Dear Readers,
Next week I am moving to the long-waited rehab facility, and after that I will be returning home.
Until now, I have been shielded from the costs of disability because of our wonderful and vital NHS. This will change when I get home due to the considerable costs of remodelling the house, and my need for round the clock care.
I ask, therefore, that if you enjoy The Kureishi Chronicles, believe in paying for good writing, and want to help with my recovery, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Lets keep this show on the road.
Dear Reader, finally I have moved from west London to a rehab in north London. This is my fifth hospital since my accident on Boxing Day last year, and I hope this will be my last move. Like all these moves it is disturbing and upsetting; you have to get used to a new room, a new set of nurses, doctors and physios. You must deal with people every day, people that you would never run into in your usual life. This is both pleasurable, interesting and difficult. You must make conversation, even when you don’t want to. But most of the people you meet in hospital are interested in your welfare; they want to do their job well, they take pride in it. But still, you have to negotiate with them, which I find frustrating and enervating.
I made a friend, Jon, who is in a bay down the corridor from me, which he shares with three other people. It sounds much worse than it is for me in my single side room. There are disturbances all night; radios, nurses coming in and out, groans and the cries of the upset.
He doesn’t mind me writing about him, he says, and he also has a blog on Substack (here), which he started after reading my blog on here. Jon had his accident in June while rock climbing, where he fell on his head and broke his neck as well as both his arms. He is a philosophy lecturer in London and the most intelligent person I have met in these hospitals so far. It was a relief for both of us to share our complaints. Like me, he hates the mornings when the nurses wash you, dress you and work on your bowel movements with their fingers. He still finds it humiliating and degrading, which I do not since I have no dignity left to injure. But he is in his late thirties and had a lot of living to do. He told me that he is often suicidal since it is almost unbearable to live with such loss. At the same time he talks about getting out of here and finding a new flat where he will be able to live alone as a semi-paralysed man.
He comes to talk to me in his motorised wheelchair but he is not allowed to enter my room since I have a hospital bug, as I might have told you. A nurse yelled at him, so he had to park himself outside the room and shout towards me sitting in bed inside the room. This I find more humiliating that any number of fingers up my arse. I am also banned from the day room, but sometimes I sneak in and hope no one is watching. I managed to have a conversation with Jon, but I am worried all the time that I will be caught and thrown out. At times, this place can feel like a prison, and I wonder how I manage to stand it.
He and I discuss how boring it is to be in hospital. Hours and hours pass when there is nothing to do. But in this regard he is better off than me. He at least can watch television or read, though his hands, like mine, are pretty useless. I at least can listen to the radio but by now I have almost mastered the art of doing nothing. I can sit in my wheelchair and stare at a blank wall for two hours at the time. Sometimes I fall asleep and other times I entertain myself with stories from my past or ideas for this blog. Jon tells me he entertains himself with sexual fantasies but I tell him that this is something of a losing game because nothing for either of us can come of it. Isabella comments, “You really know how to cheer people up”.
This new rehab is a long way from my friends and family in London. It is an old military hospital which has been turned into a modern rehab facility with a well-equipped gym, swimming pool, coffee shop, and a lovely garden designed by people in wheelchairs. It will be interesting to see whether anyone comes out this far to visit. Isabella of course comes every day, and I have another friend who lives ten minutes away from the hospital, who also visits and gives me face and head massages.
Jon and I were discussing the loyalty of various friends and family members; those who have visited once or twice and never came again, for instance. One would like to be near the centre of others’ attention but of course people in hospital are easily forgotten, with good reason, as there is only so much suffering that one can take in.
It was consoling to learn that Jon has the same obsessive thoughts as I do. Why has this happened to me? Why was I picked out for this misfortune when others are skipping down the street and living good lives? What would I do if I could go back in time? And why didn’t I appreciate it more when I could use my hands and legs? Etcetera. It is so boring. No wonder he wants to die. But the blog cheers him up. Like me, he feels he is communicating with someone. And if you have managed to read this far, then you are the person that this is for. Thanks for being there.
Your loving writer,
Hanif
Hello, Mr. Kureishi! I've reading your blog for some weeks now and I read it aloud to my husband. We live in Mexico ciry. Both of us are huge fans of your work, starting when we were single and hadn't meet each other yet. I found "London kills me", the movie, in a videoclub near home. I rented it many times and when the videoclub went on bankrupcy and they put on sale most of their movies, I bought it. Then I found the book. And I was such a happy gothic mexican post-teenager till I lent both the movie and the book to a friend who never gave them back to me. My husband started with "My beautiful laundrette". Everytimenwe finish reading one of your post, we talk again about how astonishing was finding your work back then, long before we ever dreamed about writing for a living. You inspired us then and you inspire us now. I was kind of shy of writing all this in your comments -and my English is not that good, I know -but when Ibfinidhedbreading aloud this post I thought I had to do it now. So here I am, wishing you and Jon more chats and some relieve and thanking you for all the time dedicated to make your art.
If nothing else, you have cemented the idea in my mind of fingers up the arse as a fractional unit of measurement, in a boundless scale of humiliation. The Kureishi Scale. Four fingers to a Fist, in the same way that there are 16 ounces to a pound, and 100 grams in a kilogram. It's five if you are on the continent, where they do things differently and count the thumb. I wonder whether all those people who had diseases named after them had any say in the matter, or if it was just accepted that they would assume that mantle. It's a good way to kill-off of a surname. Nobody wants to be Mr and Mrs Syphilis.
The kind of bugs that result in wards quarantining patients can and do kill people. The fines if a hospital logs too many cases are eye-watering, but it can be isolating for patients.
Hospital gardens are not like normal gardens. There was one – I forget where it was – it might have been a residential care facility. The pathway was a figure of eight, which allowed dementia patients the freedom to roam without getting lost.
Reading this blog and thinking about what I have read, has made more me appreciative of my own relative good health. On paper I am seriously ill. In the eyes of the law I am disabled. However, I do have my freedom of movement. I can put on a Diamanda Galás CD and turn it off when it becomes too much. Someone – a literary rival perhaps – could come into your room with a boom box, put 'Plague Mass' on repeat, crank the volume, and leave you to your fate. It is a sobering thought.
I acquired 16kg kettlebell. It is a heavy weight for me to carry. I love the resistance that it gives me. I walk around the garden holding it above my head at the end of a single extended arm, feeling the untidy thatching of the grass under my feet. I was out there on Wednesday evening when the Summer, that has lingered long into October, irrevocably shifted to Autumn, in what seemed like the passing of a few minutes. There was something almost miraculous about it. I thought: I am lucky. I won't always be lucky. One day I will lose my grip on this kettlebell and it will fall on my head. At the moment though I am, and I should revel in every small passing moment.
It is a quarter past eight in the evening. I have been fasting all day. In a minute, I will go down and light the barbecue. I will sit in the dark and obsess about lions, which is what I always do when I am alone under these circumstances – the thought that in other countries where there are large predators, you would always be scanning your surroundings for the light reflecting in a pair of large eyes.
Let Jon have his sexual fantasies. It worked for de Sade when he was locked-up in Vincennes. Anyone who lives long enough will experience their horizons drawing in to the point where they are confined to a room. In time, we all have no choice other than to retreat into our heads and make best use of what is there.