Salman Rushdie is on the road to recovery, his agent confirmed Sunday, two days after the author of The Satanic Verses suffered serious injuries in a stabbing at a lecture in upstate New York. Padma Lakshmi, Rushdie’s former partner, said she was “worried and wordless” with the news but she could “finally exhale” as the updates on his recovery emerged.
“Relieved @SalmanRushdie is pulling through after Friday’s nightmare. Worried and wordless, can finally exhale. Now hoping for swift healing. (sic),” she wrote in a tweet on Sunday. The Indian-American author, TV host and model was married to Rushdie between 2004 and 2007. Lakshmi is also the host of popular show ‘Top Chef’.
Relieved @SalmanRushdie is pulling through after Friday’s nightmare. Worried and wordless, can finally exhale. Now hoping for swift healing.
— Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi) August 14, 2022
Rushdie was taken off ventilator over the weekend amid wide concerns over his condition. The indication of continued improvement followed news that the lauded writer was removed from the ventilator Saturday and able to talk and joke. Although Rushdie’s condition is headed in the right direction, his recovery would be a long process.
Rushdie, 75, was stabbed Friday while attending an event in western New York. He suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye, his agent Andrew Wylie said. Rushdie was likely to lose the injured eye.
His assailant, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the attack at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit education and retreat center. A judge ordered him held without bail after District Attorney Jason Schmidt told her Matar took steps to purposely put himself in position to harm Rushdie, getting an advance pass to the event where the author was speaking and arriving a day early bearing a fake ID. This was a targeted, unprovoked, preplanned attack on Mr. Rushdie, Schmidt said.
The attack was met with shock and outrage from much of the world, along with tributes and praise for the award-winning author who for more than 30 years has faced death threats for The Satanic Verses. Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa, or Islamic edict, demanding his death. A semiofficial Iranian foundation had put up a bounty of over $3 million for the author, though it has yet to offer any comment on the attack.
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