On Boxing Day, in Rome, after taking a comfortable walk to the Piazza del Popolo, followed by a stroll through the Villa Borghese, and then back to the apartment, I had a fall.
I had just seen Mo Salah score against Aston Villa, sipped half a beer, when I began to feel dizzy. I lent forward and put my head between my legs; I woke up a few minutes later in a pool of blood, my neck in a grotesquely twisted position, my wife on her knees beside me.
I then experienced what can only be described a scooped, semi-circular object with talons attached scuttling towards me. Using what was left of my reason, I saw this was my hand, an uncanny object over which I had no agency.
It occurred to me then that there was no coordination between what was left of my mind and what remained of my body. I had become divorced from myself. I believed I was dying. I believed I had three breaths left.
It seemed like a miserable and ignoble way to die. Every evening before I go upstairs, put on the dishwasher, open the window and join my wife, I wonder how more opportunities there will be for these domestic felicities.
From the floor my wife heard my frantic shouting. She saved my life and kept me calm. For a few days I was profoundly traumatised, altered and unrecognisable to myself. I am in the hospital. I cannot move move my arms and legs.
I cannot scratch my nose, make a phone call or feed myself. As you can imagine, this is both humiliating, degrading and a burden for others. I’ve had an operation on my spine and have shown minor improvements in the last few days.
I have sensation and some movement in all my limbs, and I will begin physio and rehabilitation and soon as possible. I want to thank the doctors and nurses at the Gemelli hospital, Rome, for all their extraordinary kindness, competence and care.
At the moment, it is unclear whether I will ever be able to walk again, or whether I’ll ever be able to hold a pen, if there is any assistance that I would be grateful for, it would be with regard to voice assisted hardware and software, which will allow me to watch, write -
and begin work again, and continue some kind of half life. If you have any ideas about how you might help, please comment below and my son will be in touch. I want to thank all my readers for their love and support over the years. Love Hanif
Just happen across the terrible news of your accident. My son is a quadriplegic because of cerebral palsy. He lives by himself with help and has been driving a power chair with his head since he is three. He fortunately has speech and uses voice recognition software. Between google assistant and voice recognition software for writing you will be able to live a meaningful rich life no matter how far your rehabilitation can take you. Please accept my heartfelt wishes for a speedy recovery and know whatever the outcome you will not have a half life! That would be an insult to millions of people living full and productive lives with disabilities. Sincerely Birgit S.
Dear Mr. Kureishi - In September of 2021, I woke up on a Sunday morning and could not move my legs. Over the next few weeks, I lost the use of my arms and the ability to breathe on my own. All of this happened completely unexpectedly and without an identifiable cause. After 2 months in the hospital, during which time I did regain the ability to breathe and some limited use of my arms, I moved to a physical rehabilitation center, and slowly but surely relearned how to walk. It has been a difficult journey, but I am at last approaching a semblance of my former life. One of the great revelations for me, as I think it has been for you, is that people want to help and are happy to do whatever needs doing. It was hard for me to accept such help but there really was no choice. I wish for you a steady and ultimately complete recovery from this injury! Sincerely, Kathy O.
A short, considered response to 'Luz' (his comment somewhere below), regarding my original message, which I have now taken down.
I'm appalled that my original message could be read and considered by anyone as "kicking someone when they are down." It certainly wasn't my intention. I was shocked and saddened to hear news of Hanif's accident and wanted to offer "a speedy recovery with love, strength and solidarity" . Yes, it gave me cause to reflect on my own fall, and I did say I'd always considered Hanif a "lucky sod", it was my hope it might give him half a laugh. This isn't Twitter, I don't want to get into an inane spat, I just wanted to make clear I send only the best wishes to Hanif, along with many I am rooting for him as he starts his recovery.
Dear Vincent, obviously I can't read your original comment. However, I wouldn't feel bad about what sounds like a failure on someone's part to "get" the ironic tone that you intended your comment to convey. I am a stage 4 cancer patient, and have made a friend through attending oncology exercise classes. (I will call him Mike.) Funnily enough, I have been thinking resentfully about a comment Mike made to me when discussing our respective cancers. (Mine is a Gleason 9, so about the most aggressive.) I explained to Mike that I wouldn't get better, and that my treatment was palliative in that it was just depriving the cancer of the androgen it fed off. Mike said "I'm probably better off than you". I was a bit stunned and made no reply.
The point of all this is -- in spite of an insensitive comment -- I still regard Mike as a friend. So people will look at the total relationship, not just one solecism.
Did the hospital check for Guillain-Barre Syndrome? It is a rare (1-2 in 100,000) very rapid onset autoimmune condition that causes paralysis, and can be tested for. Because it is so rare, many doctors - even neurologists - and hospitals don't know about it.
GAIN, a charitable organisation in the UK, offers much information and support. https://gaincharity.org.uk/ The full name is Guillain-Barré & Associated Inflammatory Neuropathies.
(I had Guillain-Barre seven years ago and know whereof I speak.)
My son is a paraplegic and I volunteered for ten years at the Shepherd Center for Spinal Cord Injuries in Atlanta, Georgia. That said, I only know what paralysis is like from a parent’s point of view. From ten years of observation of spinal cord patients, I’ve seen people totally paralyzed from the neck down who ended up walking out the doors of the hospital. And I’ve seen patients who didn’t have any return of sensation or function at all. You are in early days of recovery and you already have sensation in all of your limbs. Don’t give up and don’t despair.
Dear Hanif, I am touched by your courage in writing this. It tells me you will, over time, wrestle a good life out of this event, come what may. I wish you more of that courage, and hope that you are surrounded by good, loving care.
I am a therapist and spiritual director and I know, both personally and professionally that these big events happen to all of us, one way or another, and can contain deep (albeit dark) gifts within them, if we can allow ourselves to seek them out.
I met you at Powell's Bookstore decades ago, it seems, when you came to Portland, Oregon to do a reading. I don't know if we were formerly introduced, but I was dying to ask you after seeing "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "Sammy and Rose get Laid" if you spoke Urdu. Sending you warmth, as well as wishes for as complete a recovery as complete can be, and hoping you know just how many of us are doing that for you. <3 You mean a lot to many of us, and your plays, screenplays, and stories have inspired me, for one.
So sorry for your accident, one of my favorite writers in the world! Your biographical book, My Ear at His Heart, Reading My Father, is at my bedside, having arrived a week ago. The defining quality of your writings for me has always been its unique wisdom and insight in capturing human soul with its incredible complexity and craziness! The souls of lIttle men and women caught within a social- political context larger than themselves! I know you will be making progress with the help of the miraculous techniques of physical therapy and get back to us, your admiring readers!
Only learned of this today and I barely dare believe it. You are finding a way now and I know you’ll find a way to continue your communications - it may just need a different type of creativity. Sending much love x
It is a great shock to hear of your condition. I have admired you ever since I read your first book and as a person since I met you in Naples and accompanied you to the Università Orientale, where you gave a talk.
At present I am unable to offer financial help since I live on a small Italian pension, but I will share your newsletter with others who might.
I had a similar twist of faith from a fall and the one thing I wish I had pushed for more during the first year post-injury was acupuncture. The Florida rehab I spent my third through fifth weeks post fall wouldn’t allow it. Back in Los Ángeles where I had to resettle to be under the care of my parents, I didn’t find acupuncturists who were willing to spend more time with me given my body required more attention than their celebrity-ridden wait rooms. One old school Chinese born doctor even asked...did you see who’s waiting in the waiting room? But 2.5 years and many surgeries later, I found a truly caring acupuncturist (a scalp acupuncturist) who said if I’d received help the first year, I was guaranteed a return of my functions. I’m lucky I only have an incomplete injury but I know it works as much for complete injuries- I saw it and have read articles proving as much. For me, my injury was bad enough where as hard and as many ways as I tried, my career and friends diminished (a few remain but most who were as ambitious and type-a as me found it difficult). Anyway- please start acupuncture ASAP. It works. I saw if with my own eyes at the clinic of the scalp acupuncturist in San José where I spent a few months. I regained feeling in my bladder but I gave up too soon and that disappeared. Don’t give up. Nerves can regenerate and do so very easily within the first year. Xo
The bleeding and your spine injury resulted from your fall? Did you fall from a great height or on something? And do you know why you fainted in the first place?
That's scary. I also fainted last June, while sitting at the computer, after an unpleasant dizzy spell combined with a headache that came during a nap and that I initially brushed off. I suspect I may have had convulsions as well. I slightly injured my face in the fall, my neck was sore, but that was all. Now I feel lucky, which I certainly did not when it happened: I was mortified.
I had collapsed on some boxes next to my chair. I'm not sure if my head hit the screen or the wall on my side or both. When I woke up, I did not even realize I had fainted. It's as if I had only a small portion of my mind left and this little portion was just telling me: now you're very tired, you must go to bed. And nothing more.
It's only when I woke up the second time that I put the pieces together and realized something had most definitely happened to me.
The cause of the fainting was the most worrying part, because I was afraid it happened again (so far it did not). I had fainted abruptly before, in a similar way, after feeling this peculiar kind of dizzy headache, but that was 4 years ago, during a harsh winter, when I had spent lots of energy, fallen ill and lost weight. In the end though, I assumed the reason was the same and related to a poor diet.
What surprises me in your account, is that you put your head between your knees, as a precaution I assume, and yet you injured yourself in a spectacular way. How can it be?
Anyway, best of luck. I wish you a full and speedy recovery and many long years ahead of you to remember this tragic accident hopefully with some kind of amusement! (when you can think mockingly at the worst things that happened to you, it's probably when you feel the best!)
My son is a paraplegic and I volunteered for ten years at the Shepherd Center for Spinal Cord Injuries in Atlanta, Georgia. That said, I only know what paralysis is like from a parent’s point of view. From ten years of observation of spinal cord patients, I’ve seen people totally paralyzed from the neck down who ended up walking out the doors of the hospital. And I’ve seen patients who didn’t have any return of sensation or function at all. You are in early days of recovery and you already have sensation in all of your limbs. Don’t give up and don’t despair.
So this may be left of Center but what’s there to lose ? Pls check out Dr Joe Dispenza’s work, it’s consistently defied all logic , science & belief. Miracles are no longer a one off but happening & being proven repeatedly. To think it’s about simply getting out of the way of yourself & surrendering to quantum energy that powers all life in & around us.
Give it a shot. You never know , we may just be reading a miraculous testimony about Hanif Kureishi one day soon!
Many of us hold Dr. Joe deeply responsible for the death of one of our dearest friends so I would take this recommendation with an entire bottle of salt. She "believed in miracles" so much, thanks to his counsel, that she refused to have any medical interventions which could quite possibly have saved her.
I wish you recovery. I send you lots of prayers and hope. Keep the hope. I am sure there are millions who are grappling with similar pain, and many who have probably seen the sun shine brightly on the other side. I pray and hope that one day you'll tell us how the journey to recovery was.
I shall pray deeply for you to heal and recover completely for you have much to offer the world yet. I have enjoyed your writing and I know there is so much more for you to do. Sending strength and strong prayers. Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo
Dear Mr Kureishi,
Just happen across the terrible news of your accident. My son is a quadriplegic because of cerebral palsy. He lives by himself with help and has been driving a power chair with his head since he is three. He fortunately has speech and uses voice recognition software. Between google assistant and voice recognition software for writing you will be able to live a meaningful rich life no matter how far your rehabilitation can take you. Please accept my heartfelt wishes for a speedy recovery and know whatever the outcome you will not have a half life! That would be an insult to millions of people living full and productive lives with disabilities. Sincerely Birgit S.
Dear Mr. Kureishi - In September of 2021, I woke up on a Sunday morning and could not move my legs. Over the next few weeks, I lost the use of my arms and the ability to breathe on my own. All of this happened completely unexpectedly and without an identifiable cause. After 2 months in the hospital, during which time I did regain the ability to breathe and some limited use of my arms, I moved to a physical rehabilitation center, and slowly but surely relearned how to walk. It has been a difficult journey, but I am at last approaching a semblance of my former life. One of the great revelations for me, as I think it has been for you, is that people want to help and are happy to do whatever needs doing. It was hard for me to accept such help but there really was no choice. I wish for you a steady and ultimately complete recovery from this injury! Sincerely, Kathy O.
A short, considered response to 'Luz' (his comment somewhere below), regarding my original message, which I have now taken down.
I'm appalled that my original message could be read and considered by anyone as "kicking someone when they are down." It certainly wasn't my intention. I was shocked and saddened to hear news of Hanif's accident and wanted to offer "a speedy recovery with love, strength and solidarity" . Yes, it gave me cause to reflect on my own fall, and I did say I'd always considered Hanif a "lucky sod", it was my hope it might give him half a laugh. This isn't Twitter, I don't want to get into an inane spat, I just wanted to make clear I send only the best wishes to Hanif, along with many I am rooting for him as he starts his recovery.
Vince x
Dear Vincent, obviously I can't read your original comment. However, I wouldn't feel bad about what sounds like a failure on someone's part to "get" the ironic tone that you intended your comment to convey. I am a stage 4 cancer patient, and have made a friend through attending oncology exercise classes. (I will call him Mike.) Funnily enough, I have been thinking resentfully about a comment Mike made to me when discussing our respective cancers. (Mine is a Gleason 9, so about the most aggressive.) I explained to Mike that I wouldn't get better, and that my treatment was palliative in that it was just depriving the cancer of the androgen it fed off. Mike said "I'm probably better off than you". I was a bit stunned and made no reply.
The point of all this is -- in spite of an insensitive comment -- I still regard Mike as a friend. So people will look at the total relationship, not just one solecism.
Dear Mr Kureishi,
Did the hospital check for Guillain-Barre Syndrome? It is a rare (1-2 in 100,000) very rapid onset autoimmune condition that causes paralysis, and can be tested for. Because it is so rare, many doctors - even neurologists - and hospitals don't know about it.
GAIN, a charitable organisation in the UK, offers much information and support. https://gaincharity.org.uk/ The full name is Guillain-Barré & Associated Inflammatory Neuropathies.
(I had Guillain-Barre seven years ago and know whereof I speak.)
Best wishes and good luck.
Yvonne Hewett, Twickenham, UK
My son is a paraplegic and I volunteered for ten years at the Shepherd Center for Spinal Cord Injuries in Atlanta, Georgia. That said, I only know what paralysis is like from a parent’s point of view. From ten years of observation of spinal cord patients, I’ve seen people totally paralyzed from the neck down who ended up walking out the doors of the hospital. And I’ve seen patients who didn’t have any return of sensation or function at all. You are in early days of recovery and you already have sensation in all of your limbs. Don’t give up and don’t despair.
Dear Hanif, I am touched by your courage in writing this. It tells me you will, over time, wrestle a good life out of this event, come what may. I wish you more of that courage, and hope that you are surrounded by good, loving care.
I am a therapist and spiritual director and I know, both personally and professionally that these big events happen to all of us, one way or another, and can contain deep (albeit dark) gifts within them, if we can allow ourselves to seek them out.
I wish you all possible healing and comfort.
I met you at Powell's Bookstore decades ago, it seems, when you came to Portland, Oregon to do a reading. I don't know if we were formerly introduced, but I was dying to ask you after seeing "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "Sammy and Rose get Laid" if you spoke Urdu. Sending you warmth, as well as wishes for as complete a recovery as complete can be, and hoping you know just how many of us are doing that for you. <3 You mean a lot to many of us, and your plays, screenplays, and stories have inspired me, for one.
So sorry for your accident, one of my favorite writers in the world! Your biographical book, My Ear at His Heart, Reading My Father, is at my bedside, having arrived a week ago. The defining quality of your writings for me has always been its unique wisdom and insight in capturing human soul with its incredible complexity and craziness! The souls of lIttle men and women caught within a social- political context larger than themselves! I know you will be making progress with the help of the miraculous techniques of physical therapy and get back to us, your admiring readers!
Only learned of this today and I barely dare believe it. You are finding a way now and I know you’ll find a way to continue your communications - it may just need a different type of creativity. Sending much love x
Dear Mr Kureishi
It is a great shock to hear of your condition. I have admired you ever since I read your first book and as a person since I met you in Naples and accompanied you to the Università Orientale, where you gave a talk.
At present I am unable to offer financial help since I live on a small Italian pension, but I will share your newsletter with others who might.
I shall be following your every improvement.
Roy Boardman
I had a similar twist of faith from a fall and the one thing I wish I had pushed for more during the first year post-injury was acupuncture. The Florida rehab I spent my third through fifth weeks post fall wouldn’t allow it. Back in Los Ángeles where I had to resettle to be under the care of my parents, I didn’t find acupuncturists who were willing to spend more time with me given my body required more attention than their celebrity-ridden wait rooms. One old school Chinese born doctor even asked...did you see who’s waiting in the waiting room? But 2.5 years and many surgeries later, I found a truly caring acupuncturist (a scalp acupuncturist) who said if I’d received help the first year, I was guaranteed a return of my functions. I’m lucky I only have an incomplete injury but I know it works as much for complete injuries- I saw it and have read articles proving as much. For me, my injury was bad enough where as hard and as many ways as I tried, my career and friends diminished (a few remain but most who were as ambitious and type-a as me found it difficult). Anyway- please start acupuncture ASAP. It works. I saw if with my own eyes at the clinic of the scalp acupuncturist in San José where I spent a few months. I regained feeling in my bladder but I gave up too soon and that disappeared. Don’t give up. Nerves can regenerate and do so very easily within the first year. Xo
The bleeding and your spine injury resulted from your fall? Did you fall from a great height or on something? And do you know why you fainted in the first place?
That's scary. I also fainted last June, while sitting at the computer, after an unpleasant dizzy spell combined with a headache that came during a nap and that I initially brushed off. I suspect I may have had convulsions as well. I slightly injured my face in the fall, my neck was sore, but that was all. Now I feel lucky, which I certainly did not when it happened: I was mortified.
I had collapsed on some boxes next to my chair. I'm not sure if my head hit the screen or the wall on my side or both. When I woke up, I did not even realize I had fainted. It's as if I had only a small portion of my mind left and this little portion was just telling me: now you're very tired, you must go to bed. And nothing more.
It's only when I woke up the second time that I put the pieces together and realized something had most definitely happened to me.
The cause of the fainting was the most worrying part, because I was afraid it happened again (so far it did not). I had fainted abruptly before, in a similar way, after feeling this peculiar kind of dizzy headache, but that was 4 years ago, during a harsh winter, when I had spent lots of energy, fallen ill and lost weight. In the end though, I assumed the reason was the same and related to a poor diet.
What surprises me in your account, is that you put your head between your knees, as a precaution I assume, and yet you injured yourself in a spectacular way. How can it be?
Anyway, best of luck. I wish you a full and speedy recovery and many long years ahead of you to remember this tragic accident hopefully with some kind of amusement! (when you can think mockingly at the worst things that happened to you, it's probably when you feel the best!)
My son is a paraplegic and I volunteered for ten years at the Shepherd Center for Spinal Cord Injuries in Atlanta, Georgia. That said, I only know what paralysis is like from a parent’s point of view. From ten years of observation of spinal cord patients, I’ve seen people totally paralyzed from the neck down who ended up walking out the doors of the hospital. And I’ve seen patients who didn’t have any return of sensation or function at all. You are in early days of recovery and you already have sensation in all of your limbs. Don’t give up and don’t despair.
So this may be left of Center but what’s there to lose ? Pls check out Dr Joe Dispenza’s work, it’s consistently defied all logic , science & belief. Miracles are no longer a one off but happening & being proven repeatedly. To think it’s about simply getting out of the way of yourself & surrendering to quantum energy that powers all life in & around us.
Give it a shot. You never know , we may just be reading a miraculous testimony about Hanif Kureishi one day soon!
Best of luck.
Many of us hold Dr. Joe deeply responsible for the death of one of our dearest friends so I would take this recommendation with an entire bottle of salt. She "believed in miracles" so much, thanks to his counsel, that she refused to have any medical interventions which could quite possibly have saved her.
I wish you recovery. I send you lots of prayers and hope. Keep the hope. I am sure there are millions who are grappling with similar pain, and many who have probably seen the sun shine brightly on the other side. I pray and hope that one day you'll tell us how the journey to recovery was.
I shall pray deeply for you to heal and recover completely for you have much to offer the world yet. I have enjoyed your writing and I know there is so much more for you to do. Sending strength and strong prayers. Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo
Mamlu Chatterjee (an Indian in Malaysia)