Just after Christmas, writer Hanif Kureishi was walking in Rome, where he and his wife, Isabella D’Amico, were spending the holidays, when he collapsed and fell on the sidewalk. It is not clear why he — perhaps he fainted or suffered an epileptic seizure, his son Carlo Kureishi indicated — but he fell in such a way that he twisted his neck and severely injured his upper spine. .
When Kureishi regained consciousness, he was lying in a pool of blood, unable to move his arms or legs. “It occurred to me that there was no coordination between what was left of my mind and what was left of my body,” he wrote days later, via dictation, on Twitter. “I thought I was dying.”
Kureishi, who was taken to Gemelli Hospital, spent the next few days “deeply traumatized, shaken and unrecognizable to myself,” he tweeted. “At the moment, it is not clear if I will ever be able to walk again, or if I will be able to hold a feather.”
Since then, Kureishi, 68, a novelist, screenwriter, playwright and director best known for “My Beautiful Laundromat” and “The Buddha of the Suburbs,” has been dictating messages from his hospital bed. In vivid and moving prose, he narrates his drama, but also evokes memories of the past, reflecting on writing and art and recounting the terrifying thought of depending on others.
The messages are presented as a series of tweets and are compiled as a Substack newsletter. They have struck a chord with readers, who have responded with practical advice and messages of love, support and gratitude for what they say has been an extraordinary role model of dignity in the midst of misfortune.
The tweets are brave, deep, playful, lyrical, desperate, and sometimes downright funny. Mentioning an impending rectal exam, Kureishi recalled the most recent one he’d had, courtesy of the public National Health Service in England. The nurse mistook him for Salman Rushdie.
“As the nurse turned me face down she asked me, ‘How long did it take you to write ‘Children of Midnight’?” Kureishi wrote. “I replied, ‘If I had actually written ‘Children of Midnight,’ don’t you think I would have gone to a private hospital?’”
The two writers are old friends. “My friend Salman Rushdie, one of the bravest men I know, a man who has confronted the most evil form of Islamofascism, writes to me daily, encouraging patience,” Kureishi wrote in a message on Twitter.
Kureishi has been transferred to a rehabilitation hospital and his recovery will surely be arduous. Carlo Kureishi said that an operation had reduced the swelling in his father’s spine and that he had regained some movement in his legs and fingers.
Hanif Kureishi wrote in a recent post that a physical therapist “promised him that I would hold a pen in my right hand again.”
By: SARAH LYALL
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6543896, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-01-24 22:50:07
#Novelist #writes #fascinating #texts #recovering #injury