Kicked unconscious, his head almost cut off: ‘It’s bizarre how untraumatised I feel’

There are things we might expect of a man who nearly had his head cut off in the middle of a Tube station. A man who was jumped from behind and kicked unconscious before his disturbed attacker pulled out a bread knife and began sawing at his neck while shouting: "This is for Syria, my Muslim brothers … all your blood will be spilled."

The psychological trauma might have been deeper than the cut, which required 19 stitches and left a lumpy scar. Anger might have damaged him more than the knife, which broke as it reached his windpipe. Fear might have outlasted the press coverage, which began on the front page of every national newspaper.

But none of this is true for Lyle Zimmerman, who was so determined not to be changed or defined by the attack in east London last December that he kept his identity secret for more than six months. At his flat a few miles away, the American talks about his recovery in full for the first time, and how the deaths of Jo Cox and 49 people in Orlando – as well as the deadly threat of climate change – have compelled him to speak out.

"The degree to which I feel untraumatised is a little bit bizarre even to me, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it," says the scientist and musician initially described in court as "Male A". Those proceedings ended in June when a jury found Muhiddin Mire guilty of attempted murder. The 30-year-old, who had images of the murdered soldier Lee Rigby on his phone, will be sentenced on 27 July. He is now at Broadmoor, the secure psychiatric hospital.

Zimmerman, who is 56, sits on a desk chair facing a pile of guitars and a fully loaded hat stand. As he speaks he takes longs pauses to think about what he’s saying – and resists an instinct not to talk about himself. His desire for privacy means he has asked for photos not to include his face, which is a picture of composure. His 12cm scar looks like a jagged choker above a loose T-shirt. His resilience is confounding; no nightmares, no flashbacks, no tears or trauma – only an extreme rationalism and at times a black sense of humour.

Not gonna change my life

“I remember vividly being in a hospital with all these needles and tubes coming out of me. I heard a doctor saying to the cops, ‘No, he doesn’t have life-threatening injuries but he’s got potentially life-changing injuries.’ And I said, ‘Excuse me! No, no, not gonna change my life. I do not have life-changing injuries.’ They probably thought I was crazy, but they stopped saying it, and that’s the way I’ve thought of it ever since.”

Zimmerman was travelling to Leytonstone station on the Central line on Saturday, 5 December. He had left his flat carrying an amplifier, a mandolin and an electric guitar on his back. He points at the instruments as he speaks. He was on his way to a a gig with one of his bands, the Snakeoil Rattlers. He didn’t know it, but Mire was on the same carriage. The musician wonders if the silver necklace he wore that night drew attention to his throat.

“I can’t think of any reason he chose me, and when he jumped me I was unclear whether I’d been stabbed or punched. I turned my head and caught a glimpse of a man and then I don’t remember anything until I was on the ground getting my head kicked in. I covered my head and remember thinking, ‘Hey, this doesn’t hurt too bad.’ He must have knocked me out with the next kick.”

Eyes blackening and teeth cracking, Zimmerman was unconscious by the time the sawing started, leaving his necklace in a pool of his own blood. He never saw it again. He isn’t sure how committed Mire was, or whether he had set out to “reproduce a tableau”. “I told the police the next day, ‘If this guy had grown up on a farm, I’m not here.’” Mire then began running around the station, injuring two more people with the damaged knife. Mobile phone footage showed passers-by trying to disarm him, and police officers eventually stopping him with a Taser. The clip soon went viral as news of the attack spread.

‘You ain’t no Muslim, bruv’

Zimmerman couldn’t make out what Mire was shouting. Nor did he hear the man who shouted: ‘You ain’t no Muslim, bruv’

By the time of the arrest, Zimmerman had come around. A passing young doctor and two bystanders had dragged him to some steps and staunched the bleeding with a scarf. "Having a doctor there to tell me I was going to be OK meant a huge amount," Zimmerman says. He was aware of the commotion but couldn't make out what Mire was shouting. Nor did he hear the response of the man who shouted: "You ain't no Muslim, bruv." The phrase became a rallying cry and was quoted by David Cameron. Zimmerman loved the sentiment, too, and what it said about the city he has called home for 15 years. But he also knew what it said about the charged atmosphere beyond the hospital walls. The world was still shuddering after attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. Parliament had just voted to bomb Isis in Syria, and Donald Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric was reaching its nadir. And here was an American victim of an apparent Islamic extremist attack in London.

"I don't see Mr Mire as emblematic of immigration or religion, I just think he's a really unwell guy," he explains. "And I knew I was going to be OK. But obviously I also knew it was going to be a sensationalised story. It would have been like giving a million dollars to Trump's campaign, and a gift to Isis. I didn't want that, so I asked the police, 'How long can you protect my anonymity?'" Zimmerman got a privacy order, and told close family and friends not to share his news. The silence also allowed him to spend time with his girlfriend, who he says has suffered more than him. "She got driven across town in a car with the lights flashing and the siren on. She thought I was dead. And she gets to the hospital and not only am I not dead but the first thing I says is: 'When you were looking into surgery for my snoring, I didn't know you were going to hire a freelancer.' She didn't think it was funny at all."

The snoring did stop, for a while. A few days later, Zimmerman was playing guitar again and thinking about work. The attack had come at a challenging time. He had always been a high achiever, growing up in Washington DC as the son of a Jewish-American lawyer and poet, and a liberal mother of Wasp stock.

He studied English literature then biology in California, before a PhD at MIT in Boston. He arrived in 2001 to lead research in disease-causing genes at the Francis Crick Institute. "Basically we arranged marriages for frogs in such a way that they had the funniest looking kids." His work partly explains his lack of squeamishness. "I've decapitated enough frogs to just about make up the equivalent amount of soul of one American scientist," he says. When he watches Game of Thrones with his girlfriend, who he prefers not to name, he doesn't flinch during the throat-cutting scenes, while she has flashbacks.

Recovery felt like ‘a kind of vacation’

But by the time of the attack, Zimmerman’s confidence was plummeting. He had quit the lab to research and write about climate change, a long-held passion. (Remarkably, he says a desire not to distract attention from the ongoing climate talks in Paris partly compelled him not to reveal his identity after the attack). If nothing else, the randomness of his encounter with Mire made his physical recovery feel like “a kind of vacation” from his depression: “I got to not feel like everything was my fault.”

The anonymity was also stabilising, and he considered maintaining it during the week-long trial at the Old Bailey, where a screen blocked his view of Mire. He says he felt little emotion on the stand, and while his name appeared in court reports for the first time, his nationality remained secret. He received little attention. But then a new attack rocked his resolve. Four days after the guilty verdict, another young, disturbed man with a warped ideology murdered 49 people in an Orlando nightclub. "I suddenly realised I'd done this exactly backwards. There was the possibility of actual movement on gun control and I thought, maybe hearing an American accent saying, 'I understand why people like guns but I feel much safer in the UK' could help. Because I had this potentially horrific event that had trivial consequences for everybody but Mr Mire and his family, in part because of gun control."

Zimmerman has watched CCTV footage of his attack, and cannot see how he could have reached for a gun had he been armed. If Mire, passers-by or the police had been armed, the station floor would have been much bloodier that night. “In the US he’d be somebody’s martyr now, and I also feel like I would now feel much more traumatised if not dead. Instead, I’m OK, and he’s nobody’s martyr. I think that’s a great civil society outcome.”

“It’s clear Mr Mire succumbed to a violent ideology but how do you hold those organisations which prey on the vulnerable responsible for that without challenging free speech? I don’t have that sorted out yet.” He wants to see more resources for mental health services, with which Mire had been acquainted. “I’ll be very disappointed if he isn’t sentenced to a mental facility where he can be fixed up. I’m not interested in anything retributive.”

After Zimmerman spoke briefly to a London news agency, and on US radio, his Facebook feed became a torrent of shocked support, which he found uncomfortable. "I just hope that my story is in some way useful," he says. He wants now to focus on climate change. "Despite the fact somebody tried to take my head off, I think that violent extremism is going to cost a tiny fraction of the number of lives that climate change is going to cost," he adds, comparing the threat to a firing gun. "We can hope the bullets will miraculously bounce off harmlessly, like the knife that broke on my neck, but we know that by far the safest and least expensive thing to do about those bullets is to keep them in the gun."

And he wants to move on. He thinks of his attack like he would a car crash he could have done nothing about: “It happened, but it doesn’t have much to do with who I am.” The only real change in his life has been a deeper love for London and his girlfriend. He plans to thank the passing doctor in person – to show him he is OK. He has already returned to Leytonstone. He repeated the gig he missed just a month after the attack. His bandmates wore matching red neckerchiefs in solidarity. He passed through the station on his way home, and felt fine. “But as I’m approaching the ticket barriers, this West African guy with a huge smile comes up and shakes my hand and won’t let go. He was cheerful and and I think he wanted me to come back out and buy him a drink, but he wouldn’t let go. And I’m thinking, dude, this is way more complicated than you know. Then he let go and I went to get the last train home.”

Guardian