Nasim Marie Jafry's Blog, page 4

Dr Avindra Nath's research. And lovely books

I'm so very, very heartened by the research that is currently going in USA at the National Institute of Health with Dr Avindra Nath as principle investigator (PI). Dr Nath is a neuroimmunologist and exactly the calibre of scientist we need in ME research. His hypothesis is that ME is 'triggered by a viral illness that results in immune-mediated brain dysfunction'. His work is described as a 'deep-diving' into the disease, he is looking at not just one aspect but every aspect. Long overdue!!!...

A Book of Banished Words

Delighted to have a short piece in Nancy Campbell's just published The Polar Tombola: A Book of Banished Words (photo from @BirdEditions).


I met Nancy on Twitter via a photo of a snowdrop three years ago and we came to 'know' each other through my dear late stepdad. My own banished word is described in 'The Hoot of an Owl', here is a fragment:

Coxsackie – pronounced cook-sah-kee – is the name of a small town on the Hudson River in upstate New York. Derived from Native American language, it...

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Bath Flash Fiction Anthology - To Carry Her Home

Delighted to receive this gorgeous anthology of longlisted, shortlisted and winners in past Bath Flash Awards. My own story 'A widow with a bowl of wine and lipstick coming off' - longlisted in early 2016 - was inspired by seeing my dear stepfather in the funeral home just two years ago. I still can't go to that image in my mind without feeling shock.

Someone has remarked this cover has a feel of Vanessa Bell, I agree. I very much look forward to reading the other flash fictions (144 of them)....

A change of mind...

Fiction titles are sometimes changed to be more nuanced and suit the country of publication. For example, Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow by Peter Høeg, translated from the Danish - I gave it my dear late stepdad in 1993 - was published as Smilla's Sense of Snow in the USA. Smilla - a half Danish scientist with an Inuit mother -  has 'a feeling for snow', which is helping her solve the death of an Inuit child who is her neighbour's son in Copenhagen.




What may be more surprising is that the...

On fathers: Om Puri, Hisham Matar and some short writing

Saddened to learn that Om Puri has died aged only sixty-six. I loved him, of course, as the flawed Pakistani father in East is East. And as the taxi driver in My Son the Fanatic (based on a short story by Hanif Kureishi). I watched him more recently in Satyajit Ray's 1981 film Sadgati/Deliverance - Puri, in his early thirties, gave a devastating performance as an 'untouchable'.
*The last book I read in 2016 was Hisham Matar's The Return. Anne Enright describes it as a terrible and lovely book,...

Progress...

This is great news from Griffiths University in Australia: the National Centre For Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases (NCNED) , has been awarded $4 million dollars to research ME. In this short clip, Professor Staines says: Exercise should be contra-indicated in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as it worsens the clinical condition of the patient and should be avoided.

This, of course,  has been corroborated by patient testimony (though largely ignored) for decades. As my fictional character He...

The world is fucked and books are all we have

The world is fucked and books are all we have. When things are tough, I look for illumination in poetry, nothing has helped, but then a few days ago someone tweeted 'Apes' (1990) by Adam Zagajewski.

 Apes

One day apes made their grab for power.
Gold seal-rings,
starched shirts,
aromatic Havanas,
feet squashed into patent leather.
Deeply involved in our other pursuits,
we didn’t notice: someone read Aristotle,
someone else was wholly in love.
Rulers’ speeches became somewhat more chaotic,
they even...

Letter in BJGP

I had an e-letter published in response to this article on CBT/GET in the British Journal of General Practice at the end of August. I see my response was also published on 1 October.

Nothing to see here, sorry to spoil the party

The PACE recovery data has been released and analysed - the results are not pretty, confirming what ME patients, their charities and advocates, and informed doctors have been saying all along: PACE is seriously flawed. It is not news that it's flawed, it has always been flawed, but was spun and spun and spun to be the best thing since sliced bread, thanks, mainly to the UK Science Media Centre. I am too weary to write more, but here is David Tuller hosted by virologist Professor Vincent Racan...

Like being in a boxing match

I'm very prone to post-cold coughs that go on forever - possibly because I have chronic sinusitis (from over-using mothballs years ago) and I can't use steroidal decongestant sprays  because of my eyes - but this has to have been the worst, almost five weeks of coughing. I had a vile summer cold beginning of July, that came and went, then a few weeks later I developed a cough from nowhere. Three lots of antibiotics and now an inhaler (which I think is helping, though I had to get a space...