Salman Rushdie’s son says his father’s “defiant sense of humour remains intact” despite remaining in a critical condition after he was stabbed at a lecture in New York.
Key points:
- Rushdie’s agent said he is recovering, but that it would be a long process
- His son paid tribute to audience members who leapt to his defence, and police and paramedics
- US President Joe Biden praised Rushdie’s courage
“Though his life changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty & defiant sense of humour remains intact,” Rushdie’s son Zafar Rushdie said in a Sunday statement that stressed the author remained in critical condition.
Rushdie, 75, suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye, Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, had previously said, and was likely to lose the injured eye.
The statement on behalf of the family also expressed gratitude for the “audience members who bravely leapt to his defence,” as well as police, doctors and “the outpouring of love and support from around the world”.
Mr Wylie earlier confirmed that the author had been removed from a ventilator and was “on the road to recovery”, two days after the attack, and was able to talk and joke.
“He’s off the ventilator, so the road to recovery has begun,” Mr Wylie, wrote in an email to Reuters.
“It will be long. The injuries are severe, but his condition is headed in the right direction.”
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Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, pleaded not guilty on Saturday to attempted murder and assault charges in what a prosecutor called “a targeted, unprovoked, pre-planned attack” at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit education and retreat centre.
Originally from Lebanon, Mr Matar’s family comes from the south town of Yaroun.
Mr Matar’s father has locked himself in at his home and has refused to speak to anyone, town mayor Ali Tehfe said.
Mr Tehfe said the man’s parents emigrated to the United States and Mr Matar was born and raised there, but his father returned to Lebanon several years ago.
“His father is in the country now but he has locked himself in and is not accepting to give any kind of statement to anyone. We tried with him, we sent people, we went and knocked the door but he is not agreeing to speak to anyone,” Mr Tehfe said.
The attack was met with global shock and outrage, along with praise for the man who, for more than three decades, has weathered death threats and a US$3 million bounty on his head for “The Satanic Verses”.
Rushdie even spent nine years in hiding under a British government protection program.
Authors, activists and government officials cited Rushdie’s bravery and long-time championing of free speech in the face of such intimidation.
Writer and longtime friend Ian McEwan labelled Rushdie “an inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists” and actor-author Kal Penn called him a role model “for an entire generation of artists, especially many of us in the South Asian diaspora”.
“Salman Rushdie — with his insight into humanity, with his unmatched sense for story, with his refusal to be intimidated or silenced — stands for essential, universal ideals,” US President Joe Biden said in a Saturday statement.
“Truth. Courage. Resilience. The ability to share ideas without fear.”
Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim family and has lived in Britain and the US, is known for his surreal and satirical prose, beginning with his Booker Prize-winning 1981 novel “Midnight’s Children,” in which he sharply criticised India’s then-prime minister, Indira Gandhi.
Iranian papers praise ‘devine revenge’
Infused with magical realism, 1988’s “The Satanic Verses” drew ire from some Muslims who regarded elements of the novel as blasphemy.
They believed Rushdie insulted the Prophet Muhammad by naming a character Mahound, a medieval corruption of “Muhammad”.
The character was a prophet in a city called Jahilia, which in Arabic refers to the time before the advent of Islam on the Arabian Peninsula.
Another sequence has prostitutes that share names with some of Muhammad’s nine wives. The novel also implies that Muhammad, not Allah, may have been the Quran’s real author.
The book had already been banned and burned in India, Pakistan and elsewhere when Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death in 1989.
Khomeini died that same year, but the fatwa remains in effect — though Iran, in recent years, hadn’t focused on Rushdie.
Iran’s state-run newspaper, Iran Daily, praised the attack as an “implementation of divine decree” on Sunday.
Another hardline newspaper, Kayhan, termed it “divine revenge” that would partially calm the anger of Muslims.
AP/Reuters
Salman Rushdie’s ‘defiant sense of humour’ intact as he recovers from New York stabbing & Latest News Update
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