Nasim Marie Jafry's Blog, page 19

Tanks In Our Bedrooms

You feel a helpless fury and incomprehension, you don't even want to see or hear any more news when this is the image you went to sleep with.  It's not rocket science - excuse the terrible pun - to work out that the hugely disproportionate - and brutally predictable - response of Israel is going to lead nowhere except hell. 
I came across this Granta essay from 2009 by Libyan writer Hisham Mater. He has also tweeted that: 'Most US newspaper/magazine articles I've read dwell on Israel...

Doctors & patients & writers ...

I attended a talk mid-week on doctors who also write, a hop and a skip from me. It was a long talk, almost two hours, and I found it so hard to concentrate towards end but it was very enjoyable hearing these three medics talk about their dual lives. You do not come across writing doctors very often and I was especially interested in their concerns about self-censorship when they also have such important social roles as doctors. During the Q&A someone referenced Virginia Woolf's essay 'On...

Robert Louis Stevenson Day

Today is RLS Day, a celebration of our wonderful Robert Louis Stevenson. I wrote this wee post on him last year. I love this photo in Samoa, and this one too. A remarkable man, I wish I could have met him.  I can relate so much  to the being  in bed writing (though he is playing an instrument here). 

As an aside, was shortlisted for the RLS writing prize, a long time ago.

'Cracking India' by Bapsi Sidhwa

This is the book I am reading: 'Cracking India' by Bapsi Sidhwa (I was somewhat distracted in the last post). It has a gorgeous cover. In chapter 5 she describes a trip to Murree, in the Himalayan foothills. It reminds me of going there with my Pakistani cousins in 1974. I had on a green and white dress and we went on a donkey ride. I have a photo somewhere.

John Maddox Award...& a gorgeous novel

This is, sadly, not an early April Fool, but Professor Simon Wessely has been named as one of the recipients of the inaugural John Maddox award - for those individuals 'standing up for science and showing courage in the face of acute hostility'. I am sure the other recipient, Chinese writer Fang Shi-min, is indeed an inspiring and courageous scientist, but  in the case of Simon it is a dangerous absurdity to reward him - it only perpetuates the  damage and nonsense of conflating ME...

Guising

I loved Halloween as a child. We'd get dressed up and go round the doors, we called it 'guising'. We'd come back with polythene bags full of apples and oranges and swedgers (sweets) and nuts, and if we were lucky,  a coin or two. We'd keep the bags under our beds 'til the apples started to rot. I remember going to a neighbour's house with my brothers and the grandad was there, our chemistry teacher, and I sang 'The Happy Wanderer', (we called  it 'A Knapsack on my Back'). I still bl...

Collapse of Scottish Cross Party Group on ME

Very disappointed to see that the Scottish Cross Party Group on ME is no more.  I attended an event in May at the Scottish Parliament.

It is so, so, so vexing to see that thirty years on from my own diagnosis that the conflation with 'fatiguing illnesses' goes on, undermining patients with this catastrophic neuro-immune illness. I blame those medics who enabled the conflation to occur in the first place. I strongly believe that if Simon Wessely had not involved himself in ME, the landscap...

Junot Díaz on writing

I came across this interview with writer Junot Díaz a while ago and am only getting round to reading it. I love what he has to say:
While a short story cannot build the same kind of relationship with a reader that the novel can, the short story can far more convincingly remind the reader of life’s cruel brevity and of how irrevocable some of the shit we decide and that happens to us can be.
And this:
Each narrative mode has its benefits and its dangers. Third person, for example, runs the risk a...

Thirty years ago...

Came across the orange carte de séjour from my year abroad, October 1982, the year that turned out to be the year(s) from hell when I got Coxsackie, then ME. 


It makes me think of this wee snippet from The State of Me:<!--[if gte mso 9]>

Jim'll Fix It

Watching last night's Panorama, What the BBC Knew, in which the BBC investigates itself,  I was  reminded of how deeply we were all anaesthetised - for want of a better word -  in the seventies and eighties about the reality of who Jimmy Savile was: he was avuncular and eccentric, he was a good man; he was up there with Blue Peter, part of the safe furniture of childhood. My wee aunt with Down's Syndrome, a couple of years older than...<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]></div>