Hanif Kureishi, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter best known for penning the Daniel Day-Lewis romance “My Beautiful Laundrette,” suffered a potentially catastrophic fall that could prevent him from working again. In a Twitter thread on Friday, the actor detailed the dangerous accident that took place in his apartment in Rome over the winter holidays.
“I should like you to know that on Boxing Day, in Rome, after taking a comfortable walk to the Piazza del Popolo, followed by a stroll through the Villa Borghese, and then back to the apartment, I had a fall,” Kureishi wrote. “I had just seen Mo Salah score against Aston Villa, sipped half a beer, when I began to feel dizzy. I lent forward and put my head between my legs; I woke up a few minutes later in a pool of blood, my neck in a grotesquely twisted position, my wife on her knees beside me.”
He went on to describe the harrowing feeling of waking up to realize that he had lost the use of his hands.
“I then experienced what can only be described a scooped, semi-circular object with talons attached scuttling towards me,” he wrote. “Using what was left of my reason, I saw this was my hand, an uncanny object over which I had no agency.”
Kureishi says he credits his wife with saving his life, though the accident has left him partially paralyzed.
“From the floor my wife heard my frantic shouting,” he wrote. “She saved my life and kept me calm. For a few days I was profoundly traumatised, altered and unrecognisable to myself. I am in the hospital. I cannot move move my arms and legs.”
Kureishi says that the paralysis has prevented him from resuming many routine activities. The writer expressed hope that he will eventually find some voice-operated technology to assist him with day-to-day functions.
“At the moment, it is unclear whether I will ever be able to walk again, or whether I’ll ever be able to hold a pen,” he wrote. “If there is any assistance that I would be grateful for, it would be with regard to voice assisted hardware and software, which will allow me to watch, write, and begin work again, and continue some kind of half life.”
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