THE PHOTOGRAPH

Dear Readers,

I began this blog in January, less than a month after my fall. For seven months I’ve been rambling about my condition, hoping to reach you somehow, to tell you what it is like to live without the use of your arms or legs. It is no fun, to say the least.

As always, if you have the means, it would mean a great deal if you could become a paid subscriber, and keep this show on the road.

Your loving writer, Hanif.

An old friend of mine came in to my hospital room with an envelope of photographs. He pulled one out, it was of me, taken in Cork in or around 1993. I am at a book signing, handing a paperback copy of my first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, to someone. I am wearing a Levis jacket and a Paul Smith scarf, which I still have. My hair is long and black and tucked behind my ears. The light is on my face, which is smooth and pixie-like. I guess I am in my late thirties.

My friend pins the photograph to the wall opposite me without asking. I am not sure I want it there. But there is it, I am looking at it now. People come in and they say, in amazement, “is that you?” Now I am gaunt and unshaven with straggly hair, and, like all of us, barely resemble the person I once was. The picture reminds me, of course, of all that I have lost and I wonder if it is good for me to have it there.