Since being stabbed on stage in New York, Salman Rushdie has been able to talk and has maintained his “feisty and rebellious” sense of humour, according to his son.
Despite being able to be taken off a ventilator, Zafar Rushdie, 42, posted a poignant update on his father’s health, which is still considered “serious.”
The 75-year-old Booker Prize winner was stabbed up to 15 times on Friday before giving a literary event at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York.
The author, who has been facing execution in Iran since 1989 for penning The Satanic Verses, was also left with liver damage, severed nerves in one arm, and, according to his agent, the possibility of losing one eye’s sight.
Hadi Matar, 24, a suspected knifeman, has been accused with attempted murder and assault.
He entered a not-guilty plea.
According to US media, Matar supports Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Shia fanaticism.
PR specialist Zafar, who is based in London, wrote: “My father’s health is still serious.
We are very grateful that he was able to speak briefly yesterday after being removed off the ventilator and supplementary oxygen.
His normal feisty and stubborn sense of humour is still there, despite the serious and life-altering injuries he sustained.
“We are very appreciative of the love and support we have received from all around the globe, as well as the courageous audience members who valiantly sprang to his defence and gave him first aid.
We beg for your continuous understanding and privacy while the family gathers at his bedside.
Just before fresh mugshots taken at the Chautauqua County Jail in Mayville, New York, were released, Zafar made an impactful remark.
The renowned novelist is on the “path to recovery” and is anticipated to survive the assault, it was further disclosed.
This afternoon, agent Andrew Wylie said: “It will be lengthy; the injuries are significant, but his health is improving.”
Rushdie can now “talk and joke,” a friend who visited him this morning confirmed.
Since Iran’s then-“supreme leader,” Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, or edict, proclaiming The Satanic Verses to be blasphemous and encouraging Muslims to murder him, the author, who is of Indian descent, has had to live under the fear of violence.
According to District Attorney Jason Schmidt, Matar intentionally placed himself in a position to injure the author, and the court ordered that he remain in custody without bail.
Mr. Schmidt said, “This was a deliberate, premeditated assault on Mr. Rushdie.”
He came a day early with a phoney ID, according to the prosecution, and had purchased an advance admission to the lecture.
Lebanese parents from Yaroun, a bastion of the Iranian-backed terrorist organisation Hezbollah, gave birth to Matar in the US.
He is said to have resided in Fairview, New Jersey, with his mother, two sisters, and other family members.
Neighbors there characterised them as a “typical, very pleasant, very American family.”
Friends claim that Matar is a reclusive devoted Muslim who has never mentioned Iran or Sir Salman.
The alleged attacker ran onto the stage, repeatedly stabbed the author, and was then pulled to the ground.
Henry Reese, who was also injured and was scheduled to moderate an on-stage conversation with Sir Salman, said that at first he believed the incident to be a “poor joke” since it “didn’t have any feeling of realism.”
Rushdie’s remarks to a German magazine from two weeks before, which were later made public in the aftermath of his stabbing, reflect the author’s unwavering optimism in the face of these “dangerous times.”
Death threats, according to Mr. Rushdie, “have grown more regular,” but the fatwa no longer frightens him.
A fatwa is a serious matter, he said. Fortunately, there was no internet back then. The fatwa was sent by the Iranians to the mosques.
It was a very long time ago. My life is now back to being completely normal.
After his fourth book, The Satanic Verses, which was seen to be blasphemous, Iran issued a demand for Muslims all across the globe to assassinate the author.
Sir Salman spent ten years in hiding in London under police protection, but once Iran’s government dropped its support for the death penalty – without technically rescinding it – he gradually reentered public life.
He is no longer on the ventilator, thus the path to recovery has started, according to his agent Andrew Wylie this afternoon.
“It will take a while; the wounds are significant, but his health is improving.”
Rushdie had one of his limbs’ nerves severed, was probably going to lose an eye, and had liver damage, the speaker said.
In New York, Matar was accused of trying to kill someone and assaulting someone.
Rushdie has two children from his four marriages; his other son is named Milan. Despite this, Rushdie has had several relationships, including one with Indian model Riya Sen.
The renowned author also admitted to Stern that he no longer fears the fatwa despite the “terrible circumstances” we now find ourselves in and the fact that the internet has made the globe “infinitely more hazardous.”
I constantly advise them not to be scared, Rushdie stated.
The bad news is that death threats have started to become increasingly commonplace. Not only do politicians get them; American instructors who remove certain books from the curriculum also do.
“I believe that many individuals now face risks comparable to those I did back then. And when compared to the internet, the fax machines they deployed against me are more like a bicycle than a Ferrari.
In 1998, Mr. Rushdie emerged from a decade-long exile when the newly elected Iranian president Mohammad Khatami declared that he no longer supported the fatwa.
The price on Rushdie’s head was upped to $3 million (£2.7 million) as a result of certain Muslims continuing to support Ayatollah Khamenei’s outrageous decree.
Rushdie, a New Yorker who became a citizen of the US in 2016, said he was most concerned about challenges to American democracy.
There, Trump’s triumph against reality is of utmost significance. He said: “His people think that the others are lying to them, not him.
Rushdie continued, “I believe something very good is happening in the young generation,” expressing his optimism for the future.
It has a stronger propensity for activism. A confrontational generation is coming of age that we really need right now.
“We need individuals who can organise themselves and who are willing to engage in conflict.” Fighters. a society that is worth living in.
“As an author, I also note that young writers are once again becoming role models, as opposed to the previous situation, in which only the deceased served as role models.”
When asked whether he was sentimental, Rushdie said, “Not usually. I like history, but I’d rather look forward when it comes to my own life.
According to Matar’s public attorney Nathaniel Barone, the authorities took too long to bring him before a court and left him “hooked up to a bench at the state police barracks.”
He is entitled to the presumption of innocent under the Constitution, Mr. Barone said.
According to authorities, Sir Salman was stabbed at least twice before being rushed to the hospital—once in the belly and once in the neck.
Penguin Random House, Sir Salman’s publisher, expressed their “great shock and disgust” over the occurrence.
The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, expressed his outrage at Sir Salman Rushdie’s stabbing while he was exercising a freedom that should never be abandoned.
“Right now, my thoughts are with his family ones,” he said. All of us are hope he’s OK.
Salman Rushdie has always represented the fight for liberty and freedom against those who want to stifle them, according to Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer.
“Those ideals are being attacked by the despicable assault on him yesterday. His complete recovery is in the prayers of the whole Labour Party.
“Today, the nation and the world saw a heinous assault on the novelist Salman Rushdie,” said Jake Sullivan, the US national security advisor. This violent act is abhorrent.
The Biden-Harris administration as a whole is hoping for a quick recovery for him.
We are grateful to law enforcement for its prompt and efficient work, which is still going on, as well as good citizens and first responders for assisting Mr. Rushdie so quickly following the attack.
People will always disagree, but we have the right to express our opinions, and artistic freedom ought to be a fundamental human right, said Bernardine Evaristo, president of the Royal Society of Literature.
That being said, “Yes to argument; no to violence.”
Before writing Midnight’s Children, a book about the founding of India that won the Booker Prize in 1981, Sir Salman started his writing career in the early 1970s with two unsuccessful books.
After the fatwa, the author lived in secrecy for many years in London under a British government protection programme.
Sir Salman gradually reentered public life when the Iranian government stopped supporting the death penalty in 1998. He even made an appearance as himself in the 2001 movie Bridget Jones’s Diary.
The money was gathered to increase the prize for the murder of Sir Salman as recently as 2016, according to the Index on Censorship, an organisation that supports free speech, highlighting the fact that the fatwa is still in effect.
He received a knighthood in 2008, and as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honors earlier this year, he was inducted into the Order of the Companions of Honour.
French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, a close friend of the author, has criticised Prince Charles for his alleged opinions on Sir Salman.
He claims that after Iran called for the author’s death, he asked Charles what he thought of Sir Salman.
Charles growled that Rushdie was not a good writer and added, “His protection costs the British Crown very dear,” Mr. Levy wrote yesterday in the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.
He said that when they were at the British embassy in Paris, author Martin Amis, who was accompanying them, retorted, “It costs considerably more to safeguard the Prince of Wales who has written, as far as we are aware, nothing of great consequence.”