42 Comments

Your convalescence; the way that your horizons have narrowed in some regards and expanded in others, has me thinking of my late grandmother. She grew up in poverty - a tin bath by the fire that served the entire family on Sunday evenings. Thanks to the efforts of my grandfather, who worked his way up from the lower echelons of the Shell oil company, she travelled all over the globe. In her later years she developed severe arthritis and could barely walk. Her hands resembled a pair of screwed-up paper bags.

Eventually her world shrank to an armchair, in the midst of a shaggy brown carpet, next to a set of sliding patio doors. Outside, a rotting wooden bird table stood beneath a sickly cherry tree. The tree had been colonised by peculiar worms that dangled from the branches at the end of silken threads..

One day my grandmother told me about a female blackbird that watched Coronation Street through the window.

"Dotty old woman," I thought.

The following evening I sat down to watch television with her. During the opening theme to Coronation Street, a brown bird hopped across the grimy crazy paving and took up a position by the patio doors, where it stared intently at the TV. It made me rethink my previously sceptical outlook regarding the possibility of reincarnation.

Animals were always drawn to my grandmother. They loved her unconditionally. She was like the Disney version of Snow White who got too old to twirl around the kitchen, but who retained that kernel of inner goodness - that light that you can sense within a person, even though it cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Expand full comment

I have just started reading your newsletter, beginning in the midst of your hospitalization. My younger son had a spinal cord injury at age 16 and I remember the trauma of those early days and first year vividly. He had a T6-T7 injury and is a paraplegic. You are in the early days of healing and more recovery is possible. May you be surprised by joy in the days and weeks ahead.

Expand full comment
founding

I love the images you conjur in this newsletter -- you, Miss S., your blue-green-haired friend, and the Maestro, having cappuccinos and cake, discussing how to get drugs, the Maestro's colorful past, your own wild stories, Miss S's hard-won wisdom, looking out the window at the hospital garden and sheep on the hill...

Did you manage to get to the hospital cafeteria early enough to avoid the cultural faux pas of having a cappuccino after the only acceptable time: the early morning? Or were you willing to be rebels? My guess is the latter, all three of you, thumbing your noses at the establishment.

You bring us so much delight!

con grande ammirazione e affetto

Kimmen

Expand full comment

I love your daily letters. Thanks so much for sharing this strange new world with us all. I too have a spinal injury. And hospital life is a world unto itself and oddly satisfying. I also want to thank Isabella for writing these up. My husband does a lot of care for me and we have come to a deep rhythm of giving and receiving over the years. Both giving in our own ways and both receiving. But thank you Isabella the scribe!

Expand full comment

I have nothing important to say except THANK YOU and recover.

Expand full comment

I'll probably be hammered (again) for imagined insensitivity, but bloody hell I can't wait for the film of this.

(To be pedantically clear, this is said with aching respect for the creativity and will to live, to experience, to express, of the writer, and with deepest hopes for his recovery).

Vince x

Expand full comment

Amsterdam. Fell on vacation there and discovered admirable hospital personnel and system and no lack of help. Not bad choice for an accident. You write "hospital is often painful and boring, but it is usually interesting." True and when it's not, one can develop odd skills, for example after bout in one when a child, I taught myself how to wiggle my little toe independent of the rest. And yes, Chekov's Cherry Orchard makes me want to shout "Shut up!"

Expand full comment

A comment I made and deleted about this newsletter was about me. And that seems so crappy- this is about you. But you are a writer, so everything you write is also about the reader because we are reading it and chords are being sounded in our minds. And in other locations. it's hard to feel anything but admiration and awe for you- for one thing to have the will and courage to write this all down through the medium of someone else typing it is a lot more than we would have in any comparable circumstances. It's the doggedness of a professional who knows what he's capable of and does it. But it's also as real to us as the gloom of the winter afternoons many of us are seeing out of our windows. And as real as the hands we use to type, and the absences we each experience, as aspects of us disappear- loves, skills, senses, memories. I really enjoyed your cappuccino. Yes meeting new friends. Once I wished very sincerely for a new friend, and that day was asked to meet a woman I had never met but had heard of, at the bus station. She became my newly separated husband's lover. Now, 28 years later we are friends.

Expand full comment

In the mid 2000s you gave a reading at the Dome in Brighton. Being preternaturally anxious in my 20s I turned up pretty early. I was boring - not intentionally. I wanted excitement- I just couldn’t find a way to be exciting as I was just too frightened. Walked into the near empty bar, and you were standing there. As I was painfully shy, instead of saying hello which I would really like to have done, I convinced myself I would do so “next time” and instead went and bought some cigarettes. I had visions of making an absolute tit of myself - meeting a hero and all. You gave a hilarious reading. The packed room lapped it up. You were a rock star. Now I read you’d have been up for the orgy, or anything, had I plucked up the nerve. Which I didn’t, and couldn’t, at that time in my 20s. Now in my 40s I’m happier (drunk, just stumbled out of a nightclub in Cairo). I suppose we can’t help our internal prisons. But we can eventually move beyond them.

Expand full comment

Hanif, greetings from a wintry Ireland. I just adore these blogs. I am sorry your current physical horizons are limited but your daily writings take us to so many places and are so instructive and educate us so much in terms of the craft of writing and literary criticism. Like most people I tended to think of characters in literature as heroes or villains but not often as bores but some such as Pooter in Diary of a Nobody are highlighted as being just that. David Brent is a bore and most of the characters in Detectorists are as well. I’ll be thinking more of the classic boring characters across the cultural sphere.

Expand full comment

I pray you heal and get to your readers, and your life very soon. I have enjoyed these postings very much. Oh boredom, and boring people. It made me think of an ex friend who does the most bizarre things to hide the fact that she is painfully boring. She is an English woman exiled in New Hampshire. So, she focuses on what she thinks is her intelectual superiority. If that doesn’t work because most of us are very bright people aware of insane stereotypes about the English, she turns good decent people into “villains”. Or at every occasion she triangulates. I mean whenever there are three people she turns one into a weapon against the other person. There are always troubles she creates at every opportunity. What is this about? She is disguising the fact that she is a horrible BORE! I recognized the pattern long ago, but one day I decided I disliked her very much, and couldn’t do it anymore. write! That is your call, and observe, and love! There are always new friends to make around us!

Expand full comment

What great observations of the past and present, you help make us all see the world again

Expand full comment

The picture you have painted of your Mum and Dad but mostly your mum interspersed with the making new friends thing (I can relate so much to this ) overtakes your hospital experience well there is less of your body and what it is or is not doing and more about your relationships- being boring - enjoyed your analysis of this and fancy it has fuelled the characters of writers - anyhow (I am a fan of Dickens too) life continues on. Glad you edging through it all ⭐️

Expand full comment

I just came to this a few days ago, and each day's post takes me along several interesting paths. Thank you so much for sharing these.

Expand full comment

Saying your name sounds like a sneeze. Hanif. Bless you.

Here are a few things I learned when Death came knock, knock, knocking on my door.

You will understand the brutal meaning of the word “lonely” --- a word that doesn’t exist in French. Does Italian have a name for it, I wonder?

No matter how compassionate your cheerleaders are, no matter how well meaning their messages of concern and love are, you are on your own, matey!

You will soon realize that the most vital thing in your life is your energy. Save it, protect it, appreciate it, venerate it!

Do you know, A Swim in a Pond In the Rain by George Saunders? You wrote about Chekhov...

Like Saunders, Death is a brilliant writing teacher. Have your pen ready. Write on!

Expand full comment

A fascinating post. I commend your honesty & your acuity. Do we live too dully? No doubt. I’ve been hiding:isolating due to COVID restrictions but it’s a ruse, an escape, a dodge. Good for you in digging into all of this.

Expand full comment