A host who was about to interview Salman Rushdie was attacked onstage by a mad knifeman. He revealed the grievous injuries he suffered while trying to defend the stabbed novelist.
Henry Reese, 73, blacked out when he told the BBClate Tuesday about last Friday's attack on Chautauqua Research Institute, about 55 miles south of Buffalo.
Besides the deep bruises that made his eyes pop, he also burst onto the stage and held the leg of the man who stabbed Rushdie repeatedly.
"I am doing well. Everything is going well. I am doing very well," he told the British broadcaster from his home in Pittsburgh.
"Our concern is Saruman," he said of the "Satanic Verses" writer who was put on a respirator first and could lose an eye.
"And it's certainly not just for himself, but what he means to the world. And he matters to the world," Reese said of the writer.
Reese was selected to host an interview with Rushdie. After Iran put a bounty on his head for his own work with the City of Asylum, a group that supports persecuted writers.
The pair remained calm and chatted when an attacker burst onto the stage and stabbed Rushdie in the neck three times and his abdomen four times, injuring his chest, right thigh and right eye. had not started.
And to see Salman Rushdie get assaulted for his life is unimaginable…I can't explain what it's like to see it happen before your very eyes.
"There is nothing more vivid in the embodiment of our values," he said.
The soft-spoken host told The Atlantic that he sustained a knife wound when he pinned down Rushdie's attacker's leg. Hadi Matar, a 1-year-old New Jersey male.
"This is a very bold attack on the core values of freedom and ways to resolve differences other than violence, using art, literature and journalism," Reese said in the magazine.
"It gave me personally a very instinctive, instant connection, and certainly for Salman, perhaps in the depths of his mind, that never disappeared." But now it's been permanently captured in a physical way," he said.
Now he can one day finally deliver his scheduled lecture.
"To see it come to fruition is what I hope will never stop us from doing what we're trying to do," he told the BBC. The ideal is to show that these values are both upheld and upheld," he said.
Rushdie has been receiving death threats since the late 1980s after Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his death because of his book Satanic Verse. was targeted.
The suspected attacker, Matar, had previously made posts on his social media that supported Iran and its Revolutionary Guard. He was also reportedly in touch with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on social media.
He has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault charges.
Iranian officials on Monday denied Tehran's involvement in Rushdie's stabbing, but sought to justify the attack.
"For the attack on Salman Rushdie in the United States, I do not believe that anyone, other than (Rushdie) himself and his supporters, deserves condemnation, condemnation or condemnation," said the Iranian Foreign Ministry. spokesman Nasser Kanani said.
Rushdie is now on the road to recovery,again "clearly"- and his "The Satanic Verses" is multiple of his Amazon bestsellers. has jumped to the top of the list for