Wheelchair-bound author and screenwriter revealed at the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) in London, new ambitions, profound insights about life, since his accident and how he gets confused for Sir Salman Rushdie (sometimes)… He also said that in walking to the local coffee shop by the end of August – he would feel like Nelson Mandela did after being released from prison…
By Naomi Canton
WRITER HANIF KUREISHI revealed that he finds it impossible to think about writing fiction since his accident which has left him paralysed and in a wheelchair since December 2022.
In his only second public UK literary festival appearance this year, Kureishi, the writer behind the seminal novel, ‘The Buddha of Suburbia‘, (1990) showed that his cheeky and provocative wit remain firmly intact.
Speaking to a packed-to-the-rafters hall at the Jaipur Literature Festival at the British Library in London, he told the audience that his sons are now helping him write a film about the accident and the aftermath.
Kureishi is responsible for penning one of the famous British independent films ever made – ‘My Beautiful Laundrette‘ (1985).
The 70-year-old said: “I haven’t written any fiction at all since falling on my head. “What happened to me was so mind-blowing and traumatic and painful to absorb.
“Last night I was asleep but screaming and shouting all night as I have PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) – the horror of what happened to me doesn’t go away.”
One minute he was watching a game of football in Rome on the TV and the next thing he remembered was lying on the floor not being able to move.
Arguably, along with Sir Salman Rushdie, the two British writers are among the best known in the country – and share not just an Indian heritage but these painful, life-changing and sudden events.
Sir Salman was attacked by Hadi Mater – now serving a 25-year life term in prison – in New York in August 2022. Mater stabbed Sir Salman multiple times, leaving him blind in one eye and inflicting damage on his liver and hands.
The publication of ‘Knife‘ last year which dealt with the attack and the recovery, have set the writer free, as Kureishi informed his audience and continued to explain how difficult writing fiction had become.
“I was discussing it with Salman Rushdie – he writes fiction now after the terrible thing that happened to him – he wants to move away from what happened to him and write fiction and go back to being a novelist – but what has happened to me, has so blown my mind, I want to write my own experience.
“I find it difficult to make up stuff now. I can’t get away from my own experience. I’d like to write fiction again, but it seems trivial and silly to me, compared to writing about what has actually happened.”
That is why he wrote ‘Shattered‘ which is based on the accident and the year that followed and that is what the movie is about.
He revealed all this at his powerful session with another British author, Monisha Rajesh, at which the audience sat in awe, struck by the poignant sight of Kureishi on stage in a wheelchair but still retaining his ability to make people laugh.
At times the audience was silent, watching him in total shock and awe just absorbing it all.
It was the most powerful session at JLF London.
The audience heard that Kureishi’s experiences/the book ‘Shattered’ is now being adapted by his sons, for a film treatment.
“I dictate it to them and they revise it and we are trying to write a movie on it. It’s quite difficult to write a movie, based on my experience as it is quite miserable and was bad enough to live. You think the book is quite cheerful to read, but to see someone lying on the hospital bed, it’s tricky to make it into something absorbing for a film audience, but eventually you will get to see it, I hope.”
His twin sons Carlo and Sachin are independent filmmakers by background.
Kureishi senior also said he wants to continue to tell his life story in prose, with a new book entitled, ‘Still Shattered‘ – he dictates that to his younger son, Carlo.
“It is a series of blogs about what it was like to go home. I live in a small area of my large London house with lots of rooms but they all go up – I can look up but can’t go up there – I don’t know what people are doing upstairs – could be orgies and revolutions taking place,” he quipped, triggering wild laughter from the audience.
In a further display of his playful wit, he recounted being treated by a hospital nurse who slightly confused his identity…
As she flipped him over in his bed in hospital, she asked: “How long did it take you to write ‘Midnight’s Children‘?” (which is by Salman Rushdie).
He replied: “If I had written that, don’t you think I would have gone private?”
The Boxing Day accident has triggered not just physical changes but altered the way he thinks about people and the world around him.
He told Rajesh that he sees a different dimension to love and personal friendship now.
He shared that he was getting married for the first time in his life and that he believes walking and getting out of his wheelchair are real possibilities.
Like many to whom grave events can suddenly occur – he admitted to asking the question, “Why me?” But then a friend said, “Why not you?”
He remains unable to use a phone or computer.
On one occasion, he remembered, a cleaner knocked over his iPad mid-way through a film he was watching and he was left alone in his bed with it lying on the floor.
“For a while I felt like I was in Plato’s cave on my bed seeing if I could see a flicker on the ceiling to see what was happening in the film,” he said.
“We are all going in that direction. It can happen to any of us at any time. What is stupid is the fact you don’t believe it will happen to you, you live as though that is not the case.
“When you are at hospital, you see all the people outside hospital, walking around living their lives – even laughing – and telling jokes – and you think: ‘You idiots, you have no idea, mate, you are going to be in here in six months paralysed from the neck down, rather than chattering away like a (Samuel) Beckett head in ‘Play‘? You can’t see that and you don’t want to know that’.
“Then, you wonder whether the hospital is reality and the people outside are fools or is it the other way round?” he posed, as Rajesh held a cup with a straw in for him to sip through whilst also holding her mic and his mic.
He admits he was swamped with calls from all over the world after the accident and many people came to see him in hospital in Rome – some flying in and out for lunch the same day – some of them he had no idea who they were – they came in looked at him and left pretty rapidly.
He soon figured out who his friends were.
Now he has people visiting him every day – including his sons. He also has a third younger son, Kier.
“My son Carlo comes to my house every single day at 10am, amazingly, and we sit down and we write together until lunchtime and we also talk about loads of stuff like what we have seen on TV and politics.
“It is an extraordinary, loving thing for him to do for me. Obviously, I pay him,” he revealed, sparking further laughter.
So, has he become closer to God, having declared himself an atheist previously, asked a member of the audience in the questions from the floor segment.
“What you call spiritual, I guess I would call friendship,” he said matter-of-factly. “The support and love of other people and to feel their love for you and your love for them. That is my understanding of what I consider spirituality to be – to commune with other people. It’s love, I guess. My relationship with other people has really changed since the accident and became much deeper and my need has become greater and they have responded to my need for love from them”.
Despite needing a full-time carer and having seen his life change so drastically, he said like many, he has much too look forward too – he was set to be married on Monday (June 16), he told the audience speaking on Saturday (14) at the three-day JLF (See below link for wrap story).
“I’ve never been married before – unlike some other people who have been married many times – I have never tried it, so I am going to try it.
“So, Monday afternoon you will hear how it’s going…”
He was set to marry Italian partner Isabella D’Amico. The Daily Mail reported it in its Eden Confidential story on Tuesday (June 17).
Kureishi told JLF: “Another ambition of mine is to try and walk to GAIL’s coffee shop, near my house at the end of my street and have a cheesy twizzle stick.
“It will be a bit like Nelson Mandela leaving Robben Island for freedom. I am going to make a video of me walking to GAILS’s. I hope to do this by the end of August, so there are reasons to live and this is one of them.”
All pictures: Courtesy of Jaipur Literature Festival at the British Library ©Marcin Nowak
