GAZA IS A DOOR

Gaza is a door

into two worlds - 

one that keeps us alive,

and one that kills us.

We die, either way,

at the door.

Death is a door

we knock on. And then run

far away from. 

Life is a door 

we can’t remember if we chose

to walk through. 

Meanwhile, the river moves,

a running thing, 

away and towards.

Meanwhile, I,

the other living thing

standing on this bridge, 

autumn leaves in my pocket,

rain on my skin -

the tiniest of windows letting light in.

Artwork : @bypeoni Peonica Fernando

Poem featuring at dverse poets

CLIVE JAMES, ARS MORIENDI

‘Put that down.’ 

Clive always said that, if he thought I turned a phrase neatly. That’s good. Put that bit in. 

‘In’ to the ongoing double narrative of our lives that we were both writing separately even in our moments of togetherness on the Addenbrooke’s infusion ward. 

We met on one ward - D4 – hooked up to the same treatment of intravenous immunoglobulins, both under the care of the same wonderful immunology consultant, Dr Kumararatne - and then a few years later, on G2, the new incarnation. There is going to be a third iteration, but Clive will miss that one.

Death is so annoying. I feel a bit cheated as we all do when the continuity of our conversation with friends gets interrupted. But the nature of a writer is to personally provide the material for imaginary conversations to continue for all of time. Meet a person once and if they make an impression, you can re-meet them. Take down the book from the library of your mind and find the chapter titled ‘Clive’ or ‘Shaista’. In our case, that first meeting in April 2012 on D4 was not destined to be our last. Four years passed from our first meeting and one day a nurse told me that Clive had gone up to another Indian patient and hailed her across the tubes, ‘Shy Star! Lovely to see you again, kid.’ Except it wasn’t me. So I asked the nurse to book our next slots together if possible and on we went for the next three years, him booking in concordance with my dates if I hadn’t done so. We emailed throughout the years. 

It was a strange friendship because Clive saw himself as mentor to a new young female writer. But the not very new or very young writer had no such notion. I was often and often extremely direct with Clive when he made remarks that didn’t sit well with my own sense of self and my feminism. Dude, seriously. You can’t say that! Or at least, you can’t say that and then expect me to take your praise of my work seriously. Clive once said I had a type of arrogance not dissimilar to his. Eek. Make of that what you will. But presumably he never imagined a pipsqueak would squeak back. Or roar back, baring her teeth. Mostly it amused him, and probably made him want to persist with that thread but for the fact that he genuinely cared and eventually ceased to undermine a real friendship. One during which he swiped my favourite snuggly hat. One during which he introduced me to Tom Stoppard. One during which he offered to send an essay of mine about Les Murray to Les Murray. But I never got around to it, because life with illness is an interrupted life. Hold a thread here, concentrate on keeping it unbroken, and another one, just over there, breaks. Les died six months ago.

Clive’s eyes would light up when he saw me. And this was because if I walked on to the ward, I was still alive. If I was alive, there was conversation to be had and a moment to be shared. Preferably a merry one but I never held back on sharing my sorrow, depression or painful reality. I lifted up my eyelid once to show Clive the various shunts and blebs that my glaucoma surgeon has sown in over the long years to save some sight. And Clive wove the moment into one of his poems. 

A year before we met for the second time, Clive had been in correspondence with and then lost a fellow cancer patient. She was, believe it or not (but if you have read that article you will know this to be true), also Indian and, also a blogger. Shikha Chhabra wrote under the pseudonym Oblomov; her blog was titled Oblomov’s Sofa, and Clive mentioned her in the Guardian. It was a respectful nod he offered her, one that meant for a brief sweet while, Shikha was the acclaimed writer she was always meant to be. She died at 24, so losing me to an early arrival of Death was not implausible. And I have brushed that cloak - or did the cloak brush me? Either way, it has not been my time yet to cause that particular clutch to the heart and breath that hearing of Clive’s death caused me. I am writing because he would expect me to. Because he’d think it a wasted opportunity and because I know he always checked my blog, ostensibly to see what I was up to, but also to see if I was writing about him. He was rather disappointed that I hadn’t brought the ‘yoof’ in as he once had hoped I might. 

I have IVIg tomorrow. It’s a Thursday. And Clive won’t be there as he hasn’t been for the past several months. In his last email he made light of a recent operation, and I chose, ridiculously, to pretend he just might merry his way back to the ward. Even though I knew he wouldn’t. But he had already outlasted that type of ‘knowing’ for ten years. 

Death is so annoying. I am so tired of it. I ought to respect it and fear it, but really... I can’t. Not this death anyway. It was preceded by so much humour that the cloak looks a little less terrifying now. A cheery pathway is being cleared for us by the kid from Kogarah. 

And presumably, heaven and hell aside, I will hear him hail me again someday, his eyes lighting up and my cheeks and lips curving up. Unless of course he mistakes that other Indian girl for me... 

GRACE

In this fading light
while the crickets sing,

A chant rings out
aboriginal, whole -

Keeping tune with the rhythm
of the humming gong -

Of the bell that brings me
home.


© Shaista Tayabali
Bergerac, 2012

How can it be that I have gone and come? I left on my in breath, and I have arrived on my out breath. How can it be that only this morning I was on Plum Village soil and whisking my skirt along with a frisky French white butterfly, and now I step into the doorway of my little house in the garden and a white butterfly pranced around at my feet, flirting outrageously near my cheek before sidling off to you. Watch out for him!

The girl that I was belongs to ether now. In her place, something firm has grown roots and spread branches, from which fall green curtains of mists and memories.

So much to share. Will it suffice to say it was perfect, from the first person I met waiting outside the airport with the name Padma, meaning Lotus? To emphasise the depth of her name, a tattoo of a lotus adorned her right foot. My beautiful blue room was named Mulberry, and had a hot water shower! The unexpected thrill! The loveliest of roommates, from Israel, Canada and Romania, and the heartbeat of compassion that wove its thread around every one of the thousand retreatants.

I have arrived. I am home. But from the moment I arrived in Plum Village I was home too. Some of the time I was sick, but I was tended to carefully by strangers who were not strangers. A cup of hot tea in the morning, made by a loving new friend while you are still snuggled under the duvet - now tell me, does it get better than that?!

A Royal Wedding, and The General's Funeral

They gave us two kisses, did William Windsor of Wales and Catherine Middleton of Bucklebury. He, emblazoned in Irish guard red, she in embellished lace, echoes of Grace Kelly serenading us through the years. Acorns in her ears, myrtle and sweet william in her hands, an avenue of trees, 20 feet tall, English Maple and Hornbeans, hushing and hallowing the human beings she passed, the skirt of her train an unfurling flower, up the Abbey aisle.

They were appointed Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, home to the Tayabalis, where an equally hushed and hallowed ceremony took place on the day.
At a small parish church, we buried in the open earth, my Father's brother, Murtaza Ali, who had two special nicknames. The first was 'General', a reference to him being the only non-Royal allowed to attend Daly College, at a time when it was exclusively open to the sons of Indian Kings, and British Governor-Generals. Absolutely no suprises then, that he should share his last day on earth with the greatest Royal Wedding in decades. Brilliant stroke of genius! The other nickname was 'Motu', meaning 'Big One'; in complement to my Father's nickname 'Chotu', meaning 'Little One'. The names were ironic, since Uncle was the littlest of the tall Tayabali brothers, but the names stuck and Motu and Chotu they remained from childhood. They were a year apart, and as different as brothers could be. Father, studious, spiritual, poetic, and true to one love. Uncle never married. He was always escaping marriage as fast as his legs could carry him. Into the comfortable arms of the next amour. What they shared was a thirst for knowledge and the inimitable comradeship of being brothers. Uncle's library was extraordinarily eclectic, but his great passion was for all things Roman. We tucked a book into the nook of his body, 'Daily Life in Ancient Rome'. A stunning hardback from the Folio Society. I wrote a little note inside, from himself to Life.

'I Take With Me

Love of Knowledge

And the Springs of Rome'

Uncle was a strong presence in my life, always. Our passion for literature and the subtle nuance of language meant conversation was always a playful joy. He was proud of me, that I do know. I am glad he lived to know I was on the radio, to know Irfan had a son named Rafael Zain, that Rizwan had found someone special to share his life with. I recited our favourite surahs for him at the grave, the ones we used to recite solemnly for him, when we were little. It was all light and air and green and birdsong as we walked him to his resting place. It was wide open sky and spring fields beyond. He was entirely surrounded by love, funny memories, a Robert Burns poem, prayers. I patted the earth encouragingly. It will be alright Uncle. You will be alright.

Vera - a Tempest

It is nearly two am. Another night of a churning mind. Did you know the secret rule to solving insomnia is 'not minding'? Not minding not sleeping, not minding not sleeping... then suddenly, you fall asleep. Tonight, Deepak Chopra, that is not working.
Tonight's is a weighty concern. I am thinking about hair. Women's hair.
And why we care, so very much, about hair. Men care too. More deeply than they reveal. We women, we reveal.

When I tell my father I am off for a haircut, he wishes me happy tears. "Women go to the hairdresser," he theorises, "in order to get depressed." Not true! And yet, and yet. There is something deeply unempowering about having another woman (or man) cut your hair. They take your hair in their hands and with scissors and razors and a vision entirely their own, take away what belongs to you, and you give it, and you pay for your fallen locks, and you walk away. A lesser, smaller self. Until you grow it back - your hair, your self, your smile.
Perhaps other women experience this differently. Perhaps other women walk out of hairdressers bouncing along pavements, freer, sassier, colour coded to match that moment of nowness. That woman has never been me.

Many thousands of miles away, a woman named Vera, is thinking tempestuous thoughts about her own hair. She has just been diagnosed with high grade follicular lymphoma. She will start an aggressive form of chemotherapy soon. Death be damned, to hell with the needles and bruising... "My hair," she moans. "What will become of my hair?"

Grandmother, for so Vera is to me, was a raging beauty in her day...and although that day may long be past in some dry calendars, Vera is still very much that beauty, that wit, that swift lithe dancer of the waltz. She is the sort of woman who dresses for the day. Not in pearls, but in the simplicity of perfectly 'done' hair. Her age is of little matter. She is health embodied. Well, except for the unaccountably large lymph nodes extensively roosting in her body like fat goose eggs.

And those words... Cancer. Chemo. Cytotoxic. Or as one doctor merrily pointed out, "Well, it's your choice. If you don't take the treatment, you'll be dead in six months. Your choice." (I am breathing out steam as I write).

Is there ever really a choice? The choice is life. Always, life. And a woman's hair, for better or worse, reflects her life. Whether or not it is taken from her by force, she pays for its fall.

Even if it leaves, it will return Vera mama, it did return for me. But I don't think she believes me.