A VOCATION

I was chatting to a research doctor the other day about vocations and she told me once she was teaching a clever student and made the mistake of asking him why he wanted to be a nurse rather than a doctor. He was offended by the question; it never occurred to him to be a doctor. Being a nurse wasn’t to be a failed doctor. It was a vocation in itself. He remembered as a child a nurse helping his mother; from that moment he decided he wanted to be a nurse. Nothing would deflect him from this course.

In every town, in every city in the world there are hospitals, and these hospitals are full of nurses who do a devoted job. From the conversations I’ve had with the nurses with whom I now spend most of my days, and some of my nights – not having known any before – they consider their work to be a vocation. They dress and undress me, wash my body, genitals and ass, cleaning every part of me, and brush my hair; and of course this is their everyday work. They also are very skilled in all kinds of ways. It’s technical, and not an easy job.

One of the reasons I want to talk about this is because I can see that now, compared to others – certainly the people I’m surrounded by – I am phobic about strangers’ bodies. I wouldn’t want to inject them, give them pills, turn them over, insert a catheter or wash them. I find it difficult, therefore, to identify with their vocation, except where I can think that I have a vocation myself, which is to write.

The nurses I spend my days with appear to like, if not love, their work. They are cheerful. Often they sing and make jokes. They are not well paid, but they have done this job for years and as far as I can see want to carry on doing it. One nurse I talked to recently said he didn’t have a girlfriend because he was too tired from his nursing work to spend time with anyone when he went home. He had to recover in order to concentrate on doing his work as well as he could. His favourite TV shows were those set in hospitals; he particularly liked anything that involved whole populations being wiped out by fatal diseases.

The idea of a vocation has religious overtones; there is the notion of the divine, and of a calling. The desire to help others and to be of use. There is also a sexual aspect to such a choice, since people’s sexuality, like their vocation, isn’t an option, but something they are inexorably drawn to. It could be said that it chooses them, rather than them choosing it.

I wanted to be a writer since I was a teenager, and never thought I’d be much good at anything else. As with sexuality, such a mission is like a perversion, something you cannot live without and compulsively need to do. I cannot be persuaded out of my desire to write. It is the centre of my being.

I’ve always been fascinated by the daily rituals of professional writers. Of how much time they spend at their desk, whether they use a fountain pen or typewriter, and how many words etcetera they like to do a day. Trivial stuff, but not to me.

Recently I was reading about a very successful writer. (I should add here that Isabella was reading the piece to me, since I can’t use my hands or pick up an iPad myself; and I love her voice and accent). This writer produces two novels a year. He spends around ten hours a day writing and has written around a hundred and thirty books.

This is a level of obsessionality that I do not envy and would never aspire to. I go whole days without writing – I have better, more interesting things to do - and sometimes I wonder whether I might stop completely. I like to think about what that would be like. In truth, however, I never go more than a week without writing something. When I finally get down to it, I am amazed by how naturally it comes to me. But it never stops making me feel anxious.

I began this piece thinking about what I consider to be the strange devotion of nurses and their commitment to kindness and selflessness, and now I’m writing about writing. Then, after Isabella read me the piece about the obsessional writer who once went on a thirty-six hour writing jag, she read me another piece, still from the excellent website Arts and Letters, about the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. He has his own form of obsessionality, which he describes in his new book of essays. Apparently he never goes a day without completing sixteen-hundred words. That is a lot of words. I consider myself lucky if I produce a thousand words a week.

I thought about this a lot, and worried that I was lazy. There was no way I could compete with Murakami. Anyway, I decided, the number of words one completes is irrelevant. It would be like an architect wanting to make sure he’s laid two-thousand bricks in one day. It is the idea, the shape and the force of the piece which matters to me.

Writing can be used – sitting alone in a room, typing – as a refuge, as a hiding place. You are concealing yourself from others and the world, and living entirely in your own mind. It might be useful to remind yourself that there are better places to be, if one can bear it, than in one’s own imagination. Not that writing is selfish and egotistical, unlike nursing. It has its uses, too.

I like to remind myself what the writing of others has meant to me and still does; and what a strange world we would live in without stories, novels, journalism, blogs, TV shows and cinema. Maybe writing is as necessary in its own way as nursing, as we writers nurse the human soul through its difficult journey in this impossible world.

As an adjunct to writing and something I consider part of it, is teaching. I began to teach writing when I first worked at the Royal Court Theatre in my early twenties, and I have done some teaching in some form or another, most weeks ever since. I often wonder, as I guess most teachers do, whether I am actually doing anyone any good. But I enjoy it. I like to talk about structure, organization, voice, agents, publishers and TV-shows. I’m interested in the lives of my students, and I’m happy when they progress. I have to admit that it is difficult to read their work sometimes. Real talent is a rare and surprising thing;  it is a gift, cannot be bought, and not all the writing is as good as it could be. The writers themselves are usually more interesting than their work. But teaching is a calling too. It feels necessary. And after a good session I feel I’ve done something useful and helped someone as I myself have been helped by good editors, good readers and friends.

Good news and bad news. The good stuff is that Miss S with her glorious two-toned hair has finally gone home after six months. She will return here to swim and use the gym - so I can keep you updated on her progress. The bad news is that the Maestro, with whom I was happy to share my room, has died in another hospital. Isabella went to his funeral and I was sorry not to be able to attend. He was a talented and sweet man, and a good friend. His partner and his two daughters will miss him.

Isabella and I are trying to go back to London where we live. It is time. It is proving difficult for us to figure out how to get into a facility near London where I’ll be closer to friends and family and can continue my rehabilitation. I’ve been in the same place, virtually the same room, along with Isabella, for four months and I’m surprised not to be madder than I am. Certainly we are both worn out.

We will keep you updated as to any progress on this matter.

Your loving writer,

Hanif x