Salman Rushdie is doing a little better according to his relatives, two days after the author of "Satanic Verses", threatened with death since 1989 by a fatwa from Iran, was stabbed at least ten times by an American of Lebanese origin , in the northern United States.
This Friday morning attack on the stage of an amphitheater in the cultural center of the quiet town of Chautauqua, near Lake Erie in upstate New York, shocked in the West, but was hailed by Muslim extremists.
The 75-year-old British and American intellectual is no longer on life support and "the road to recovery has begun", welcomed his agent Andrew Wylie in a press release sent to the Washington Post.
"The injuries are serious, but his condition is moving in the right direction," added this close friend of the world-famous writer, stabbed ten times in the neck and abdomen.
A 24-year-old man, Hadi Matar, had rushed to the stage before Salman Rushdie spoke at the Chautauqua cultural center.
"Integral Humor"
Zafar Rushdie, his son, confirmed on Twitter that his father "was able to say a few words" and that he "kept his sense of humor intact".
The family said they were "extremely relieved".
A family statement… @SalmanRushdie #SalmanRushdie pic.twitter.com/tMrAkoqliq
— Zafar Rushdie (@ZafRushdie) August 14, 2022
Salman Rushdie remains hospitalized in Erie, Pennsylvania, on the edge of the lake that separates the United States from Canada.
While Sunday's news is reassuring, Constable Wylie sounded alarmist on Friday when he reported serious arm and liver injuries and the possible loss of an eye.
Conference host Henry Reese, 73, who was lightly shot in the face, told CNN the attack "felt like some kind of bad joke [that] didn't seem real. When there was blood behind him, it became real".
Their attacker, Hadi Matar, born in the United States, living in New Jersey and whose parents are from a village in southern Lebanon, was charged with "attempted murder and assault".
In a black and white striped prisoner's uniform, handcuffed and masked, he did not say a word on Saturday evening before the Chautauqua court and pleaded "not guilty" by the voice of his lawyer.
He is due to appear again on August 19.
A premeditated attack
Without giving a motive, prosecutors called the attack premeditated.
The attack caused shock waves, particularly in the West: US President Joe Biden paid tribute to Salman Rushdie for his "refusal to be intimidated and silenced".
Living in New York for twenty years, naturalized American in 2016, Salman Rushdie had resumed an almost normal public life, while continuing to defend, in his books, satire and irreverence.
Coincidence: the German magazine Stern had interviewed him a few days 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 on August 18, saying he is "optimistic" despite "daily death threats".
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 in 1988 of the "Satanic Verses", judged by the most rigorous Muslims as blasphemous with regard to the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad, and leading the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini to issue the fatwa calling for his assassination.
The fatwa has in fact never been lifted and many of its translators have come under attack.
"Universal" fight
"His fight is ours, universal", had launched President Emmanuel Macron, while the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, had declared himself "horrified".
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid - whose country is an enemy of Iran - denounced "the result of decades of incitement to murder by the extremist Iranian regime".
But in Iran, the ultra-conservative daily Kayhan praised "this courageous and duty-conscious man who attacked the apostate and vicious Salman Rushdie";
and the Javan newspaper wrote on Sunday that it was a plot by the United States which "probably wants to spread Islamophobia around the world".
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that Iranian state media were "gloating" over the attack on the intellectual.
"It's despicable," he said in a statement.
In Pakistan, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan party - notorious for its violence against what it considers anti-Muslim blasphemy - has ruled that Rushdie "deserves to be killed".
In the UK, police are investigating a threat that Harry Potter author JK Rowling said she was targeting on Twitter after expressing her support for Salman Rushdie.
With AFP
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