Hanif Kureishi says that her fall in 2022 did not steal her ability to work or be creative: “In fact, I write anymore.”
Kier Kureishi / Harper Collins
hide
tilting legend
Kier Kureishi / Harper Collins
The novelist and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi only remembers pieces of the day in 2022 when her life changed forever. He remembers being sick of a gastric infection and began to feel weak – then his memory becomes unclear. With hindsight, Kureishi said, he probably got up to walk, then fell flat on his face, breaking his neck.
“When I woke up, I was in a pool of blood,” said Kureishi. “And then I saw these objects from the corner of my eye, and I didn’t know what they were. And then I started to realize that it was my hands. But I didn’t have an agency on them.”
Kureishi could speak, but he could not move his hands or other parts of his body. He spent a year in hospitals before he could go home, where he is assisted by caregivers 24 hours a day.
“At first there was a lot of anger,” he said. “When you have … your ordinary life has torn from you by a disease – as it will happen to so many of us – you are absolutely furious. And you become furious with people around you. You become furious with your life.”
Son of a British mother and a father who emigrated from Pakistan in the late 1940s, Kureishi was nominated for an Oscar for his scenario of the 1985 film My beautiful laundromat. He continued to more films and books, including the 1990 novel The suburbs Buddha.
Kureishi began to write his new memories, BurstOnly a few days after the accident by dictating his partner, Isabella, and her son, Carlo. In this document, he describes being completely dependent on the others, feeling helpless and humiliated.
But he says that writing on his state also gave him a goal: “Even if I was really sick and really bombed with my head on pain relievers and so on, I wrote a blog every day on my state, and it was very exciting that people were interested in what I had to say and what had happened to me.”
Strengths of the interview
On its current mobility
I can’t use my fingers, I can’t enter, I couldn’t pick up a pen or something like that. I can move my shoulder. I can move my legs a little. Obviously, I am in a wheelchair. I can’t get up, but I can’t really use my hands. So I am 24 hours a day, but I am stronger than me and I have physiotherapy (therapy) every day and so on. … I move a little, but I think it’s about where I’m going to stay from now on.
On the chance of the fall that left him paralyzed
When I was at the Northern London hospital, in a detoxification treatment … everyone in the neighborhood had an accident. A guy had plunged into an empty swimming pool. Another guy had fallen on the stairs, drinking a glass of wine. Another guy had fallen over his rake and his garden, stumbled on it and fell and broke his neck and was paralyzed. So we all had these random and rather contingent accidents, but suddenly, in a moment, completely changed your life forever, and there is no return.
It is absolutely enrageous. Do you think why I couldn’t have done something else at that time? Why did this moment come to mind? Why was I chosen? What did I hurt? You go through all these terrible and horrible thoughts on which you did this and why it happened, and that makes you an angry person. So I think there are moments rightly, when you deserve to feel angry, but it’s difficult for people around you.
On the way that they can work helps his relationship with his partner and with himself
Most people I was in the hospital, they can’t go back to work. None of them go back to work. If you are a truck driver, or you are a street cleaner, or your factor, or something else, none of these men or women can return to work. And so they go home and they are in bed and they watch television. Fortunately, my work is a work of discussion and writing, and I work every day. And that is part of the important part of our relationship. She works and I work, and I have the dignity of my work.
I wrote BurstI write other things and I think it is my part of the relationship, that I earn money, that I support us. I am a father of my son, so I always do things in the world and I have a certain dignity. I was not deprived of my ability to work, to be creative. In fact, I write anymore now, even if I am disabled, than before. And I am very happy to work. And I’m going to work in the morning with great energy and great belief. And this is important in our relationship for both of us. We therefore both think that we are worthy and creative that do things that matter in the world.
On his relationship with sex and privacy since the accident
You feel free from a terrible agency, and you look with fun on the bizarre activities of others, in fact. So I do not particularly lack it. I do not particularly care because there are really other forms of human sexual relations, other forms of human love, other forms of touching and kissing and being with someone else in a sensual way. I think it is probably a real narrowing of the sexual spectrum, to think that there are only a few ways you can be sexual. I think sexuality and sensuality are a much wider thing than we think, to be honest. You can therefore find other ways to love other people who are not necessarily sexual in the most obvious sense, in fact.
By not reading his friend Salman RushdieMemory, Knife, About the attack that almost killed him and his recovery
The reason I didn’t read it was not because I wanted to keep my own thoughts. … I didn’t want to hear about his suffering. … I have known Salman since the early 80s and I love him, I admire him as a man and as a writer. He’s like a older brother for me. And there was no way that I was going to read on this horrible thing that happened. I couldn’t face it. And he understands that. He is aware of it. And I didn’t want to read on someone in the hospital and have to recover and so on. I can write about it, but I don’t want to hear about it because my life is quite miserable that she is. I don’t want to worsen things.
On the next step
I want to have a lot of things. I do a dance thing. I write another book. I make this film with Luca Guadagnino. I am very excited by what I do, and I have to get up in the morning and wait for the day impatiently and think, what will I do today? Is it going to be exciting? Will I see a very good friend? Will I have a conversation that I have never had before? And I’m going to work on something fresh and new? I am really excited by my book Burst Go out in the United States, for example. I have not published a book in the United States for a long time. So I want to read critics. I want to read the interviews. I want to know how the book is made. I just want to be excited by the world after going through a year of hell.
Sam Briger and Joel Wolfram produced and published this interview for Broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth November adapted it for the web.
Entertainment
