Thoughts From a Hospital Bed

How would you handle an accident or medical situation that suddenly and severely curtailed your life? Defiance? Bitterness? Depression? Grace? Acceptance? Perseverance? It’s an unknowable answer unless one has experienced it. 

British novelist, playwright and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi provides an extraordinary window into that very circumstance almost daily. He suffered a serious fall Dec. 26 in Rome that left him without use of his limbs and where he has remained hospitalized. He responded with thoughts on himself and his condition, dictated to his wife and son, who then post them on Twitter and on the writer’s Substack page (subscription). His chronicle has grown to more than 10,000 words, and he shows no signs of slowing down. 

Kureishi’s thoughts understandably are all over the map. Early dispatches were full of despair and fears that he would be consigned to live as “a vegetable.” As he gradually became accustomed to his condition, he seemed to embrace the creative thoughts that came to him amid motionlessness. Not that he’s exactly happy about it, but lemons and lemonade, and all that. 

In a recent tweet thread: “But what still makes me despair is the idea that I can’t walk up the front path of my house, open the door, and step back into my old life – lie down on my sofa, with a glass of wine and the Premier League. It seems unbelievably cruel that I cannot do such a simple thing.” … “It’s as if I have been plucked off the street by four anonymous policemen and been taken to a strange school, an irrational persecutory alternate universe. I have to find a way to survive, like we all did when we were children.” 

Details about the incident are a bit muddy. Kureishi tweeted that he recalled sipping a beer while watching the Liverpool-Aston Villa soccer match at a piazza and then returned to the apartment where he and his wife were staying. He began to feel dizzy and leaned forward and put his head between his knees. He awoke several minutes later, he wrote, in a pool of blood with his neck in a “grotesquely twisted” position and his wife alongside him. He was disoriented and believed he was going to die. He credited his wife with saving his life and keeping him calm. 

He wrote that he has some sensation in his limbs, but cannot move them and has no control of his arms and legs. He underwent a spinal surgery. 

A tweet: “A strange thing happened to me, I went to Rome with my wife for a few days at Christmas and now I will never go home again. I have no home now, no centre. I am stranger to myself. I don’t know who I am anymore. Someone new is emerging.” 

Kureishi has written (dictated) about sex from the vantage of someone whose body can no longer perform sexually. He has high praise for the doctors and therapists who work with him and others. He wants to be a good patient and engage with hospital staff, to learn about their lives. He admits envy of fellow patients who can do simple things such as wave and scratch their heads. He reminisces about his father teaching him cricket (his father is Pakistani, his mother British, and he was born in suburban London), though he confessed that he wasn’t a good prospect and was a bit afraid of cricket balls hurled his way at 100 mph. He delivers reflections about writing and other writers. 

Kureishi, 68, has an ample body of work. Among his notable pieces are the Oscar-nominated screenplay for “My Beautiful Laundrette,” a well-regarded Stephen Frears film about a gay Pakistani-British boy growing up in London in the 1980s; the novel “The Buddha of Suburbia,” which won a British award for best first novel; the novel “Intimacy,” which was adapted into an award-winning film; the screenplay for the film “Venus,” which earned Peter O’Toole best actor nominations by the Oscars, Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globes. He has written nine novels and 15 plays and screenplays, as well as several story collections and four books of non-fiction. 

A couple of thoughts came to mind as I scrolled Kureishi’s threads. One, hope that through time and therapy and medical advances that he regains at least some movement of his arms and legs. Second, gratitude. Not that I wasn’t grateful previously. I’m increasingly appreciative of my good fortune as I grow older. I try to thank those who bring me a decent meal (or prepare it, if I have access to them) or bag my groceries or open a door for me or write something I enjoy. I’m grateful for each day with my wife, for meet-ups with friends, for walks with the dog, for trips to the beach, for the simple act of typing. The ability to do and go as I please. Kureishi’s situation reminds me that we are guaranteed nothing. Nothing. 

And that life can turn in an instant.