza Griffiths also the author of the novel Promise and several poetry collections,

including Seeing the Body.

Rachel Eliza Griffith, welcome to Fresh Hair.

I really like your book a lot.

Thank you so much, Terry.

And I'm going to call you Eliza from here on in because that's how you prefer to be called.

So let's start with your wedding day, which you describe as both the best and worst day of your life.

Best because you were getting married to a man you really loved and who loved you too.

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