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My dispatches will always be free and open to everyone. I am unable to use my hands and I am writing, via dictation, with the help of my family. If you want to support my writing, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
If you have any questions for me, please post them in the comment section, which is open to everyone this week.
“Let’s have a look at his penis,” said one of the doctors to the other. Both were young and elegant, and obviously clever. “Is that okay?” she said to me.
“Sure, go ahead, feel free,” I said. I almost added, “This is something I’ve waited a long time to hear.”
The doctor fumbled in the front of my Paul Smith pyjamas, opened them up, and reached into the mass of overgrown, grey pubic hair. At last, she found the mushroom and bent over to take a closer gander.
“No,” she said, after a momentous wait, “There is no discharge. It’s fine.”
What a relief, I thought; at last, one part of my body that isn’t either broken or malfunctioning. Still, I had no idea why she thought there might be a discharge from my penis, and I didn’t want to ask.
Before my accident, nobody ever touched me; of course, Isabella, from time to time, but otherwise no one. Now, I am turned, rolled, prodded and poked constantly, and when I say constantly, I mean constantly – every day and every night. I have had more strangers touch my body in the past month, then ever before in my life. I have become used to it. Instruments in my ears, fingers up my arse, wash pads around my genitals, under my arms and over my back, lights in my eyes. Everything everywhere, all the time. How did I go from being a private man to a public piece of meat? Naturally, as I’ve said before, the nurses are kind; I am their work, I am their responsibility, and this is their vocation, one they have chosen to do, and one they are proud of doing. I see it in their faces and hear it in their voices; I am their patient and they want to do a good job.
It would be even more difficult to live this life if one were shy about being manhandled, if one had too much dignity, or fear being humiliated. I am already humiliated. It began a long time ago. There isn’t much further to fall. And I have to collaborate with the nurses, as they push and pull and roll me here and there. After all they are not humiliated as they insert a suppository and then watch me do a shit and say proudly, “My, that’s a big one” or “Today, it was only a moderate one, maybe tomorrow we’ll have more luck.”
I have to continue to be amused about this; there is nothing else for it, I am not stoical nor brave, I do nothing out of the ordinary, I am a victim of fate.
Your Questions
CAROL
When the final version of your book, screenplay etc has been printed, are you content to appreciate it, leave it alone and move on, or do you hold on to any regrets and wish you could keep editing it?
HANIF
I like finishing things off, it gives me a great deal of satisfaction. I should add that, strangely, some of the best material in the piece, whether it be a movie or an essay, comes at the end, when all the hard work has been done, when the foundation has been laid. Now, when you’re at the end, you feel freer to invent. So I find that the last draft or ‘go’ at something is often the most fulfilling. Just when you think something is finished, you usually have to go over it a few more times, when it is being edited or produced. This is often pretty painful, because it is when you feel that the piece is finished, that you’re done with it, and that you will never have to see it again.
It is a relief when something is done with, and I rarely have regrets about it. By the end, I am bored with it, and glad to get it out of the way. I am ready by then to start work on something else, and I am glad to have cleared the decs. The most interesting part of the writing process is usually the initial idea, when you feel inspired, as they say, when you’re full of enthusiasm for the new piece you are making. This soon runs out, and you are ready for the hard slog ahead, which is the actual production of the piece, which is usually the most difficult thing to do.
JAYANTHI MADHUKAR
What are the things that give you courage?
HANIF
I don’t feel courageous, brave, stoical or any of those things. I feel pretty depressed about the situation I am in, and deservedly so. I’ve walked into a nightmare that I cannot still quite believe, and every morning I wake up in the hospital and have to relive the nightmare again and again. So it is much more complex than being courageous. Salman Rushdie once said to me - during the time of the Fatwah, in the early years - that the one thing he had to learn was patience. And I guess the hard lesson here is one that I have had to learn, which is of patience. But again, I don’t have any choice in this matter, or much choice at all.
You write, "I do nothing out of the ordinary." Except write about your fate! These posts will be part of your enduring (and endearing) legacy. Thank you for being Hanif.
I periodically undergo colonoscopies as I am vulnerable to certain types of cancer.
I will never get over the perfunctory manner with which somebody to whom you have barely been introduced, and who hasn't even bought you dinner beforehand, will shove their finger up your arse, as if they fancy themselves as John the Baptist laying the foundation for the camera that is to follow, and perhaps also checking your prostate.
Prior to a blood sample being taken, you will be warned (on the NHS at least) that you might feel a sharp scratch. There is no such etiquette in play among the muted, mood lit metal surfaces of the colonoscopy suite – the kind of clinical sex dungeon that might be jointly conceived by that duo of restrained perverts, David Cronenberg and and J.G. Ballard.
If I were to tally the number of hospital employers who have had their finger up my arse against those who have been there on a recreational basis, I think the hospital might win in terms of both numbers and diversity.
Bravery, so far as I define it, is having the strength of character to face up to a bad situation where the odds seem insurmountable. Under that definition, you are brave. You have not given up. You are clawing back what you can. You write about your experiences.
I recall one of Al Swearengen's (played by Ian McShane) great monologues from the wild west drama 'Deadwood':
“Pain or damage don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you've got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man... and give some back.”