MAKING TEA (A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO WAITING)

Like Leila Chatti, I remember

the 6pm brewing of tea

for Dad, for me, 

to get through the long winter evening 

that stretched ahead

into an insomniac night. 

A bridge between two terrors. 

Sometimes it’s the hot water

bottle we are waiting for, 

to take us from shivering, 

back aching paralysis, into

a softer, more pliant acceptance 

that this is it, this is our life.

And this small pocket of heat is love.

For me, it’s dihydrocodeine - 

the friendly morphine coin

the size of a biscuit for a mouse.

Bitter, of course - 

but as miraculous, as soothing

as the hot water bottle,

the hot tea

that frees me,

moves us forward

into the day, counting the hours, 

tasting time in bitter sweet gulps - 

a friendly fire of sorts.

(There are other less pleasant waitings - 

for blindness, for death;

but we won’t speak of those,

just yet.)

© Shaista Tayabali, 2024

For the past two months I have been attending an online poetry workshop facilitated by the poet Trivarna Hariharan. Today is the shortest day of the year in this part of the world. The nights have been drawing in, foggy fingers envelop cars on the dark roads and Christmas lights are a gladdening sign. I wrote my poem using as a prompt the poem below by Leila Chatti - the poet in the very glamorous photo above!)

TEA

Five times a day, I make tea. I do this
because I like the warmth in my hands, like the feeling
of self-directed kindness. I’m not used to it—
warmth and kindness, both—so I create my own
when I can. It’s easy. You just pour
water into a kettle and turn the knob and listen
for the scream. I do this
five times a day. Sometimes, when I’m pleased,
I let out a little sound. A poet noticed this
and it made me feel I might one day
properly be loved. Because no one is here
to love me, I make tea for myself
and leave the radio playing. I must
remind myself I am here, and do so
by noticing myself: my feet are cold
inside my socks, they touch the ground, my stomach
churns, my heart stutters, in my hands I hold
a warmth I make. I come from
a people who pray five times a day
and make tea. I admire the way they do
both. How they drop to the ground
wherever they are. Drop
pine nuts and mint sprigs in a glass.
I think to care for the self
is a kind of prayer. It is a gesture
of devotion toward what is not always beloved
or believed. I do not always believe
in myself, or love myself, I am sure
there are times I am bad or gone
or lying. In another’s mouth, tea often means gossip,
but sometimes means truth. Despite
the trope, in my experience my people do not lie
for pleasure, or when they should,
even when it might be a gesture
of kindness. But they are kind. If you were
to visit, a woman would bring you
a tray of tea. At any time of day.
My people love tea so much
it was once considered a sickness. Their colonizers
tried, as with any joy, to snuff it out. They feared a love
so strong one might sell or kill their other
loves for leaves and sugar. Teaism 
sounds like a kind of faith
I’d buy into, a god I wouldn’t fear. I think now I truly believe
I wouldn’t kill anyone for love,
not even myself—most days
I can barely get out of bed. So I make tea.
I stand at the window while I wait.
My feet are cold and the radio plays its little sounds.
I do the small thing I know how to do
to care for myself. I am trying to notice joy,
which means survive. I do this all day, and then the next.

Author’s Note

This poem was the first I wrote in a long period of drought. I was, as the poem alludes to, suffering from a depressive episode, one that dislodged my language and made the simple tasks of living significantly difficult. There was one act of self-care, however, that I could bring myself to do with regularity: make tea. All day, each day, I did it; it’s true. I made the connection one day between my love of—dependency on, even—tea and the cultural role and history of tea in my Tunisian ancestry. Tea is so beloved in Tunisia that when it was under French rule, colonial administrators believed Tunisians’ tea consumption was a psychological condition, teaism, similar to alcoholism, and that the amount of tea my people drank had poisoned both their bodies and minds. I was interested in examining my own experience with my body and mind, harm and care, pleasure and survival, as it relates to tea, and this poem tumbled out of that. As a note to this note, my pantry continues to be stuffed to the brim with tea—enough to last me over a year, at least.

photo images from Carthage magazine

WHEN BIRDS COME TO CALL

A broken bird feeder found its way to me last year.

I painted it in shades of country cream.

I filled a cup of water, and sprinkled a meal, 

fit, I thought, for any feathered queen.

No bird came. Months passed by,

and today, hurrah, a visit made.

Bib of blue, and frankly suspicious, she flitted 

and flirted, from lilac to magnolia, 

to her new wooden house,

unconscious of my joyful gaze.

Chaffinch and sparrow followed, drinking in the rain,

picking through the catkin carpet,

the willow leaves, 

the tall, unwieldy, unmowed grass. 

Meanwhile, the news. Meanwhile, the roll call of names 

we never knew, strangers perching gently on our hearts. 

You ask me if I believe in God.

I say, What is God? What is a poem? 

I say, I lost my friends one by one to time, 

but when the birds came to call,

I found I had lost not one of my friends, 

not one of them at all. 

© Shaista Tayabali, 2020

Today, May 14th, was the birthday of both my Uncle Motu and my Aunty Saida. They weren’t twins. Aunty was five years older. They loved us kids equally. Growing up, we were showered with love when they visited our Bombay home, which had been their childhood home, and then when we moved to our shared new homeland of England, love continued, unperturbed by changed geographical boundaries. They are both gone now, into the other world ... but the memory of love remains.

(participating in Open Link Night for Dverse Poets)

CAMPYLOBACTER AND I

Who are you, bug of my gut? Why do you wish me to be your home? You have turned my body into a battlefield and I look nothing like a warrior anymore. I am the slain defeated soldier, wishing only for the earth to open and swallow her whole. 

Campylobacter. Another name acquired to add to the list. Did you know it is a common enough bacteria mostly found in poultry? Chicken specifically - factory farmed, sad toxic little chicken... but also the plastic packaging which contains the chicken, and any fresh produce which comes into contact with either. So really, just about anything can host the little devils. Many people in the UK population have had campylobacter chomp away at them for a day or a few days or a week. But the normal body expels the unwanted intruder ... 

Perhaps we should all be vegans but we have developed such a deep and passionate art for cooking throughout the ages and embedded in every culture and nationality, that to erase meat and fish for the sake of the occasional gut attack, appeals to a select few.  We know we contain bacteria within us - just as we ourselves once were bacteria... 

Then there’s your tricky antibody deficient, immuno suppressed lupus patient. 

I had mysterious bouts of sepsis several times in 2017 until this bacteria was finally discovered in my bloodstream - where it should not have been. This is supposed to be a strictly gut bug. We pelted it with IV antibiotics and thought ourselves in the clear. But all through last year I have been trailing behind a sense of weariness, an unwellness hard to define. Was my dosage of Rituximab too low? Too spaced out? Did I need a new drug added in? More steroid? 

I travelled to the East, and seemed on the surface to have managed miraculously well... but every evening and by nightfall I was close to tears with whatever it was that was battling away inside of me. As soon as I returned home from Singapore I went into an exhausted depression under my duvet, and thence into the grip of fierce abdominal pain. Was it my kidneys finally declaring nephritis? I even wondered if I’d had a mini heart attack, so intense was the painful grip.

The psyche of a lupus patient is a horrible fascination. For months now I have felt despair and entrapment at the thought of this being IT. I have always somehow freed myself from the idea that the future is bleak because I will always be ill... but this time around I seem to have less will, less reserves... 

Today is Valentine’s Day and my present is that the medical team have agreed to stop the three streams of antibiotics that were eradicating me with their toxicity. It will take time for my system to clear itself of these drugs ... but the PICC line is still in place so it is hard to believe such a time will come. It will come. Will it?

I could have waited to write an article when light and hope had replaced the nauseating struggle, but this is real too. This in the middle of the thing, this neverending ghastliness that is the nature of this life. Waiting for the energy of hope to pulse within. 

AFTER BADGER'S WOOD

Long passages occur when I don't leave my little writing shed in the shires, but occasionally, for a dear friend, I willingly face train schedules and cross country shenanigans. This summer I have managed Hertfordshire, Ely, Wisbech, Hampshire, Chichester and a few days ago, Bury St Edmunds, where I discovered the significance of St Edmund's Wolf. My friend Colette was kind enough to stop outside the Abbey; a wolf greeted us at the entrance and then inside, seemingly, a pack. Since C and I both have The Lupus, the synchronicity was quite striking. Here is a little grisly yet romantic tale about King Edmund:

Edmund, King of East Anglia, fought against the Danish invasion but on 20 November 869, he was captured. When he refused to give up his Christian faith, the Danes tied him to a tree, shot him with arrows until he 'bristled like a hedgehog', and then decapitated him. The King's men came to find his body after the battle but they could not find his head. Hearing a cry of 'Here, here, here!' from a nearby wood, they discovered a wolf protecting the head of the King. The wolf allowed the men to take the head, and when placed with the body, a miracle occurred. The head fused back. 

C and her husband, known only as the mysterious Badger of Badger's Wood, were the most delightful, charming hosts, and their barn conversion is a dream. Acres of land have been transformed by Badger into a haven for newly planted trees - thousands of them. I was taken on a tour and shown a badger's set, taught how to tell a hawthorn from a dog rose, how a willow might seed itself if left to her own devices, and what a roebuck's bark sounds like (I heard him and saw him prance, especially for me).

It was so magical that I forgot about The Real World, and rude awakenings. 

When I bought my ticket at the Cambridge train station, I had simply asked for a return. I hadn't looked at my ticket. It was a shock when the station official stopped me, called me back and accused me of having intentionally given him a folded up ticket in the sneaky hope of getting away with the wrong ticket - he was looking at me as though I were a hardened criminal. This, inspite of the fact that there was a stamp on my ticket, which had been approved by the ticket conductor only a few stops earlier. 'What shall I do,' I asked. 'Tell me what to do.' 'You can go through this time,' he said, 'but,' and he drew a circle around his face, 'Remember this face. I'll be watching you.'

I refused to budge. I refused to be falsely judged. 'I won't go through,' I said. 'Tell me what to do to make this right.'

Eventually he pointed out another station official. I walked over to him, explained my predicament and although I'd have rather not, found myself in tears.

This seemed to amuse the official but it also made him incredibly kind, helpful and didactic - he advised me to toughen up: 'You need to get a bit hardened.' Which was ironic since I'd just been accused of being exactly that, in a different context.

'You lot get really upset don't you?' he commented. I prefer not to focus on what he meant by 'you lot'.

One complication at a time.

I paid my penalty fare of twenty pounds.  Wiped away my tears. And told the nice man I was going to prove my mettle then and there by speaking up. 'No, don't,' he advised. 'You'll just get more upset. I'll have a word with him later.'

One battle at a time. Sometimes you have to take your kindnesses where you find them. 

VANESSA AND HER SISTER (AND ME)

Yellow bunting hangs from trees, and since there is only one (stalwart) lady heading up the queue outside the Cambridge Union Chamber, my friend Sylvia, my mother and I decide to lounge in deck chairs, have tea and elderflower, and discuss literature: the perennially delightful question and answer of 'What are you reading?' and 'What did you think?' When we are satiated, we turn lazily to the lady in the queue, only to discover there is now a snaking river of women and we must forfeit our front row seats. We are here for Vanessa Bell; Vanessa first, and then her sister - today Virginia Woolf is the one in the shadows. Never far, or hardly done by, but the conversation this afternoon between the doyenne of historical fiction, Philippa Gregory, and the darling of the Bloomsbury world, Priya Parmar, intends to focus on the painter, the portrait artist, the one who held the centre so others could come apart - Vanessa Bell.

Priya used to be a blogger (although she promised me at the book signing she would restart her blog) so I already knew she had been friends with Philippa Gregory for a while - ten years I discover. Philippa (I can call them by their first names, can't I?) began by determining that the tenor of the interview would be intimate, they would talk as though they were at breakfast or tea, interrupting as friends of longstanding do, and interspersing memory and anecdote. It was utterly perfect. It doesn't get better for faithful readers than to have writerly friends, genuine friends, chat, confide, illuminate. Witness: Neil Gaiman with Terry Pratchett, Junot Diaz with Toni Morrison, Lena Dunham with Jennifer Saunders...

It began with the chicken story - they both had chickens at the first moment of email encounter - and meandered through the personal responsibilities of holding history in your hand and then braiding it with imagination into fiction. At various points, I focused on Philippa's shoes - they were deep electric blue, heeled and seemed to have a life of their own. My view was slightly squinty, between heads but I had been too shy or diffident to ask the volunteers whether I could snag the empty front row seats for the sake of my woebegone eyes. They were reserved for the hearing impaired, not the visually impaired. Maybe next time, I'll ask. I refrained from audience questions too - although I wanted to know if Priya came from the harmonious duality of an art/writing family as I do. She captures that particular tension of roles once defined in families, being rearranged. But art in any family transmogrifies its inhabitants. It is never enough to be painter or writer or poet or scientist. We must be all, if so inspired.

Today marks a week after the last Rituximab cycle. I have since seen my consultant and although she agrees the disease is active, she is hopeful the chemotherapy will help. I used to have a doctor who concluded every conversation with the words, 'Let us wait and see.' So it is with my consultant (a Virginia Woolf lookalike if ever there was one). We are waiting, and seeing. I am trying my best to brave the daily fevers with as little anxiety as possible. And only those who know, know. 

When I presented my book for Priya to sign, and mentioned I was a little in love with her blog The Plum Bean Project, she was surprised. But her sweetness radiates and she graciously accepted my fangirling homage. The moment was, unbeknownst to me, captured by the official photographer of the Cambridge Literary Festival, Chris Boland, who being a friend, sent me these pictures...

What he didn't capture was Mum, who is an avid fan of Philippa Gregory, introducing herself and fangirling in a much more sophisticated, respectable way. Author and appreciative fan shook hands, because Mum had brought none of her many Gregory books. All in all, it seems only right to start the nieces young on the wonders of historical fiction…

You can find more of Chris Boland's photography at his website Distant Cloud Photography.

HOW TO SURVIVE RITUXIMAB

1) Do nothing.

2) But when the drug, which makes your heart and mind race, wakes you up before dawn, lie there and hope for sleep again.

3) When there's absolutely no hope, totter out of bed into the kitchen, scrabble around the fridge and settle on a virtuous carrot.

4) Wash the carrot down with a few ginger biscuits, a glass of water and several white tablets. Remember you still haven't renewed your various prescriptions, promise yourself you absolutely will attend to it later and then forget all about tablets by

5) finding the most mind numbing documentary on Netflix. It's called, say, 'The Queen of Versailles' about a rather grimly mismatched couple determined to build the biggest, brashest house on American soil. You will retain nothing later except a solitary fact about the real Versailles almost bankrupting France with its gilt and glory. This from google and not the documentary.

6) No fever or tachycardia yet and you float about between bed and kitchen, eating noodles, watching rain turn to sun, and wondering why you aren't simply stepping out of your little house and walking the half hour to your nieces, one of whom has taken to saying, 'Shai! gone!' with a sad little flick of her hand.

7) At 4 in the afternoon, you have a high point of wellness. You steel yourself not to get dressed or put your contacts in, but to sit, still pyjama clad at the open window, sun blazing into your half shut eyes, drinking coffee laced with syrup and two Jaffa cakes melting as fast as you can eat them.

8) By half past five, sun turned to long shadows, you are in bed with a creeping temperature, a steady marathoning heart and a throat that burns with a thirst you cannot pacify. In the doorway, an old fashioned tape player and Catherine Alliott's rural comedy A Crowded Marriage. A fox has decapitated Cynthia. Not the heroine. The chicken...

9) You think about washing your hair.

10) You listen to the birds.

11) You write a blog post about how you survive Rituximab the wonder drug. The cancer drug. The lupus drug. The soon to be Parkinson's drug. You think about cupcakes, not the cake but the frosting. And washing your hair. And how quiet it is because the tape needs to be changed to Side 13. You take a breath, prepare to peel the blankets off your curled up legs and brace for cooler air. There will always be more tea, hot buttered toast and you will

12) begin again.