Nasim Marie Jafry's Blog, page 5

September

September always gives me a slight, quiet shudder, I almost don't know it's there, but I feel it. It's the anniversary of my going to France to study for a year and becoming ill, with what turned out to be the Coxsackie virus that I'd picked up before going  - most likely when waitressing. Though feeling like hell, I went back to France twice - train/ferry/bus - when no one could tell me what was wrong,  really dragging myself.
Really dragging myself.
Then I got flu in France. As soon...

Who has control of the story? - Anna Katharina Schaffner's EXHAUSTION

I recall when I read Salman Rushdie's Joseph Anton in 2012, my favourite line was, 'Who shall have control over the story?'. I thought, naturally, of the way the illness myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) - an illness I have had for thirty-three years - has been ceaselessly misrepresented in the media, and of the way health editors, journalists and academics have locked onto the narrative of a group of UK psychiatrists - who harmfully conflate ME with unexplained 'chronic fatigue' - and recycled...

Taking a selfie with a chappal

I saw this last week on Twitter, the image has stayed with me, children improvise and re-enact all the time, but the poignancy of this wee boy using a chappal (flip flop)  to take a selfie is enormous. The smaller boy seems to be wearing sandals that are too big for him, and on the wrong feet.

Too poor to own a mobile, but not too poor to pose for a selfie. This is as sad as it is heartwarming. pic.twitter.com/xocPFQQqtN— Iyad el-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) 30 July 2016

Syrian National Orchestra (and my tiny memory of Damascus)

I often think that literature and music and art are what keep us going. This is reflected in the moving story of the Syrian National Orchestra for Arab Music - forced to fragment as many of the musicians have now fled Syria - which reunited recently for a short tour in Europe.  One of the violinists, now a refugee in Germany, finds comfort in playing, it helps her express 'all this homelessness and loss and blood'. She teaches music to refugee children. Another musician, a qanun player,...

Introduction to James Baldwin

I have never read James Baldwin - there is no reason, so many books are (necessarily, due to time and energy) unread - but after seeing this twelve minute film by Sedat Pakay, From Another Place (1973), I was mesmerised, and bought Giovanni's Room. I did not know that Baldwin spent significant time in Istanbul. The film is exquisite, his voice seduced me and I had to have him.




Hillary Johnson, author of Osler's Web, has also recommended that I read Negroland, a memoir by Margo Jefferson, an Am...

Wellcome Book Prize 2016 - ignorance rewarding ignorance

*Updating this post: fantastic news, first ME biobank in Europe is officially opening its doors to external researchers on May 12 at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. More info here.

I resent using any more energy - it truly takes its toll - on the daft neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan, but the travesty of her winning the Wellcome Book Prize is too important to ignore. I've been trying to correct her harmful nonsense about ME since she won the prize last week, on Twitter. She hers...

Tiny joys

The world seems abominable at the moment, but I smiled this Easter weekend. I saw two rainbows yesterday, one in the afternoon, a portion, stubby and thick, and one in the evening, a thin huge arc. And today a goldfinch as high on a tree as you can be; starlings that could be female blackbirds until you get close, a chaffinch singing its heart out and two princely beautiful male eider ducks. The world seemed almost bearable again. By the way, a broken rainbow is called a watergaw in Scots.

'A widow with a bowl of wine and lipstick coming off'

I'm delighted to have been longlisted for the Bath February Flash Fiction Award 2016. My piece 'A widow with a bowl of wine and lipstick coming off' will appear in an anthology at the end of the year. I see flash fiction as fireworks - small with a beautiful punch - but still demanding time and energy in creating - you'd be surprised at how much you can tweak 300 words, and as the writer, you know more than ever, as you shift the words around in such a small space, how arbitrary it all is.

Thi...

Penelope Lively on ageing reminds me of getting used to being ill at twenty

I've just started Penelope Lively's memoir Ammonites and Leaping Fish, I had not heard of this book and am glad that artist and writer Nancy nudged me in its direction. For a long time, I've been reading about South Asia in 1940s and 1950s in an attempt to put together some kind of fictionalised version of my father, and Nancy told me Penelope talks about Suez in 1950s, which is perfect as my dad travelled by ship from Pakistan to UK at least once in that decade (I even found the passenger li...

'Five Years'

I cried last night watching this BBC Two documentary 'Five Years', which focuses on five key years of David Bowie's work. I loved most of his seventies' stuff, the later music less so. I also loved the clips - 1 hour 9 minutes into the programme - of him playing John Merrick in The Elephant Man with exquisite vulnerability and beautiful ugliness.

I had not followed Bowie's music for a long time but there was a time when he was all I listened to, in my teens and twenties (alongside Leonard Coh...