Salman Rushdie has been left with no vision in one eye and one of his hands is incapacitated since the “brutal attack” on him in August, the writer’s literary agent Andrew Wylie has revealed in an interview with El Pais newspaper.
The Indian-born British-American writer was stabbed on August 12 at an education center in New York state as he was preparing to give a lecture in front of a packed audience.
Rushdie has been living under constant threat since 1989, when Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for the writer’s death over his novel ‘The Satanic Verses’. The fatwa, which is still viewed by many as active, forced the writer to spend years in hiding with round-the-clock police protection.
In an interview, published on Saturday, Wylie said Rushdie had around 15 wounds in his chest and torso, as well as “three serious wounds in his neck.”
“One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut,” the literary agent said.
He added that Rushdie had also “lost the sight of one eye” but emphasized that, most importantly, the author “is going to live.”
Wylie refused to say whether Rushdie is still in the hospital, explaining that he cannot reveal his client’s whereabouts.
The agent said the August incident had not come as a surprise either to him or Rushdie, as they had discussed the possibility of such an attack in the past.
“The principal danger that he faced so many years after the fatwa was imposed is from a random person coming out of nowhere and attacking [him],” he explained, adding that it’s impossible to protect yourself from something “totally unexpected and illogical.”
Soon after the attack, the writer’s son, Zafar Rushdie, said in a statement that his father’s injuries were “life-changing” and “severe,” but that his “defiant sense of humor remains intact.”
A 24-year-old American of Lebanese origin, Hadi Matar, was charged with stabbing Rushdie. In a prison interview with the New York Post in August, he called the late Ayatollah Khomeini “a great person” but didn’t say if he had been following a fatwa. He also said he didn’t like Rushdie because, in his opinion, “he’s someone who attacked Islam.”
Matar has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder.
Iran, which in 1998 made a public commitment to “neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie,” categorically denied any link to the New York attack on the writer. At the same time, the country’s Foreign Ministry said that “no one deserves to be blamed except Rushdie and his supporters” for the incident.