Novelist and Oscar-nominated British screenwriter Hanif Kureishi has been in hospital since a near-fatal fall in Rome on December 26 that left him with severe spinal injuries. The ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ author has said he may never be able to walk or use a pen again. His physical condition, however, has failed to deter him from doing what he does best — writing, letting his “Dead Fingers” talk. From his hospital bed in Italy, Kureishi has been sharing on Twitter his thoughts and updates on his physical and mental condition. From his candid description of himself as a “vegetable” or a “cripple”, to his insightful observation of people and situations around him, the daily Twitter threads have kept people hooked.
On January 6, Kureishi first told his followers in the first two tweets how he landed in hospital with “paralysis” after finding himself in a pool of blood earlier with his “neck in a grotesquely twisted position”. He shared how he had started his Boxing Day as a normal person, doing normal things in Rome — “a comfortable walk to the Piazza del Popolo”, “a stroll through the Villa Borghese”, seeing “Mo Salah score against Aston Villa”, or sipping “half a beer” — just before he had a fall.
In subsequent posts, the author described later how he “became divorced” from himself, and how he realised the “scooped, semicircular object with talons attached scuttling towards me” was his own hand. “I believed I was dying. I believed I had three breaths left,” he wrote.
“I cannot scratch my nose, make a phone call or feed myself. As you can imagine, this is both humiliating, degrading and a burden for others,” Kureishi added, not forgetting to “thank the doctors and nurses at the Gemelli hospital, Rome, for all their extraordinary kindness, competence and care”.
He also asked for help, without sounding desperate, as he sought to thank his readers “for their love and support over the years”.
“At the moment, it is unclear whether I will ever be able to walk again, or whether I’ll ever be able to hold a pen, if there is any assistance that I would be grateful for, it would be with regard to voice assisted hardware and software, which will allow me to watch, write - and begin work again, and continue some kind of half life,” he posted, urging people to comment if they could help.
‘Dead Fingers Talking, Talking’
From January 7, Kureishi’s tweets started to chronicle his days in hospital even as he began to share how he used to be as a “neither happy, nor unhappy” child, about his “less police-like” parents, how he took to writing after his father left him a “huge big fat noisy” typewriter, what doctors are saying about his condition, how men and women appear to be around him, and what he sees and what he can’t with his head “stuck between the wall and the bed”.
“The Buddha of Suburbia” author’s tweets interspersed with jokes — be it about “enema” break, or people mistaking him for celebrated author and friend Salman Rushdie, or the “good thing” about paralysis that is “you don’t have to move to s**t and p**s” — have since had followers (over 33k and counting) coming to his timeline for latest updates.
For those wondering how “the man with no hands” is tweeting, he revealed on January 8 who does the writing for him. He shared how his wife Isabella would first write the tweets for him, and later his son Carlo Kureishi took up the job.
In his tweets since, Kureishi has shared how Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed 10 times last August in the US while preparing to give a lecture, has been sending him encouraging messages every day; how sitting up on his bed for the first time after the fall made him undergo his “personal metamorphosis”; and how he tried to know from doctors and nurses how they found their vocation.
In his latest thread, Kureishi spoke about the first writers he ever met, his stint at the Royal Court Theatre, and when Rushdie invited him to his house “for dinner with Angela Carter”.
He signed off the thread with a “promise”, after breaking one made the previous day.
“Yesterday I promised revelations regarding sex and drugs but since I am stuck in this room without air or light, I am not in the best mood. I promise there will be filth in abundance to come.”
Who Is Hanif Kureishi?
Born in south London in 1954, to an English mother and Indian father who was a journalist, Hanif Kureishi comes from a family displaced by the Partition of India and Pakistan.
Kureishi has written seven novels, besides many short stories, essays, plays and screenplays. It was the film adaptation of his ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ novel that brought him international acclaim for the first time — in 1985. The Oscar-nominated screenplay was about a young British Pakistani man and his White boyfriend. The film starring Daniel Day-Lewis received a BAFTA.
In 1990, his The Buddha of Suburbia won the Whitbread first novel award. The bestseller was turned into a TV series in 1993.
Kureishi’s other novels include The Black Album (1995), which deals with Islamic fundamentalism and freedom of speech; Intimacy (1998), about a man contemplating leaving his wife and children; Gabriel’s Gift (2001), The Body (2003), Something to Tell You (2008) and The Last Word (2014).
The author has shown his indomitable spirit with his hospital updates, which surely merit a compilation for publishing in future.
He has had a surgery on his spine already and his physiotherapy sessions are on.
In his latest thread, Kureishi told his followers how he was feeling hopeful after being allowed to see “the Italian sky through the window, some trees and a cloud and few birds”.
“For the first time I believed that things might begin to improve. My heart is like a singing bird … I began to feel that I had a whole body and not just a patchwork of random pieces thrown together as if by Mary Shelley’s imagination,” he wrote.
His fans and followers are hopeful Kureishi will never stop writing. One of his tweets does give them that hope: “Recently I felt myself slowing down as a writer, as one does as one gets older, but the ideas have not stopped coming. Characters, voices, situations, I’m as full of them as ever, if not more.”