How A Writer's Life Changed In A Second

Summary

Fresh Air: How A Writer's Life Changed In A Second

Host: Terry Gross
Guest: Hanif Kureishi
Release Date: March 3, 2025

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Introduction

In this poignant episode of Fresh Air, host Terry Gross engages in an intimate conversation with acclaimed British writer Hanif Kureishi about his life-altering accident and the subsequent journey chronicled in his new memoir, "Shattered." Kureishi, known for his insightful explorations of contemporary issues through literature and film, opens up about the profound physical and emotional challenges he faced after a fall in 2020 left him paralyzed.

The Accident and Its Aftermath

Hanif Kureishi begins by recounting the harrowing details of his accident:

Hanif Kureishi (04:14): "I felt absolutely flat bang on my face. And I broke my neck or damaged my spine very badly. And when I woke up, I was in a pool of blood and I was unable to move my hands or any other part of my body. I could still speak."

He describes the immediate confusion and terror of waking up injured and disconnected from his body, laying the foundation for the memoir's exploration of identity and survival.

Writing as a Coping Mechanism

Despite his severe injuries, Kureishi found solace and a sense of self through writing. He began dictating "Shattered" to his son just days after the accident, using writing as a means to reconnect with himself:

Hanif Kureishi (06:14): "I was writing a blog every single day about my condition. And that really cheered me up. You know, I had something to do, I had a platform and I was back as a writer, which is what I am."

This daily practice not only helped him process his trauma but also provided a way to communicate his experiences to the world, eventually gaining international attention.

Relationship with Partner and Caregivers

Kureishi delves into the transformation of his relationship with his wife, Isabella, and his dependence on caregivers:

Hanif Kureishi (09:54): "The nature of our relationship was completely transformed by this accident where I am entirely dependent on other people."

He reflects on the emotional strain of being reliant on others for basic needs, expressing feelings of shame and embarrassment while acknowledging the deep love and support from Isabella.

Views on Sexuality Post-Accident

Addressing a more personal aspect, Kureishi discusses how his accident reshaped his perception of sexuality:

Hanif Kureishi (18:42): "Other forms of human intercourse, other forms of human love, other forms of touching and kissing and being with somebody else in a sensual way."

He explains that while his interest in traditional sexual activities diminished, he found new ways to experience intimacy and connection beyond the physical.

Cultural and Racial Context in Healthcare

Kureishi contrasts his experiences in Italian and British hospitals, highlighting the significant role of immigrants in the UK's National Health Service (NHS):

Hanif Kureishi (21:58): "We had to import people from other parts of the world in order to run the NHS."

He criticizes the societal paradox of depending heavily on immigrant labor while simultaneously fostering anti-immigrant sentiments, emphasizing the indispensable contributions of these workers to healthcare.

Family Background and Experiences with Racism

Exploring his heritage, Kureishi shares insights into his father's immigration from Pakistan to Britain and the racial challenges they faced:

Hanif Kureishi (27:50): "Paki was the sort of ubiquitous insult thrown at us."

He recounts the bullying and racism he endured growing up, which fueled his determination to become a writer and voice the experiences of South Asian immigrants in Britain.

Relationship with Salman Rushdie

Kureishi touches upon his friendship with fellow writer Salman Rushdie, particularly after Rushdie's attack in 2020:

Hanif Kureishi (37:04): "He's an amazing man, very, very brave and admirable and a man who's continued to be an important and an amazing writer."

He discusses mutual support between them, though he chose not to read Rushdie's memoir to avoid reliving trauma, demonstrating the depth of their camaraderie.

Fatherhood

Reflecting on his role as a father, Kureishi admits initial struggles with parenting but finds fulfillment as his children grew older:

Hanif Kureishi (33:22): "I found all that a bit sorted. It wasn't much fun. But as I got older, I really started to enjoy them and I enjoy them now as adults."

He emphasizes the joy of engaging in meaningful conversations with his sons, contrasting it with the challenges of his earlier years.

Future Projects and Ongoing Life

Looking ahead, Kureishi shares his enthusiasm for new creative endeavors despite his physical limitations:

Hanif Kureishi (40:37): "I'm writing another book. I'm doing this movie with Luca Gardenino. I'm very excited about what I'm doing..."

He is also involved in a unique dance project titled "Hospital of Accidents," aiming to collaborate with disabled dancers to create a classical dance piece inspired by his experiences.

Conclusion

Hanif Kureishi's candid discussion on Fresh Air offers a profound exploration of resilience, identity, and the transformative power of creativity. "Shattered" stands as a testament to his unwavering spirit and serves as an inspiring narrative for anyone grappling with sudden life changes.

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Notable Quotes:

• Hanif Kureishi (05:09): "I was just a body to the nurses, to the doctors. I was in the medical industrial complex..."

• Hanif Kureishi (12:40): "People touch you all the time, strangers come into my house every single day, and they touch me. They turn me over, they talk above me as if I'm not there."

• Hanif Kureishi (17:59): "It's very important in our relationship for both of us, that we both feel, you know, that we are dignified, creative people doing stuff that matters in the world."

• Hanif Kureishi (24:11): "It's a terrible dilemma really, for Britain, because originally our country was almost entirely dependent on the empire... now we're entirely dependent on immigrants..."

• Hanif Kureishi (31:30): "I really started to enjoy the kids when I could have grown up, conversations with them, you know, as they started to get older..."

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates Hanif Kureishi's journey from a life characterized by independence to one marked by dependency and resilience. His narrative not only sheds light on personal struggles but also touches upon broader societal issues, making it a compelling listen for fans and new listeners alike.

Transcript

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[Terry Gross]

This is FRESH air. I'm Terry Gross. I first became aware of Hanif Qureshi when the 1985 film My Beautiful Launderette was released. He was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay about a side of contemporary England that had rarely been explored on screen, Pakistani immigrants and their children. The film was a lively romantic comedy about gay love, family racism and punk rock. It was directed by Stephen Frears and co starred Daniel Day Lewis as a young man in a relationship with the son of a Pakistani immigrant. Qureshi has since written other screenplays and novels, including the Buddha of Suburbia. His new memoir called shattered, begins in 2020 after a fall that injured his spinal cord, leaving him unable to move his arms or legs. He describes being unrecognizable to himself, disconnected from his body, totally dependent on others, feeling helpless and humiliated, dealing with rage, envying other people who could do even basic things like scratch an itch. While spending too much time on his back staring at the ceiling. He reflected on earlier periods of his life. He shares those reflections in his book. He spent a year in hospitals before he was able to return home with round the clock caregivers. He started writing the memoir just days after the accident by dictating to one of his sons. The book's narrative is occasionally interrupted by asides like, excuse me for a moment, I must have an enema now. Qureshi is the son of a British mother and a father who emigrated from Pakistan in the late 1940s. Hanav Qureshi, welcome back to FRESH AIR. We first spoke in 1990 on FRESH AIR, and you've been on two times since then. So welcome back. How are you now? Like, how much movement do you have now?

[Hanif Qureshi]

I'm thrashing my arm about a bit now as I speak to you, but I can't use my fingers. I can't grip. I couldn't pick up a pen or anything like that. I can move my shoulder. I can move my legs a bit. Obviously, I'm in a wheelchair. I can't stand up, but I can't actually use my hands. So I'm around the clock dependent, as you put it earlier. But I'm stronger than I was and I have physio every day. And so I'm stretched out. I move a bit, but I think this is pretty much where I'm gonna remain from now on.

[Terry Gross]

And Physio is physical therapy.

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, I have the physio. Every. Every day someone comes to the house and I stand up in a standing machine and they stretch me out, manipulate my fingers and my feet and so on, so I don't deteriorate. That's the. That's the main thing. I don't want to get worse. I'm doing a lot of stuff at the moment. I. You know, this morning I was writing Here My Kitchen Table with my son Carlo, doing my blog. We're writing a movie based on my memoir, Shattered. So, you know, it's a full working day for me.

[Terry Gross]

And your arm is strong enough to maneuver the controls of your motorized wheelchair?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, I buzz around my house. I can go out on the street, obviously with somebody else, and I can go up and down the road into coffee shops and I have lunch and I can do stuff. So it's not as bad as it might have been.

[Terry Gross]

So I'm trying to figure out what happened. You were dizzy and then you woke up in a pool of blood?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, yeah, that's the story. I've been unwell with a stomach infection, and I've been taking a lot of painkillers and antibiotics and suppositories, all kinds of other stuff. So I was very weak. So I was at Isabella's apartment in Rome.

[Terry Gross]

Isabella's your partner now?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Wife, yeah. About to become wife, actually.

[Terry Gross]

Okay.

[Hanif Qureshi]

No one else wants me now, so. And then I felt fate. I put my head between my legs, as you're supposed to do, and then I blacked out. And I think what happened was I stood up at that moment and I took some steps across the room. And then I felt absolutely flat bang on my face. And I broke my neck or damaged my spine very badly. And when I woke up, I was in a pool of blood and I was unable to move my hands or any other part of my body. I could still speak.

[Terry Gross]

You write about how it initially felt to feel disconnected from your body, to see your hand and not feel connected to your hand. You're right. I had become divorced from myself. Would it be okay to ask you to describe what that felt like, that sense of disconnection from your own body?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Well, at the beginning, it's very odd because you're upside down on your head, you're bleeding from your forehead. And then I saw these objects out of the corner of my eye, and I didn't know what they were. And then I began to realize that they were. It was my hands, but I had no agency over them. I thought that they were, you know, sort of live creatures. Curled. Live creatures. And then I became convinced that I was going to die and that eventually I would sort of suffocate.

[Terry Gross]

You started writing your memoir just days after the accident by dictating it. Was writing especially important to you? I know you're a writer, I know you're very dedicated to writing. Your life has centered around writing and family. But was it helpful to distance yourself from kind of removing yourself from what was happening so you could look at what was happening, examine it and describe?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Was really because when I was in the ICU in Rome, I was just a body to the nurses, to the doctors. I was in the medical industrial complex and they were working on me and doing stuff to me and, you know, washing me and feeding me, and then I had an operation and so on. But I wasn't really a person. I'd lost myself, really. And the way that I could remind myself of who I was, a writer with a history, a person in the world, was to. Was to start writing again. So I started writing to my long suffering partner, Isabella, who would sit at the end of the bed tapping into her phone, and I started to issue statements or blogs about exactly what was happening to me. And then Carlo, my son, he put the blogs on Substack, where I had an account, and then he started putting them on Twitter and so on, and they started to go around and people started paying attention and the figures went up and up and up. So I did one one day, then I did one the next day and one the next day. At that point, even though I was really ill and really, you know, bombed out of my head on painkillers and so on, I was writing a blog every single day about my condition. And it was very exciting that people were interested in what I had to say and what had happened to me. And then people started to write pieces about me in the New York Times and in Australia and India and so on. So it was a very strange period because, you know, I was completely done for alone, lying in hospital, full of drugs and tubes. And I. My material was going very quickly around the world and in increasing numbers of people were interested in what I was saying. And that really cheered me up. You know, I had something to do, I had a platform and I was back as a writer, which is what I am, which secures my identity.

[Terry Gross]

We've all experienced staying awake hours in the middle of the night, unable to sleep and worrying about so many different things. Sometimes you obsess on one thing, sometimes on many things. For you, that was especially difficult. It's not like you could get up and get a snack or watch TV for a little while, read a book.

[Hanif Qureshi]

What I was doing was writing the blogs in my head. You described the nights very accurately. But what I was doing, I could write the paragraph and then another paragraph and another paragraph and I could hold it in my head and try and remember the blog until the next day when I would see someone who would then commit it to paper. So that kept me going. That was an interesting thing to do for me to. To start not only to write about my present life, but of course, lying in bed for so long as you describe, you obsess about things, but thinking about my childhood, about my parents, about growing up and my reading and anything that occurred to me and I could put it in a blog and then publish it the next day.

[Terry Gross]

Your partner, Isabella, spent every day during visiting hours in the hospital with you, and you were hospitalized for about a year. And one time when she was brushing your teeth and you felt like a helpless baby and a tyrant. Two really conflicting. Maybe not so conflicting. Can you describe both of those feelings?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Well, I think what you say is very interesting because a baby is a tyrant.

[Terry Gross]

Yeah, I was thinking that as I said it.

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, I remember a phrase from some writer or another who described who says the fascist face of the baby. I've had three babies and I can tell you that there are times when they are like fascists, when they overwhelm you. And then suddenly I was in that situation again. I was helpless in bed. I couldn't feed myself, brush my teeth, or do anything. I was entirely dependent on other people, and I hated being so dependent. And the only way I could ever get anything done was to ask someone to do something for me, you know, and that's my situation now. Today I'm in that situation and I hate it and I. I resent it. I want to, you know, get up and do make my own tea and breakfast, you know, So I suddenly became aware of. Of the. In order to get anything done, I had to demand things. I have to ask people to do things for me, and it's embarrassing to have to do that all the time. If I'm in my kitchen and Isabella is cooking and then she does the shopping and then she has to feed me, then she has to wash up. There's nothing I can do to help her. And it's shameful and embarrassing. And so the nature of our relationship was completely transformed by this accident where I am entirely dependent on. On other people. And also profoundly ashamed that I. That I'm not able to do what I. What I could do before. The only way to get around this is to enjoy it, you know, and to enjoy the conversations you have with other people, to enjoy their generosity, to enjoy the. The love that they have for you and. And how they like to. To help you and just to serve you. So it's a big kind of emotional and intellectual turnaround. I'm just describing here from being an independent, you know, person with agency in the world who can do stuff to becoming this tyrannical baby that. That I am here now talking to you.

[Terry Gross]

You have paid caregivers too, right?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, I have one person, 24 7, who lives in the house, who looks after me, and then carers who come in one in the morning to wash me and get me dressed and ready for the street. And then in the evening, someone who helps put me to bed and cleans me and gets me ready for the night.

[Terry Gross]

So they're paid to do this. That's their job. That's what they're trained to do. Do you feel guilty or embarrassed or humiliated when they're helping you?

[Hanif Qureshi]

I felt all those things as you have to adjust to a new life. One day I was an ordinary, normal person walking about the world doing. Doing stuff the next day. And this may happen to many of us, to. To all of us. You're entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers for your life. And it's a big adjustment. And at the beginning, it's very humiliating. You feel really embarrassed. You know, people touch you all the time. Strangers come into my house every single day, and they touch me. They turn me over, they talk above me as if I'm not there. And my circumstances have entirely changed. But I have to say, you get over it.

[Terry Gross]

You once accused Isabella of going all Bette Davis on you, making it seem like she was the one being the tyrant. That's harsh. What brought that on?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Well, I think at the beginning there was a lot of. Lot of anger, you know, from me, mostly when you. You have your life, as it were, your normal life, your ordinary life snatched away from you by an illness, as I say, as will happen to so many of us. You are absolutely furious. And you become furious with the people around you. You become furious with your life. You can't believe this horror has happened to you. It's a contingent, random thing that's happened to you just out of the blue, you know. I'll give you some examples. When I was in hospital in. In North London in the in the rehab, I was on a ward of accidents. Everybody on the ward had had an accident. One guy had dived into an empty swimming pool by mistake. Another guy had fallen down the stairs while drinking a glass of wine. Another guy had fallen over his rake in his garden and just tripped over it and fell down and broke his neck and was paralyzed. So we all had these random, rather contingent accidents which suddenly, in a moment, completely change your life forever and there's no going back. That is absolutely enraging. You think, you know, why couldn't I have been doing something else at that moment? You know, why did that moment occur to me? Why have I been chosen? What have I done wrong? You go through all these terrible, awful thoughts about who has done this to you and why it's happened, and it makes you an angry person. So I think there are moments, quite rightly, where you deserve to feel. To feel angry. But it's tough on the people around you.

[Terry Gross]

Isabella asked you that if the tables were turned and she was lying in bed, unable to move, would you do for her as much as she'd been doing for you? And you write that you weren't sure. You weren't sure if you would. What made you doubt that?

[Hanif Qureshi]

I guess because I'd never done anything like that before. I look after Isabella and she looks after me. We're equals. But the idea that I would then devote my life to her being disabled and being in a need, I can't answer that. But I think I would now. I'd do it for anybody now because I know so much about suffering and disablement, which I didn't know before. So the answer would be, yes, I would do that. But I don't know whether I would have done it when I was healthy. But as I say, it's not a question one can answer.

[Terry Gross]

So in recalibrating your relationship, what are some of the changes that you made so that even though you were no longer physically equals and you were dependent and she was a caregiver, what were you able to change, to restore things that. Or to keep on track things that were special between you?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Unlike most of the people that I was in hospital with, they can't go back to work. None of them have gone back to work. You know, if you're a truck driver or you're a street cleaner or you're a postman or whatever, none of those men or women can go back to work. So they go back home and they lie in bed and they watch tv. My job, thankfully, is a talking and writing job. And I work every day, as I just described to you earlier. And that's part of. Important part of our relationship. She works and I work, and I have the dignity of my work. I've written shattered. I'm writing other stuff, as I've said, and I feel that, you know, it's my part of the relationship that I earn money, that I support us. I'm a father to my son, so I'm still doing stuff in the world, and I have some dignity. I haven't been robbed of my ability to. To function, to be creative. In fact, I'm writing more now, even though I'm disabled, than. Than I did before. And I'm very happy to work. And I go to work in the morning with great energy and belief. And that's important in our relationship for both of us, that we both feel, you know, that we are dignified, creative people doing stuff that matters in the world.

[Terry Gross]

So you're no longer sexual because of your paralysis. Like, sex was a very central part of your life until the accident, and it was part of your writing as well. So you seem to have changed in terms of your attitude towards sex. At first, I think you really, really missed it. And then you got so used to not having it that you became kind of uninterested in it. You wrote, just because you're severely injured doesn't mean you don't think about sex. But you also write that you lost interest in sex once you couldn't have it. Can you describe that transition?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, it's an interesting thing and something I've discussed with male friends of mine, mostly because, you know, when you get to our age, a lot of my male friends have problems with their prostates, as you can imagine. And some of those guys were, you know, very horny in their younger years. And then suddenly when it's gone, it's an absence, but it's also mercy. You do feel released from some terrible agency, and you look with amusement and other people's bizarre activities, actually. So I don't particularly miss it. I don't particularly care about it, because there really are other forms of human intercourse, other forms of human love, other forms of touching and kissing and being with somebody else in a sensual way. I think probably it's a real narrowing of the sexual spectrum to think that there are only a few ways in which you can be sexual. I think sexuality and sensuality is a much broader thing than we grow up thinking, to be honest. So you can find other ways of loving other people that are not necessarily sexual. In the most overt sense, actually.

[Terry Gross]

Let's take another break here. If you're just joining us by my guest is Hanif Qureshi, and his new memoir is called Shattered, and it's about the year he spent in hospitals after the fall that injured his spinal cord, leaving him unable to move his arms and legs. We'll be right back after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH air.

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[Terry Gross]

Your father was an immigrant, and I want to get into that a little bit later, but I just want to talk about the contrast between you, between the racial, ethnic aspects of the hospital in Italy where you had your accident and in London, the hospitals you eventually moved to. Because you're from London, your partner's from Italy. So in Italy, just about everybody who worked in the hospital was white. When you went to hospitals in London, all the therapists and nurses, they were all people of color, often immigrants. And. And you were the only person here who speaks standard Middle English, was you?

[Hanif Qureshi]

When I was in Rome, in the hospital, everyone was white. You never saw a person of color. It's the only monocultural country, Italy, really, in Europe. And Isabella says that I'm wrong about that. That's beginning to change. But I didn't see any people of color in the hospitals in Italy, really. And then, of course, you come to London around the cor from here, where I am in West London now. And obviously, the whole of our huge NHS is run by, you know, people from all over the world. And it's just incredible to lie in bed, to be changed and washed by someone. And you, you have these incredible conversations with somebody from Africa, from the Philippines, from from South Africa And India, Pakistan and so on. It's incredible stew and great multiracial multicultural society. But one of the things you become aware of, certainly in these British hospitals, is our dependence in Britain on immigration, on other races, that the place, the hospitals, none of it wouldn't function at all without immigration, even recent immigration to, to be honest, there were a lot of people who had recently come from the Philippines, people who'd come from Africa and so on. And I began to realize that since we had Brexit, which was the breakup with Europe, that we were now importing people from other parts of the world in order to run the nhs.

[Terry Gross]

That's the National Health Service.

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, that's indeed. Yeah.

[Terry Gross]

And in America as well, you know, in the us, so many healthcare workers, including caregivers and aides, are recent immigrants or immigrants who've been here for a longer time. Oh, and so many people who take care of children are also immigrants. And yet there's this strong anti immigrant feeling in America, as I'm sure you know, and I think in England as well. Right.

[Hanif Qureshi]

It's a terrible dilemma really, for Britain, because originally our country was almost entirely dependent on the empire. As you know, before 1945, Britain had this huge worldwide empire from which most of its wealth was derived. And now as a smaller society, we're entirely dependent on immigrants in order to look after a slowly aging population. And if you saw the hospitals and the care homes and the transport system and so on here, you'd see it's entirely run by immigrants. But of course, it's hated, that dependency by people, and they wish to end it, to go back to being an entirely Caucasian society, but that can't happen. And so there's a kind of deadlock in British society between those who want to hate immigrants and the rest of us who realize that without immigrants, the nhs, for instance, would break down, it just wouldn't work at all. And the NHS and our social system is understaffed as it is. The nurses and doctors in the hospitals in which I spent a year were complaining all the time about they didn't have enough people to work there. So this is a real deadlock and a real problem because it's really fun to hate on immigrants. You know, people really enjoy it. They're the, you know, one group of people in society that you can hate. And it's an absurdity because they're the one group in society in which you're entirely dependent and without whom your society would go down into darkness.

[Terry Gross]

Your father emigrated to Britain in the late 1940s, from Pakistan. Was he from a Muslim family? My understanding is he was relatively secular.

[Hanif Qureshi]

My dad came from Bombay in India. He came from a Muslim family, but they were a secular family then. They were an upper middle class, wealthy intellectual family. And my dad came to England to study law. So many members of the wealthy middle class from India, like Gandhi and Jinnah and so on, great figures from India, they all came to the west to be educated and then normally they would return to India to, you know, to run the country. But my dad met my mom, he got married and he stayed in the UK and wanted to be British. He wanted to be an Englishman, in fact. And he liked England. He loved England and he always wanted to stay here.

[Terry Gross]

No, I thought he came from Pakistan.

[Hanif Qureshi]

My family moved to Pakistan after partition. All my many uncles and aunts and cousins and so on, they moved from India to Pakistan to be safe in Pakistan, which is a Muslim state.

[Terry Gross]

Yeah. And partition happened in. Was it 1947, when India basically divided into two, with Pakistan becoming a new Muslim state?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yep, that's the story. My dad came to the UK around that time, so he didn't go to Pakistan and he stayed in. In Britain, but he worked in the Pakistan Embassy and so became Pakistani even though he hadn't actually been to Pakistan. It's a. It sounds like an odd thing, but it's the case.

[Terry Gross]

And when you were growing up, one of the insulting words that you were called was Paki, short for like. Yeah, go ahead.

[Hanif Qureshi]

That was a very common designation for anyone actually, who was oriental looking or brown or whatever. We were all called Pakis, whether we. From. Whether we were from Sri Lanka or India or Pakistan or wherever. Paki was the sort of ubiquitous insult thrown at us.

[Terry Gross]

So was your father part of the first generation of a wave of immigrants to England from South Asia?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, I mean, my father worked in the Pakistan embassy and so was very aware of what was going on, of how many people from Pakistan and India were coming to the uk. I mean, in those days, my father was automatically a British citizen. If you were born in India, which was then part of the Empire, you were automatically British. So my dad always had a British passport.

[Terry Gross]

I see. So what was it like for him and then for you as being his son, to be part of a new wave of immigrants? When people, I think, is it fair to say England was largely white at the time?

[Hanif Qureshi]

England was largely white. But I think the immigrant ethic is probably like the immigrant ethic in the. In the United States, you know, that you were coming to a New country and it would be a new start for you. It was a clean slate. You would get educated, you could bring up your kids. You know, Britain was a. Was a really civilized, well organized, law abiding country. And he just left the chaos of India, you remember, after partition. And my dad thought it was fantastic. You get free education, you could go to the doctor, the dentist. We had. The welfare state was a rising standard of living in the 1960s. There was the Beatles, there was population, there was the 60s, what we call the 60s, and so on. So my dad saw it as a great opportunity for us, his kids, to do really well. Of course, at that time in Britain, particularly where I was in South London, there was a lot of violence, there was a lot of racism, there were a lot of attacks on people, people like us, of color, and we were terrified of that. And we used to run and have to hide and my father was frightened and so on. It was quite tough and rough. But on the whole, my father was really pleased that he had come to Britain and given us the chance as his kids to grow up in Britain and to do well. He thought it was a great opportunity for us and he believed that I, his son, could become a significant writer. You know, that the world was our oyster. There were opportunities in Britain. And to be honest, he was right about that. I mean, when I was a young man, there were not many Asian artists in pop or photography or in the arts, people from South Asia at all. And there were certainly no writers really, apart from vnaipaul writers of color who were successful in England. But we changed it all, you know, other writers like Salman Rushdie and of course Zadie Smith and so on. And the whole scene has changed and open out now and there's been a huge unfurling of these really, really talented people from South Asia.

[Terry Gross]

When you were growing up, you were bullied by skinheads and other kids who were racist. How did you respond to that?

[Hanif Qureshi]

I think I responded to that in the way that I responded to my accident, really, which is in the only way that I knew how, which was to become a writer, which was to live through this stuff, to, to survive it, to suffer from it and find it painful and so on, which it is. And then one day you find yourself writing a novel about it and you find yourself writing a novel that hasn't been written before in Britain called the Buddha of Suburbia, with material in it that is fresh and new and from a part of Britain that is undiscovered and so on. So I think becoming A writer is a very good way, as it were, to organize and to think about your experience. And not only that, to pass it on to other people for them to enjoy and to learn about their own country at the same time.

[Terry Gross]

Let's take another break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is screenwriter, novelist and playwright Hanif Qureshi. His new memoir is called Shattered, and it's about the year he spent in hospitals after the fall that injured his spinal cord, leaving him unable to move his arms and legs. We'll be right back. This is FRESH air. You're a father. You have three sons. Two of them are twins. And, you know, you try to write as honestly as possible. And one of the things you write in your new memoir, shattered, is there has barely been a minute of the last 10 years when I haven't enjoyed being with my three sons. But I admit that the early days were difficult, if not nasty, even hair raising on occasions. I often felt that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. What was it about fatherhood early on when your kids were young that made you feel like you weren't living the life you were supposed to be living?

[Hanif Qureshi]

I guess I don't know whether other people feel like this or other men feel like this or whatever, but I really started to enjoy the kids when I could have grown up, conversations with them, you know, as they started to get older and we could talk about sport or politics or literature and we started going to the movies together and so on. They were more like equals to me when they were little kids, you know, screaming their heads off and they wouldn't go to school and they hated you and they kicked you and etc. Etc. I found all that a bit sorted. It wasn't much fun. But as I got older, I really started to enjoy them and I enjoy them now as as adults. The twins are 31 now and the other boy is 26. But I, I, I'm not a big fan of babies, to be honest. They're okay, you know, for about half an hour, but what you really want is to is to go down the pub, sit down with a kid and have a beer and really talk about interesting things together, which is what I, I do with my kids now. We're all equals. My son Carlos said to me the other day, he said, you're much better as a friend than you are as a father. I was rather hurt by that because I like to think I was quite a good father. But I enjoy them as adults much More than I did as kids.

[Terry Gross]

The passage that I just read, did you dictate that to one of your sons because your sons helped you in writing the memoir? Because they transcribe what you were saying?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, I write all kinds of weirdo, as you can see from the book Shattered. I write all kinds of weirdo stuff about sex, about politics, about literature, about being a father or going to an orgy in one case or whatever and so on. They don't mind writing it down. It doesn't bother them at all. I don't see why it should.

[Terry Gross]

Well, because you said you didn't enjoy being a father and you were dictating this to a son so I could see how he might interpret that as disappointing.

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, well, I'm sure the same thing will happen to him, you know, when he has children. Has to stay up all night when they're vomiting in his shoes. Good luck to him.

[Terry Gross]

That's my cat's job.

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, exactly.

[Terry Gross]

And you also write you hated taking your children to karate and football and swimming and.

[Hanif Qureshi]

Oh God, I hated all that. Yeah, you had to take them to karate and tennis and God almighty, driving them around London in the pouring rain when you just wanted to, you know, be at home smoking a joint. It just seemed ghastly to me. But, you know, I did it and I did my duty, so I can't say I didn't do it. I. I actually did do it. So you must give me some credit for that.

[Terry Gross]

You're good friends with Salman Rushdie and he wrote a really wonderful, like so well written memoir about the incident where he was stabbed while on stage at the Chautauqua Festival where he was making an appearance. And you write in your book that you've had many conversations with him subsequent to your injury and his attack, the attack on him. Did you read his memoir? I'm wondering if maybe you wanted to stay away from it, knowing that you'd be writing your own thoughts.

[Hanif Qureshi]

I didn't read it. Actually, Isabella read it for me and she told me what was in it. The reason I didn't read it wasn't because I wanted to keep to my own thoughts, is that I couldn't. I didn't want to hear about his suffering. It so upset me what happened to him. I've known Salman since the early 80s and I. I love him and admire him as a man and as a writer. He's like an older brother to me and there was no way I was going to read about, about that awful thing that happened. I just couldn't couldn't face it. And he understands that. He's, he's aware of that. And I, you know, I didn't want to read about someone being being in hospital and having to recover and so on. I can write about it, but I don't want to hear about it because my life is miserable enough as it is. I don't want to make it worse.

[Terry Gross]

Which happened first, your fall or his attack? I'm losing the chronology.

[Hanif Qureshi]

No, no. He, he, he was attacked in August, and I fell over at Christmas, and he would text me every day. He was really sweet about supporting me and loving me. And I, I love and admire him for doing that.

[Terry Gross]

What did he mean to you as another writer from South Asia living in England? And he started writing Midnight's Children was published before your screenplays and novels.

[Hanif Qureshi]

I met Salman probably around 1982, and Midnight Children had just come out and won the Booker Prize. He was such an amazing figure, so super, super smart, a great writer, a great raconteur, great party giver. He was at the center of the scene in London in the 1980s, and I was quite close to him at that time. And I never stopped admiring him. Also after the fatwa, the strength he showed, the fortitude, how he survived that terrible period with those awful attacks from the Iranian government and so on. I mean, he's an amazing man, very, very brave and admirable and a man who's continued to be an important and an amazing writer, but also someone who stood up for these profoundly important values, like the freedom of speech, for instance.

[Terry Gross]

Let's take another break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is screenwriter, novelist and playwright Hanif Qureshi. His new memoir is called Shattered, and it's about the year he spent in hospitals after the fall that injured his spinal cord, leaving him unable to move his arms and legs. We'll be right back. This is FRESH air.

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[Terry Gross]

Know if you're a planner or not. And if you look ahead into the future a lot or not. But has the accident changed your approach to planning, to looking at the future, to thinking what's next? Or are you living more like day to day and not thinking ahead very much?

[Hanif Qureshi]

I want to have a lot going on. You know, I'm doing a dance thing. I'm writing another book. I'm doing this movie with Luca Gardenino. I'm very excited about what I'm doing, and I need to get up in the morning and look forward to the day and think, what am I going to do today? Is it going to be exciting? Am I going to see a really good friend? Am I going to have a conversation that I never had before? And I'm going to work on something that's fresh and new? And I'm really excited about my book Shattered coming out in the US for instance. I haven't published a book in the US For a long time, so I want to read the reviews, I want to read the interviews. I want to find out how the book's doing. I just want to be excited about the world after having gone through a year of hell, you know, you mentioned.

[Terry Gross]

You'Re doing a dance thing. What is that?

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, I'm going to do a dance thing. They asked me to supply some pages for them for a choreographer who we haven't chosen yet. And the pages that I will write, which will be about accidents, I'm going to call it the Hospital of Accidents. I'm going to give that to the choreographer, and they're going to be inspired by the pages in order to create some kind of choreography, probably with disabled dancers, in order to create some kind of classical dance piece which we're gonna perform in Bradford in the middle of this year.

[Terry Gross]

That's really interesting.

[Hanif Qureshi]

That's really fun, isn't it? Yeah. I never thought I would end up creating a dance piece, but somebody just asked me randomly and I thought, that's a great idea.

[Terry Gross]

Well, it's nice that they asked. I mean, what an interesting and unusual opportunity.

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah. And it's really fun for me to collaborate. You know, I've collaborated all my life with dancers before, with directors, with musicians and composers and other, obviously, actors and other artists. I love collaborating with other people because you can do stuff with them that you can't do alone.

[Terry Gross]

Well, even your memoir is a collaboration because you dictated it to members of your family. And I'm sure they commented on it at some points, as you were, unfortunately.

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, they comment. Commentated on it all the time. They never shut up. You know, it's really fun to hear from other people when you're writing. And I'll be doing that tomorrow morning.

[Terry Gross]

Okay. Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us and for sharing so much of your life.

[Hanif Qureshi]

Thank you, Terry. Beautiful questions. I really enjoyed it. Thanks.

[Terry Gross]

Thank you. And I wish you, I wish you, among other things, comfort and freedom from pain. And that reminds me, are you in pain? People think that, well, if you're paralyzed, therefore you don't feel anything and you're spared from pain. But that's actually not true.

[Hanif Qureshi]

I was back in hospital last week. I had a very serious, incredibly painful infection in my bladder. So they rushed me to hospital and pumped me full of antibiotics and painkillers, which worked. So today as you're speaking to me, I can tell you that I'm all right, but it's not necessarily going to last.

[Terry Gross]

Well, you spoke about the fragility of life and you've been narrating what that's like.

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, I have. Thank you for having me on your program, Terry. Let's do it again.

[Terry Gross]

It sounds like there'll be plenty of things to talk about in the future.

[Hanif Qureshi]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've always got plenty to say.

[Terry Gross]

Hanif Qureshi's new memoir is called Shattered. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram P R Fresh aired tomorrow on FRESH air. For Mardi Gras day, we'll be joined by a Mardi Gras attraction, clarinetist and vocalist Doreen Ketchens, known as Lady Louis. She's a fixture of the French Quarter in New Orleans. We'll talk with her about her decades long career as a street performer and she'll play some music. I hope you'll join us. It's FRESH air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Thanks to Fatima Alcassab for her help in recording today's interview. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers. Anne Marie Bodonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media produce, Molly CV Nesburg. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

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