Salman Rushdie is better and able to speak, his son and his agent said on Sunday, two days after the British writer was violently stabbed ten times by an American of Lebanese origin during a conference in the north of the United States. 75 years old. He is no longer on life support and “the road to recovery has begun,” his agent Andrew Wylie said in a statement to The Washington Post. “The injuries are serious, but his condition is moving in the right direction,” added this relative of the author of “Satanic Verses” stabbed Friday morning a dozen times in the neck and abdomen, during a literary conference. at the Chautauqua Cultural Center (New York State). His son Zafar Rushdie confirmed on Twitter that his father “got to say a few words” on Saturday and that he “kept his sense of humor intact”. The Rushdie family said they were “extremely relieved”.
A family statement… @SalmanRushdie#SalmanRushdiepic.twitter.com/tMrAkoqliq
— Zafar Rushdie (@ZafRushdie) August 14, 2022
A premeditated attack
Salman Rushdie remains hospitalized since Friday in Erie, Pennsylvania, on the edge of the lake that separates the United States from Canada. According to the New York Times on Saturday evening, quoting Andrew Wylie who had been alarmist on Friday, the famous writer, British and naturalized American, had started to speak again.
Joe Biden condemned “brutal attack”
The attack caused a shock wave, particularly in the West: the American president Joe Biden condemned “a brutal attack” and paid tribute to Salman Rushdie for his “refusal to be intimidated and silenced” Living in New York for twenty years, Salman Rushdie had returned to a more or less normal life while continuing to defend, in his books, satire and irreverence.
Coincidentally, the German magazine Stern interviewed him a few days ago, before the attack: “Since I have been living in the United States, I no longer have a problem (…) My life is back to normal” , assures the writer, in this interview to be published in full on August 18, saying he is “optimistic” despite “daily death threats”.
A hailed attack in Iran
Salman Rushdie, born in 1947 in India into a family of non-practicing Muslim intellectuals, had set part of the Islamic world ablaze with the publication of the “Satanic Verses”, judged by the most rigorous Muslims as blasphemous with regard to the Koran and of the Prophet Muhammad, and leading the Iranian Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini to issue the “fatwa” calling for his assassination.
The “fatwa” has in fact never been lifted and many of its translators have been wounded by attacks or even killed, such as the Japanese Hitoshi Igarashi, who was stabbed to death in 1991. In Iran, the ultra-conservative daily Kayhan congratulated the assailant: “Bravo to this courageous and duty-conscious man who attacked the apostate and vicious Salman Rushdie”, writes the newspaper. “Let us kiss the hand of him who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife”.