NON-FICTION WRITING COMPETITION
Dear Readers and Writers,
One of the great pleasures of running this Substack page is hearing from you in the comments section.
Many of you have written to me with deeply personal testimonies of your trials with your own bodies and those of your loved ones.
In my time of crisis, your stories have absolutely kept me going, and showed me what life can be like after a traumatic injury.
They are also wonderfully written, well-observed and funny.
So, I’ve decided to host a non-fiction writing competition on the topic of Injury, in the broadest sense of the term.
You have until the 8th of May to get your writing in.
Please post your stories on this thread.
They should be no more than 750 words.
The most compelling stories will be posted on my Substack with my thoughts.
The Kureishi Chronicles has over 14,000 subscribers, and so it’s a good opportunity for any writer to have they work seen by a gracious community of readers.
This competition is for paid subscribers only. I will be running a flash sale this Easter weekend. The cost will be just £5 a month or £50 a year. After that, prices will return to their usual rate of £8 a week or £80 a year.
So subscribe now to lock in your price at £50/year — less than a pound a week.
Your loving writer,
Hanif xx
Hanif - I started following your writings when I read about your injury in the NYT. I’ll admit my interest was in your recovery process and the incredible insights you were sharing because I am a physical therapist. I didn’t expect the gift you gave to me - you’ve opened a world of writing and literature to me. I’ve even started journaling - it’s cathartic. Thank you. I continue to care deeply about your recovery and wish you the best care and the will to work hard - I know we therapists can be awfully pushy.
Here’s my little story. All true.
A few years ago, I received a book in the mail from my best friend. It was entitled Recovering From Trauma - Stories from Victims. Cathee was really excited because her story had been included in one of the chapters. Indeed her story was pretty compelling. In August of 1967 her family drove from Kenosha, Wisconsin to the central plains of Kansas. Her mom had grown up on a small farm outside of Beloit, Kansas and it was a tradition for the family to come together and help with harvest. After a long 12-hour drive with 3 girls and a dog in the back of the Rambler they arrived on the farm Saturday evening. Her uncle was eager to show them the wheat fields and the new combine. Traditionally they would take one cut around the perimeter of the field to see if it was dry enough to harvest the next day. It was also a tradition to let the kids ride in the back of the bin. It was considered a privilege to sit upon the pile of cut grain and feel the flow of wheat pour into the back. Cathee and her little sister were lifted and placed in the bin. Her dad hung onto the ladder by the front seat and talked to their uncle as they made the lap around the field. Her uncle steered the combine over to the silo to unload the wheat. But lost in conversation, he forgot about his two nieces in the wheat bin and he flipped the auger switch on. Cathee was tall enough to grab onto the edge of the bin and she hung on with all her strength as she watched her six year old sister helplessly circle around with the wheat as it was sucked down towards the auger at the bottom of the bin. Her dad immediately screamed at her uncle to turn the auger off but it was too late – her sister’s foot was already sliced to ribbons. Her dad reached down and grabbed her sister as her uncle whipped off his shirt to stop the blood flow. They ran to the car but in the rush to save her sister, my friend was left hanging onto the wheat bin, terrified she might be sucked down next. She felt overwhelmed, frightened and alone. She states this trauma affected her for the rest of her life. And it was very cathartic for her to see her story published and her trauma validated.
But my reaction after reading her story was one of anger. Because you see my best friend is my sister and I was the little girl whose foot was cut off. I felt that if anyone was traumatized it was me not her. I was the one with a lifetime of strapping on my prosthesis every morning to make it to the bathroom. I was the one with endless appointments to doctors to manage my pain or replace the leg after it had broken. Surely my trauma was bigger, longer lasting and more painful than hers. Why would she still be holding on to that moment, that in comparison to my experience, wasn’t that big of a deal?
But in truth - I was the one who was pulled out of that bin and was supported from that day forward. My father hoisted me onto his shoulders whenever I was tired of walking. My mom took me to endless doctor and prosthetist appointments. My family encouraged me through swimming lessons and gymnastics. I married a big strong man and backpacked around the world with him. He carried the heavier load and kept me safe. I had friends and a wonderful profession in health care and a supportive family surrounding me my whole life. I cannot claim to be traumatized.
And yet I never took the time to understand that Cathee did. She still felt abandoned and forgotten. She has spent her adult life trying to understand the deeper mysteries of life. She channels spirits, she wanders off into the mountains, and luckily she’s found a good man with whom to share her itinerant life. But she always chooses solitude over friendships. And in her quietness she had been struggling with a trauma I had not recognized or even discussed.
I guess being a part of a traumatic experience isn’t the issue. What’s more important is what happens afterwards – the feeling of being pulled to safety.
Cathee chose to disappear 2 years ago and only recently reached out to us. I hope it’s not too late to pull her home
The Rope
My grandfather lived on an island towards the middle of Australia, surrounded by buckled spreading white trunked gum trees and an unpredictable brown river. A small farmer-built bridge crossed the anabranch to connect it to solid land.
The farmhouse was ramshackle and you could tell it had weathered droughts, fires and floods. The farmer abandoned it for a shinier house on higher ground, so Pop got it rent free.
It was the mid 60s. Pop was 76 and I was 17, each on a different rim of the cusp of life. He was stubbornly old, I was fiercely young; he had grown wise into his years, my naive ignorance was shrouded by bluster; he bolstered his waning strength with deep courage and conviction, my strength was yet to reach the intensity of my imagination.
That summer, when the river was low, he dug an ancient row boat out of the mud and patched it up. He tied a long rope to a tree and let the boat drift into the current to do some fishing. He didn't have to row, just steer it into the bank when he caught something or the sun got too hot.
Mum yelled at him and told him to stop. He would kill himself, she said.
Better than waiting to die in some run-down nursing home, Pop replied.
We lived 50km to the north west so he was by himself on the river bank most of the time and did whatever pleased him. He grew vegetables, fished, listened to the radio, read - he liked westerns and crime stories - and slept. Maybe once a week he would coax his old grey ute into town to buy milk and bread and change library books. I tried to visit every week but it was hard with school and sport.
The first big storm of the season came to the mountains about 100km east of him. We got our storm about a day later. The rain was intense, mesmeric with its thudding grey beat for several hours. As always, it turned the black soil plains to clenching mud.
No internet, no mobile phones, we relied on the radio for news. No satellites to tell us where and when the rain fell.
You'd better check on your grandfather, mum said when the rain stopped.
The small bridge across the anabranch was just under water. I trusted that 50 years meant the bridge would last another day and drove onto the island. The track was wet but clear to the first rise; from there it was thigh-deep water to the walls of the house 500metres away.
Away from the river the water moved slowly. Pop's ute had floated towards the middle of this small lake. I couldn't see him, so I followed where I knew the track went and waded towards the house. He wasn't there. He was sitting calmly in the boat near the middle of the river being thrashed around by the roughly tumbling flood.
The rope was still tied to the big white river gum near the top of the bank, but the knot was under calmer fast flowing water.
Looking at his half smiling face, free of fear, I began to understand what courage with age meant, and I cried - tears of anger, despair, hope, hopelessness and love.
I waded towards the tree but he yelled at me to stay back. It’s too dangerous. I can wait out the flood. I won't die, I've got plenty of water, he shouted.
But my heart was full of love and some nascent fool hardy teenage courage and I kept going. It's not him or me, I understood, it's him and me.
Bracing myself behind the tree with the rope I slowly pulled the boat into the calmer water, tying the rope in loops as it came. I reached him just as he stood and began to fall. I held him tight and we waded back to the track and my ute. He wasn’t hurt; just my hands were bleeding.
Leave everything. Nothing's as useful as you. And don't tell your mother, he said.
When he was, finally, in that nursing home he told me he did once fall out of the boat when his fishing line got snagged, but he held onto it and kicked it back to the bank. All he lost was his battered hat. He pleaded with me to take him back there now. This time, he said, I won't try to swim.