It looks like Salman Rushdie is going to lose an eye. He also has stab wounds on his neck and chest. He’s finally off the ventilator that was used to keep him alive in the immediate aftermath of the attack, but his son has called the injuries “life-changing.”

The novelist was getting ready to deliver a lecture in New York last Friday when a man rushed the stage to stab him. It seems to be a belated attempt to carry out the clerical death sentence against Rushdie issued decades ago by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The fatwa was issued because Rushdie wrote a “blasphemous” novel, The Satanic Verses.

To say all of that a bit more succinctly, a writer just spent days on the brink of death because a religious leader found his novel offensive. It’s a brutal reminder of the importance of free speech.