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

MESSY BOOTS AND POCKETS OF JOY

Do you recall two movies starring Kate Winslet titled 'Hideous Kinky' and 'Kinky Boots'? The first was based on a memoir by a woman whose mother cobbled together an interesting and beautiful life, off the beaten track. The second... well, it's just an intriguing sounding phrase, isn't it? Less of the hideous or kinky here, but if I were to title my cobbled together story, it would probably be Messy Boots. I mean that literally - I do sometimes forget that this is England and we have cream carpets (well, trying to stay cream) and I walk in after a good hack around the village with Samwise Gamjee, the cockapoo, and track mud here and there. 

But mostly I mean that I live like a messy snail, leaving a trail of stuff in this room and that, where I start projects of creativity or purpose, and then tumble into illness and forget. Later, I return, the good elf to my messy troll, and pick up and tidy and sort. For thirty years, I have shaped a kind of happiness and peace from this little exercise, not so much of control, as of collage, collaboration with my two selves, my several selves.

There's another book I think of now... 'How To Make An American Quilt' by Whitney Otto. The movie starring Winona Ryder and Dr. Maya Angelou, is sweet. It's all very genteel and yet emotionally true to women of any time. Ever since the pandemic made realities virtual, made the impossible possible, we the various disparately located peoples of the world, are now able to come together in a thing called Zoom Rooms... we workshop in the same space and time across geography. So house bound elves like myself, even on troll-like days, can zoom with the likes of Fatima Bhutto, Fatima Farheen Mirza, Trivarna Hariharan and Suleika Jaouad to name a few of the writers and poets I have 'hung out' with. There are writing prompts, and we write together in silence, later sharing what we wrote if we have the courage, or even, for a while, being in silence during an entire reading hour cultivated by Naomi Alderman. 

How do you hand make your life? Do you potter like I do? Are you tidy or messy? Is it childish to be messy and grown up to be tidy, or is it agelessly creative to be messy and openly vulnerable to display that you are not 'together' yet? Do you find, like I do, that there is so much to read and do, and never enough time, but that pockets of joy are in fact found in this mess of everything, everywhere, all at once? I am trying, as always, to cultivate an hour here and there to 'do something', and not be overwhelmed by how very small my doing is. 

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

NO MUD, NO LOTUS

One year ago, on the 15th of October, I began an online course called Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, a seven week teaching course based on the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, his Plum Village monastics and Christiana Figueres, Costa Rican diplomat, UN Chief on climate change and daughter of three time revolutionary president of Costa Rica, José Figueres Ferrer. Dad had just been brought home from hospital by ambulance a few weeks earlier after his fall, Gaza was on fire after a co-ordinated military attack provoked the world into taking sides, Mum was hospitalised with a burst cyst and I was as scattered in my life as I am now with almost the exact same circumstances - one year later.

   

People say 'war is looming in the Middle East' as if war has not been the aim, the target of US and UK military invasions across Iraq and Afghanistan. You cannot keep amputating a people's children and expect no consequences. We all pay global prices for American greed, for capitalism's dream, for patriarchal power, for religious fanaticism. So although the Zen course was only available for a year, I find myself in need of it now as much as I did then. In Week Two, Brother Pháp Dung speaks of the three energies of Artist, Meditator and Warrior, which we need to keep in balance. At the heart of the teaching is the Diamond Sutra, the cutting through of the illusion of duality, of separate selves. Non-duality, or advaita, is the nirvana of all Buddhist teaching.  An impossible feat, it seems, for the human mind to grasp. We would rather snarl and kill first, ask questions of deeper curiosity and understanding later. We act in pain, and out of pain, never having the patience to free ourselves from pain a different way, a slower way. Slowness, like illness, is an obstacle for power, for progress. As Christiana herself learned, without mud, the lotus flower cannot grow. Becoming a lotus flower takes time, and can be a painful process. As humans we seem to be in the business of avoiding pain for ourselves first. So how can the planet survive us? 

   

IN SEARCH OF DELIGHT

With every year that passes, I seem to accumulate a smaller number of blog posts. I think this is the inevitable fate of The Blog as a vehicle for our thoughts. Technology intruded in its rapid way and demanded a change - but for the writer, all the modes of transporting thought to word remain alive, however strained the thread.

It has been a very difficult two months. The beloved friend I wrote about in my last post, Victoria, would have read this post, but for her life in this human form taking flight on the 29th of August. A month later, Dad, who had been having trouble with infection in his ears, had episodes of losing consciousness, developed a high fever and was hospitalised with E.coli sepsis on the 18th of September. Here we are, at the end of the month and Pops is still in hospital. His infection markers have all returned to normal but his hearing has not. Communication has been a struggle but he is as ever graceful, remarkable and heartbreaking in the loveliest of ways. Dad, I miss you horribly. Come home soon.

In between, my brothers and Mum's brother have visited and done the supportive work that makes family continue to be family. In between, a young boy cycled up to my house and seeing a handbag unattended, stole it. This is the intersection of being human. My lapse of judgment in doing a careless yet trusting thing - oh it's a young boy I've seen many times before, cycling up to ask if he can wash our cars, I can leave my bag unattended, the front door open while I dash out to the back for... what? I cannot recall now, as I was waiting for friends to take me to Victoria's funeral. In my bag was my mobile phone - which, once upon a time, might not have impacted my life too much. But, today, our little devices hold worlds within them. 

I had a bone infusion yesterday. I picked up a cold a few days ago while at the hospital with Dad, so I feel rather heavy and my eyes feel bleak. But Dad is sitting up, practising his standing with the walker and I have hope returning for the first time that we might bring him home by the end of next week. In the meantime, I am doing the homely things of cooking meals for Mum, chicken soup for Dad, laundering clothes from hospital and watering the precious indoor plants that Mum tends to with a far greener thumb than my own. I just pat them on the head and apologise and they pat me back and say they understand. 

In the meantime, I have rewatched several old favourites... aren't movies one of the greatest reasons to stay alive, stay reminded of why we are and who we are? 'The Young Victoria' is sumptuous in its romantic portrayal of her courtship with Albert, 'Mrs Harris Goes to Paris' is delightfully Parisian in her search for the dreamiest Dior gown and 'Miss Potter', one of my most favourites... not only for its charming illustrations of Jemima Puddle-Duck and its central character being the excellently feminist Beatrix Potter, but also for the sweetest musical refrain... 

'Let me teach you how to dance,

let me lead you to the floor;

simply place your hand in mine,

and then think of nothing more.

Let the music cast its spell,

give the atmosphere a chance;

simply follow where I lead,

let me teach you how to dance.'

 

THE YEAR OF YES

I originally wrote this poem in response to turning down the opportunity to join my mother and her darling friend Victoria for a walk. I was tired. Maybe I’d recently had Rituximab. I sat in the doorway instead, waving off my friends. And soon found myself writing a poem about how I regretted saying no! These days, Victoria is the one unable to go for long walks among crunchy leaves, and the inevitable bump into a friendly soul for a catch up. Village life occurs in the entwined casual conversations that spring up on summer or autumn walks…and hospital life puts an end to those. It is a winter of sorts, a wintering of a life well lived.

                               I wish I had said Yes!

                                          beloved,

                      When you asked me out to walk

among the leaves,

the turning leaves, 

You were offering me

the sound of dreams,

And I turned you down, politely.

Not today, I smiled.

Perhaps, maybe, tomorrow?

But I wish I had said Yes!

beloved,

I wish we had shared this light.

Next time, don't ask.

Just take me!

Order me to dress!

I am going to need your help,

beloved,

To begin the Year of Yes.

 

TIME, FICKLE TIME

Firstly, with thanks to Meenakshi DCruz and Dr. Sunil Pandya for personally writing to my mother and to me to express concern for my long silent absence from my blog. Five months now, I calculate. So, in this, my birthday month, I shall attempt to redress the balance with a newsy post.

I left England for Asia at the end of March after a lot of dithering because Dad wasn’t in top condition. He intimated as much a few days before my flight, and I nearly cancelled all plans. Perhaps that might have been wise, as I proceeded to encounter a grisly case of gastroenteritis in Singapore, ending up in Tan Tok Seng hospital. Unfortunately for me, there were no beds available on the ward, so I was placed on the corridor stretcher, where I proceeded to pick up pneumonia. I didn’t know it was pneumonia, only that I had a cough, which turned more and more devious as I once again contemplated the wisdom of travelling on to Kuala Lumpur. I did go. Twin nieces awaited! And ended up in a Malaysian hospital this time. Finally, I cut my trip short by two weeks and hustled home in case my luck really ran out!!

Dad was relieved to have me home. He had a few grisly infections himself. And then summer pretended to arrive, and with it Irfan, Theresa and the kids… we celebrated Dad’s birthday and now with them gone, here is Rizwan. In between, my uncle Zubin drives to Cambridge from London when he can, to read to Dad and take over the washing up, and generally add to the support network that has been much needed since Dad fell last autumn. What is time? One moment Dad was a father to toddlers, then teenagers, and now his son is father to a teenager.

The plants need watering. Meals must be cooked. My breaking heart walks herself into the garden. My sweet Wendy House into which I have poured a silly amount of love, paint, art and happy memories, is probably in her last days before she will be dismantled and taken to the skip. Everything comes and goes. We cling on, ever hopeful, to that which we love. And we long for The Other Stuff to pass. We are as fickle with time as time is with us.

I contemplate writing. And I crawl away from the words. I face up to the brutalities of modern empires and colonising powers and I crumble at the sight and sound of tortured bodies. They buried another young journalist in Gaza, without his head. Ismail was his name. Everyone compliments me on my nails. With my mouth I say nothing - my nails say Free Palestine, from those who endanger the olive trees, the watermelon, strawberry and poppy, the fish in the sea, the kites clinging on to the hopeful fingers of the children in the Gaza Strip. 

A GOOD YEAR FOR SNOWDROPS

I took myself for a walk today. My body aches, lately. Ha! Lately? For the past thirty years kind of lately... but yes, this sludge like treacle we move through while attached to our phones receiving news of a genocide adds a new layer of ache. When the doctors found a murmur on my ten year old heart, they kept an eye on it even as I moved countries. Lately... oh that word again... my heart is heavier, the beats a little unsteadier. "I think I'd like to send you to Papworth if you don't mind," said my cardiologist a few weeks ago. For an MRI at the big fancy heart hospital. "Anything I should know? Any questions for me?" she asked. She's lovely, and Northern Irish, so I think she would have been fine with me responding with the truth. "The children," I would have said. "The children of Gaza." I don't know what the figures are for bombed, amputated, under the rubble, but as we know, they are not numbers. Each one has a name. Although the ones who knew their names, who could write their names on the tiny white shrouds, are also gone. Motaz Azaiza, our traumatised young heroic journalist, puts it this way: "They passed," he says. I find his way of commenting on unjust death very moving. Sparse and factual, laden with helplessness, and yet, dignified. Even as he witnesses a physical reality beyond the language any one of us possesses. In war time, photographers from foreign western lands, are often given the wealthiest noblest prizes for capturing children on fire or dying. Motaz is Palestinian, and the people he photographs are family, friends, neighbours. The blood of his blood. No award or prize will ever ease his psychological torment.

On Valentine's Day, I took myself for a walk, because my body was aching, and I know there are snowdrops ‘out there’ and aconites and the beginnings of daffodils. There are bridges with river water, and even birdsong. There was unexpectedly more. I walked past the village hall and was invited in for the monthly Wednesday tea and cake. My first thought is often no, instinctive to avoid gatherings. Not just a pandemic protection, but a social defence. Years of "so what are you up to these days?" Now I find I can talk more easily having been accepted as The Daughter Who Lives With Beloved Parents. I have somehow moved into a more accepted phase. Not quite old, not too young. Just... a person. The Elders were glad to have me. I ate a slice of apple pie, and then washed up as many cups and saucers as I could before linking arms with a friend and walking on. "Rage helps keep my tears at bay," she said. It's nice having friends who know.

What now? The clock ticks on. The calendar advances. "We are living through a very dark time," my mother acknowledges. And that comforts me too. Dad asked me to start reading the autobiography of Sister Chân Không a day or two before we heard the news of the young US soldier, Aaron Bushnell, setting himself on fire in protest against American military aid to Israel and solidarity with the suffering of Gazans. Sister Chân Không witnessed the burning of the monk Thích Quảng Đửc on June 11, 1963. Speaking of photographs that won prizes… I could post it here. But you have already seen it. Maybe even at the time it flew around the world. My heavy heart, my heavy heart. It was never designed for this live witnessing of the worst of who we are to each other. So instead, some blossom and a poem, and later, perhaps a walk. It has been a good year for snowdrops.

every time I ever said I want to die

By Andrea Gibson

A difficult life is not less

worth living than a gentle one.

Joy is simply easier to carry

than sorrow. And your heart 

could lift a city from how long

you’ve spent holding what’s been

nearly impossible to hold.

This world needs those

who know how to do that.

Those who could find a tunnel

that has no light at the end of it,

and hold it up like a telescope

to know the darkness

also contains truths that could

bring the light to its knees.

Grief astronomer, adjust the lens,

look close, tell us what you see.

EVERYONE SANG

Our beloved friend, Annette Rowntree-Clifford née Johanna Abrahamsohn, died in December. She was nearly a hundred, so she knew life in all its shades of horror and glory. Some years ago, Annette's granddaughter wrote a beautiful poem about her Granny being a bird, flitting from room to room, 'her wings are deep blue folded cardigans and tucked inside are her stories'. Emily's poem was read at Annette's eulogy yesterday, and so, I believe, was the poem below, which I had written for Annette many years ago when I visited her. After the long drive to Leicester from Cambridge, I had to be put to bed like a small tired bear. Annette tucked me cosily into one of her grown up children's bedrooms. I felt frustrated as always by my time stealing illness. Precious time with Annette and Hugh lost because of my unruly body. 

Hugh was a lifelong friend, at school and later at Oxford, of my father's brother Sadiq, and Dad spent all his summer vacations staying with the Cliffords while he was a medical student at St. Andrews. As Mum and Dad laughed and shared tea and stories together with their dear friends, I wrote this upstairs in bed: 

Moving Plates

The perfect home
has something sentimental
resting side by side
with the practical.

Everything a meaning,

a memory,
a moment - even the broken,
the chipped china,
but especially the hand woven
crochet craft work,
and the little notes
you write yourself -

you leave for us
a forget-me-not trail
winding all the way
to 1939
when the plates
          of your atlas
moved forever.

I do feel tired and heavy these days. And not because it is winter, and dark after four o'clock. After all, there are many blessings as always - not least that Dad and I walked down to the railway line twice this past week. I saw the sun and hustled Dad out. At the end of the driveway, I expected he would want to turn back as always. Expecting that, I hesitantly stepped out into the road and was met by blithe acceptance on his part. 'Anytime you want to stop and turn back, we can, ok Dad?' 'I'm fine!' he assured me, reassured me. So on we went. On - on - and out of sight.

Annette brought good cheer always. In person, over the telephone and in gifts. When I was a teenager, Annette sent me a huge postcard with one of A. A. Milne's Christopher Robin and Pooh sketches on the front. It was so special to me then, and has continued to be near me since. Wherever I have lived - home, university, rented annexe, garden shanny - I have blue tacked the postcard to a handy wall. Pooh is not just for children. Annette understood things like that. She 'got you' in the words of her son Tony. To have such people in my life - people who 'get me' - my heart should be a singing bird at all times. But. War, injustice and poverty make that impossible. 

Tony ended the eulogy for Annette with another poem. This one by a poet made famous by a war. Siegfried Sassoon had a Jewish father, like Annette and her sister Gretel did. In 1914, Siegfried, being an enthusiastic Cambridge and Kent boy, was drawn into the English army. In 1939, Annette and Gretel, being German Jews, were shepherded to England on the kinder transport, waving goodbye at the train station to the parents they would never see again. Never again. Words we hear a lot of, but not fully meant - never again, for everyone. Did you know that Sassoon's father was a Baghdadi Jew, from an Iraqi family who had settled in Bombay? And did you know that Sassoon was sent to Palestine to 'recuperate from shell-shock' - the party line taken by a government angered by the anti-war poetry and speeches made by their tall, handsome, exceptionally brave soldier?  Siegfried Sassoon wrote poetry in the spring of 1918, in Gaza and Ramallah, Palestine. He wrote, 'On the rock strewn hills I heard/ The anger of guns that shook/ Echoes along the glen./ In my heart was the song of a bird,/ And the sorrowless tale of the brook,/ And scorn for the deeds of men.' The bird he was listening to was a bulbul, whose song was heard often by my parents when we lived in Bombay. The discovery of these connections has made me happy. Annette is lifting my heart even as I write these words. 'It's complicated,' everyone says. As if a single life isn't complicated enough to fill trilogies. All we can hope is that as we near the end of our own complicated life, everyone lifts their voices to sing our tale. 

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight,

As prison birds must find in freedom,

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of

sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;

And beauty came like the setting sun:

My heart was shaken with tears; and horror,

Drifted away ... O, but Everyone 

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing

will never be done.

(photo of bulbul by Sunjoy Monga via Conde Nast Traveller)

IN BADGER’S WOOD

Whose woods these are, I think I know;

They belong to my friends, Coco and Joe.

What if there were no fear, or loss,

but hawthorn berry, instead?

What if I could tell

hazel and maple apart,

not because one had more beauty -

there are rosehips, don’t forget,

and Vibernum Opulis

and crushed, scented pine.

Some catkins are soft green 

caterpillars, plush with rain.

I learn a new story now

and again - like how rosemary 

got her name - Rose Marinus -

‘dew of the sea’.

Everything ages. The cork

of the field maple marries moss,

and somewhere in the low bramble,

wild strawberries; 

deeper still, the badger sett,

a whole world underneath.

And high above, birds calling.

‘Where do birds go when they die?’

Joe asks. ‘Why don’t they fall 

in great heaps from the sky?’

Perhaps Merlin knew. Or Arthur, 

when he was a boy, not exiled king.

What if we could go home?

What if we were found, instead?

Poets Open Link Night at dversepoets…