The man who was supposed to interview novelist Salman Rushdie before he was attacked onstage in New York on Friday is speaking out about how shocking the ambush was to him.

Henry Reese, co-founder of City of Asylum, a nonprofit group based in Pittsburgh that houses writers exiled for controversial writings, sat down for an interview with CNN host Brian Stelter. While Rushdie was grievously wounded — he appears to be on his way to recovery — Reese received a minor injury and is seen in the interview with a swollen eye and a patch on his face.

“It was very difficult to understand, it looked like a sort of bad prank. It didn’t have any sense of reality, and then, when there was blood behind him, it became real,” Reese said.

SALMAN RUSHDIE STABBED MULTIPLE TIMES DURING FRENZIED ATTACK ONSTAGE

Reese declined to give any more details about the attack, saying he didn’t want to talk about it.

After suffering severe injuries on Friday, including a neck wound, Rushdie has just been taken off a ventilator and begun to talk again. His agent, Andrew Wylie, told CNN of the good news on Sunday.

“He’s off the ventilator, so the road to recovery has begun,” he said. “It will be long — the injuries are severe. But his condition is headed in the right direction.”

Prosecutors said that the author was stabbed 10 times by Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old New Jersey man, in a premeditated attack, according to the New York Times. A public defender for Matar, who is charged with attempted murder and assault, entered a not-guilty plea for the suspect. Matar is being held in jail without bail, awaiting his next court appearance set for Friday.

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Rushdie might lose an eye, his liver was damaged, and the nerves in his arm are severed, Wylie told the newspaper.

Despite the outpouring of support from most in the United States and West, solidarity wasn’t found everywhere. In Iran — where the Ayatollah famously issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death following his 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses, which many Muslims find blasphemous — the news was met with jubilation. The front page of Keyhan, a newspaper published in Tehran, said that Rushdie had been met with “divine vengeance” and that former President Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo “are next.”

Original Location: ‘Like a sort of bad prank’: Man on stage with Salman Rushdie tells of horrific attack

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