A few weeks ago I stumbled across an article in the New York Times sharing the story of Hanif Kureishi, a British writer who collapsed while on holiday in Rome on Boxing Day. He fell in such a way that he awoke paralyzed from the neck down, becoming as he has poignantly described, “divorced from myself.”
Since the first week of January he has been sharing his thoughts from his hospital bed, dictated to his loved ones who then dispatch it to Twitter and Substack.
It’s raw, vulnerable, profound, at times profane and painful to take in as he describes a reality and predicaments that the word hard doesn’t begin to do justice to describe. It’s also humorous at times. It’s all together captivating.
His writing has made me look at my life differently. To notice the gifts I have of doing simple things he speaks about missing - perusing my own bookshelves, writing words for myself, having command over my own hands, walking up the front path of home to sit and relax on my own couch.
It’s a wild privilege to be reading something written with such clarity - of voice, perspective, the writing itself - from the middle of tragedy in which the writer is the protagonist and the narrator. When the other side is so clearly uncertain, without the benefit of perspective that comes from writing with the gift of hindsight, knowing that the thing has been survived.
So many of us write from the meaning making, ‘here’s the lesson,’ place. I know it’s a place I always want to get to when the unexpected or undesired happens. The place where I alchemize something from pain and hearthurt into something useful, for myself and hopefully for others. The “I wish it had never happened yet look at how I’ve grown,” place. As if life can always be neatly wrapped up into tidy, sensical packages.
Maybe other writers have the capacity to drop themselves into moments of long ago and speak with aching honesty about what was viscerally happening in that moment. I’m aware that no matter how honest I wish to be, I edit as I write, or speak, if only by which details I reach for to include, or choose to leave out. By the desire, at times, to make use of an experience, to feel a sense of growth or purpose to stuff I’ve struggled with. I think this is human. This impulse to make sense of the nonsensical, assign meaning to the difficult events that have happened.
It’s such a gift to read Hanif’s writing. From the middle, as he’s in the experience. It’s aching, brutal, real, hopeful. It’s brought me, with each dispatch, more into the present moment than anything I’ve read in a very long time.
I don’t have a tidy conclusion to share. I’m laughing at myself for the impulse to find one, given what I’m reflecting on. For now, I just have thoughts expressed with awe and gratitude. And an internal nudge to express more from the place where I’m still in it and figuring it out. I realize that I will always be figuring it out.
Photo by Kent Tupas on Unsplash
