Dear Readers, a small note before we begin. Since my accident in December which left me without the use of my hands or legs - a considerable inconvenience - I have been writing, via dictation, a weekly dispatch, which you all read and respond to with such love and thoughtfulness. You have kept me alive. As we approach six months, and as I prepare to come home, I kindly ask that if you have the means, it would mean a great deal if could support my writing by becoming a paid subscriber, and keep this show on the road.
Miss S suddenly swung back into my room a couple of days ago. As I might have told you, she left this hospital after five months and moved back into her apartment in Rome, which had been adjusted for her to live in. She returned to use the pool here, and there she was, next to my bed, smiling, laughing and bursting with news from the outside world.
Apparently there are people out there who are noisy and energetic. There are smells, tastes and activity, and a mad, compelling world that has little to do with illness. She informed me that people want to be kind to the disabled; when they can, they help. They don’t pity you but are gratified to assist. It was great to see her and I was wild with pleasure and some envy that she is able to go about with such freedom and joy.
Isabella and my family are working hard to get me into another hospital in London, but it’s proving to be a slow, bureaucratic business. It might surprise you, but I am still here. When I will be in the actual outside world or even home - like Miss S - is another matter. But as she points out, she was in a far worse state than I was when she first came into this hospital. I should not despair or give up hope, yet. Later that day, I saw her in the gym walking on a frame and I was so pleased for her.
The days here are long. They are filled with a novel thing for me: conversation. My new best friend Lady G, a research doctor here, comes to see me most mornings when she can, bringing pasticcini, and we have long conversations comprised of family gossip, serious talk about AI and politics, and anything else that crosses our minds, from the lowest to the highest. At midday Isabella arrives to take care of me until supper, and we talk until she leaves. A friend asked what we have to talk about after so long together in this enervating institution, and at first I couldn’t think of a reply. “Everything” would have to be my answer. Again, as with Lady G, our talk rarely ceases, and I never find either of us dull.
Often at lunchtime one friend or another travels all the way to visit and there is more gossip about mutual friends and life in London which I miss, as well as disquieting talk about the collapse of civilization. I would have thought that my days would be only boring since so little is achieved; there is no forward momentum. These days are in complete contrast to the way I live in London, where mostly I am reading, writing and shuffling aimlessly around the house, lost in my own head. The only people I see there are Isabella and the kids, for a walk in the afternoon. Since my accident I’ve completely changed my life and I don’t regret it. I miss my previous existence because of my ability to do certain things, like scratch my ass and go to a restaurant, but these new conversations have proven to be a fascinating innovation.
What are they about, these talks? A serious conversation with a friend about his difficult autistic child. A long discussion about the respective bald heads of Pep Guardiola and Erik ten Hag and whether they shave them every day, and if they worry about their odd, if not peculiar shape, or if it is irrelevant to them. A discussion about a friend whose son converted to Islam in order to please the parents of a woman he wanted to marry. Long conversations with my sons about the necessity of a new striker at Manchester United and the hideous prices of strikers these days. My two oldest sons are screenwriters, so there is essential talk about past and current TV shows. Much talk, as well, about our dog Cairo’s recent visit to a pub; and how he loves going on the tube, where he sits up on a seat, and how many people in the pub came to him for a tickle and stroke, and how quickly they tell stories about their dogs, and indeed their entire lives, if you give them the opportunity.
My Indian father had eleven siblings and one of my greatest treats as a kid was to be taken to London with him at the weekend to watch cricket with my uncles, who usually spent their summers in London. They would drink beer, smoke and invite friends over, spending the entire weekend doing what they liked to call “shooting the breeze”, i.e. telling jokes, being funny, and competitively trying to amuse one another. It was a great game and I loved every minute of being a kid with the men - men I wanted to be like when I grew up.
Conversation is useless in the best sense. It’s anti-capitalist - you don’t make money out of it; there is no gain, except for that which is exchanged in the moment. There is only the pure pleasure of sitting with another human being, of listening to them, of an ephemeral exchange which has no meaning beyond a temporary pleasure that is shared. There are laughs, jokes, teasings, and serious questions. It is better, less trouble, more fulfilling and longer lasting than sex.
Conversation is like play for adults; in fact, it is play. Serious and unserious, pointless and momentous, conversation is not a meeting, job or career. And there is no doubt that some people are better at it than others. You could say that this ability is a more important attribute than beauty or talent, since speaking is something we spend most of our time doing, telling jokes and talking politics. If people are fascinating, we can’t wait to hear what they think.
As significant as talking is the ability to listen, to want to know others. You can get better at it, you can develop a skill for it, learning to bear what others have to say. Listening is a talent that one can improve on every day.
I love secrets – not my own so much, which I find unexciting - and one of my favourite parts of conversation is to hear the confidences of others. Secrets are the currency of intimacy. I love to be told things that few others have heard yet. You have to cajole, charm, and listen, using silence; you have to be bold and careful, particularly if you don’t know the other person so well. But if you are fortunate you can hear amazing and lurid things. Each person has something to hide, something secret they want you to know about them, given the opportunity. The want to be seen. That is the truth drop you are waiting for; you could call it “the novelist’s moment” when you hear some horrifically, juicy revelation from someone you otherwise consider relatively ordinary. Really there is no ordinary. That’s what you realise, if you listen long enough, and wait.
There was a time when I was homeless in London. I slept within a dense thicket of bushes (which have since been cleared away) at the foot of the bell tower of St Sepulchre Without Newgate, a couple of minutes walk downhill from St Paul's Cathedral. The outer surface of the tower was exfoliating thin layers of stone that would fall and then shatter around a slimy drain at its base, close to where I lay my head at night. In this spot, a few feet away from a busy stretch of pavement, and practically next-door to a police station, I was so well hidden that, had I been killed by a piece of falling stone in my sleep, my body might have lain there undiscovered for days.
My sleeping situation at this time was a metaphor made flesh for the profound isolation that I experienced, surrounded by thousands of people, just outside the old Roman walls of the English capital, and yet unnoticed and unacknowledged. I had prematurely become a ghost. The eddies of passing conversations swirled around me. Very quickly the participants in these conversations became more real to me than I was to myself. I began to experience a creeping dissociation from my own identity, to a point where my own name and history seemed alien, as if they were something I had dreamed. There is no combination of words I know of that can fully articulate this state of steady mental deterioration. There are realms on the margins of human experience that defy linguistic description.
One night I was sitting on a bench outside St Barts Hospital. It was around 11pm. A middle-aged woman sat down next to me. She confided that she had been to see her brother, who had undergone an operation on his heart. Afterwards, he had found that his feet were bent perpetually upright towards his shins and he could not point them downwards. I made some thoughtless comment about the operation marking the end of his career as a ballet dancer. Thereafter, I hastily attempted to save some face with an uninformed take on acupuncture - a needle applied to one part of the body can trigger a response in another part that is seemingly unconnected. Maybe that is what has happened here.
“I knew you would know what to say,” said the woman.
A bus pulled up to a stop. She got up, said goodbye and disappeared inside.
The exterior of St Sepulchre was being restored and cleaned. Along the walls there were grimy marks that resembled the tightly-compressed peaks and troughs of a heart monitor, or a monochrome abstraction of a tall pine forest. I had come to believe that it was a message from God – literal writing on the wall – not directed at me specifically, but some outer sermon that was intended for Londoners at large. When I walked past the church a year or so later, I assumed that it would all be scrubbed away, but it was still there.
This Thursday just passed, I cycled five or so miles to the reptile shop to purchase locusts for my elderly chameleon, Frederic. On the counter there was a small plastic tub filled with a couple of inches of water. A pair of small grey snakes lay puddled together beneath the surface.
I often talk to the owner of the shop about anything new he has in. It's how I found out that the turtle, who lives in the big tank underneath the counter, is really into strawberries. I asked him about his latest acquisitions. He told me they were Elephant Trunk Snakes. They are aquatic and native to Malaysia. They can grow to be eight feet in length and they are non-venomous. I never knew such things existed.
I cycled back home. I showed Frederic the boxes of locusts and told him he would eat. The sight of fresh food brought out the brightness in his black eyes.
Frederic is dying. He is not sick, or visibly in pain; he eats and drinks and engages with his surroundings. He is suffering from that most unresolvable of problems – old age. He has lead a very adventurous and active life. In his dotage he is easily tired out; happy to let the world pass him by. I have seen this gradual winding down before in other chameleons and I know how it ends. I look after him and give him my attention. We will navigate through it together.
Chameleons converse using fluctuations in colour, skin patterns and shape. While they do not use colour changes explicitly to camouflage themselves, I have noticed that, when they are perched on someone, they will sometimes change their approximate tone to match the tone of that person's clothing. I regard this change as deference to what the chameleon perceives as the mood of its host – so a kind of social camouflage.
When Frederic is happy, he is pale blue. When he is angry, he will turn the colour of a roiling storm cloud. If he feels threatened, pronounced vertical banding will kindle down his flanks. You might even get 'the mouth' though he will not bite you, unless you are the vet, of course. When he was younger and less tolerant of my occasional incursions into his territory, he would lower his head and rhino-charge me along a branch. His predecessor, Sebastian, had to be dragged away from fighting his own reflection in the floor-to-ceiling bathroom mirror. He took similar umbrage to any Christmas lights that slowly changed colour.
When Frederic is unhappy, he will push his tongue into his chin, causing the skin to bow outward, like the bulbous protrusion at the head of the keel of an oil tanker.
His verbal communication is limited to the odd discontented puff of air that generally follows him being moved, against his will, from a comfortable position, or in one memorable case, when the sun went behind some clouds, which he perceived as being my fault. Sometimes he will issue a contented inner tick – the same sound that water makes as it percolates through the dry soil of a potted plant.
Recently, he seems to have worked out that when I put things in my mouth, that is the same as when he is eating. He will make little opening and closing motions with his mouth in anticipation of being fed as well. When he is thirsty he will push his tongue between his lips. When he has grown bored of the windowsill, or is too hot, he will turn around to face me and gratefully receive my hand as I move to lift him off.
Frederic and I have spent a lifetime learning how to effectively communicate with each other. Now it is almost over.
Great piece Hanif! We’re coming to see you at Chelsea and W on your return! Love Nige