Published on December 29th 2022
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Bedrooms and Broomstick Basses
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This is the December piece for my writing site, set up in January 2022, and thus this site has done it's job. It forced me to write something every month for a year and apart from the summer where I was away playing so much that I didn't get round to it, I managed one piece of writing each month. Now, as 2022 ends and I did what I set out to do, I suppose I'll be moving on? Don't know yet. Have to have a think. I'm a restless spirit, always wanting to move onto the next thing, but not always knowing what that next thing is! The mind of a restless creative is not an easy one to live with. But for now I'll leave you with this.
My eldest brother died on Sunday November 27th, 2022 at 16.34pm . As he died I held his hand, along with his son, my younger sister and my other older brother. His son and my sister spoke to him as he died, telling him how much we all loved him. I stood there quietly, watching it all, trying to keep still and take it all in. Occasionally I'd look around at the other people in the room. I may have been the only one who saw the nurse turn her back pretending to check one of the machines but what she actually did was wipe away her tears. The machines keeping him alive had been turned off as my nephew in law and I watched. The others had declined being in the room for that as sometimes it can cause the patient some distress. I, as often is the case with me, wanted to witness everything and be totally present. I'm not sure why I'm like that. Maybe I just don't ever want to flinch, and I always want the truth. Evading difficulty is not my way. I guess.
Once the machines had been turned off and the ventilator removed the process took about ten minutes. We watched as he took his last breaths. The only sibling missing was my older sister, who decided to stay away, and whom many of us had not seen in years. I hadn't seen her in something like seventeen years. My brother had been unconscious for two or three days but had been in hospital, declining slowly at first, then very quickly, for about a month. I'd gone to see him just a week before, and had an hour with him on his own, laughing and joking and almost having a proper conversation. I wasn't raised with my two older brothers but one thing that is strong in us is that we always 'got' each others sense o humour when maybe others didn't. We've also had our ups and downs over the years and I remember thinking as I left the hospital that evening that we'd reconnected in a good way and it was all fine. Of course I didn't know that just ten days later I'd be watching him take his last breath.
As soon as the nurse confirmed he'd died everyone, in tears, left the room. Except me. I stayed in the room on my own for about fifteen minutes, talking to him quietly and telling him he was going to be ok, and that God loves him. Again, I'm not sure why I did that. I sometimes get a feeling that I'm meant to do some things under certain circumstances. It was important for me to be in that room, to see my brother in death, and to talk to him, to re-assure him.
When I was secondary school kid, living in a small Lancashire town, I'd come back to London and stay with my older sister who had a really cool flat in Victoria and then travel down to Catford to stay with my dad and my older brothers for a few days. This would happen in most holidays and especially summer, where I'd be in London for a few weeks, hanging out in Soho, Piccadilly Circus and other places with an edge that was very attractive to a 13 or 14 year old kid who loved the streets, especially at night. Staying in Victoria was especially exciting. Daytimes spent at the Tate in the Pre-Raphaelite room, lost in the beauty of their artworks, night times hanging out in Soho, when it was still grimy and sleazy and thus exciting, although I was always a watcher, from a distance. I knew if I got too involved I'd probably get too close to the world of criminality and it's danger was more about taking in the atmosphere and staying on the very fringes of the edge.
One day, while I was staying with my dad and older brother's place in Catford during a summer holiday, I was rotting around under my oldest brother's bed, looking for items of interest that I knew existed, based on previous stays where I had come across said items of interest. I'll let you decide what these items of interest may have been except to say that I was about fourteen, a boy, and once on a previous occasion, whilst looking for these very specific items of interest, I'd found my oldest brothers little red diary, in which he'd written the unofficial history of my family, and why we'd come to Englands, and why there had been a split in the family when I was less than a year old. Oh, I didn't tell you, did I?
I didn't grow up with my father and two older brothers. My mum had left them with my dad and took me, still a babe in arms, and my older sister to start a new life away from an unhealthy relationship. But my brother's diary filled me in on something that has never been spoken about in my family. No one ever told me why the family had split, what the root cause was, why there was a lifelong animosity between my real father and my mum, and why I didn't really get to know my dad and brothers till I was about ten years old, although I knew they existed. So this little red diary told me family secrets, and it says a lot about my family that no one has ever spoken about these secrets, and others. Maybe one day I'll write about them. Maybe not. We'll see. Right now I want to tell you about what I found that summer day in about 1976. As I rooted about under my brother's bed I found a dusty, unused, one pick up, chip board body electric guitar.
The brand was Kay, a cheap beginners guitar on a budget, sold by the ubiquitous UK supermarket Woolworth's. I remember looking at it with my mouth open. It had a typical “sunburst finish”, it had all it's strings, it had been neglected and I knew that I wanted it. I'd been playing guitar for maybe a few months by this time. Actually I'd nicked my little sisters acoustic guitar, a present given to her by a neighbour, and I was absolutely in love with it. This little acoustic had strings so high and far away from the fingerboard that we guitarists call them 'cheese graters' and when I'd snapped a string on it, having no money to buy a new string, I replaced it with my mums knitting wool, tightened to enough tension to give it a 'twang'. I didn't know how to tune it, or that wool was not a good substitute for a steel or nylon string, having little or no vibrational capacity but I'd seen those blokes playing a broomstick with a rubber band attached to it to pluck and making it sound like an upright bass so to me it was a brilliant piece of solving a problem and actually showed what a genius I was, if anyone took any notice. So when I saw my brother, I asked him if I could have it and he said yes.
I loved that guitar, and played it every day, taking it into town every Saturday so that one of the older boys who worked at a music shop could tune it up, and laugh at me. Eventually I got tired of the laughing and somehow bought or was given a simple guitar tutor book that had a record in it with the six notes to tune to and then man I was on.my.way! Nothing can stop a kid with a properly tuned guitar who loves to play the guitar. So my older brother, and my younger sister, are inherently part of my music story. As is my older sister, who loved music as a kid, but that's maybe another story for another time too?
In the summer of 1972 my step dad, my mum, my little sister and my oldest brother jumped in my dad's white Hillman Hunter and drove from England, across Europe and Asia, to Pakistan. It took us about two weeks, and it was an amazing experience, and I remember almost all of it and I should probably write about it all one day. Hmmmm. Lots to write about. Anyway, at some point, in a desert somewhere in Afghanistan, I really needed to go to the loo. Desperately. So I made them stop the car, got out, ran behind a bush, and dropped my trousers. As I was doing my business my brother crept up behind me and took a photo on his black and white camera. That photo is in his photo albums at his house, and he'd often refer to it and we'd all laugh at how embarrassed the ten year old me was in the photo, trousers round my ankles, hands held up high, screaming 'Please no!!” He was so funny, my brother. Always joking, making little quips, often deliberately risque. Speaking of which.
Another thing I found at my brothers place was the record Derek and Clive Live, a vulgar, shocking, profane and unbelievably hilarious LP made by the household names Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, who's tv show Not Only But Also...was a favourite of mine. If you've never heard of it, and are of a gentle disposition, I don't recommend it. But to a fourteen year old boy who thinks he's clever, it was gold.
The last thing I want to tell you about that I found in my brother's place was the original studio recording of Jesus Christ Superstar. Right now is not quite the right time to explain to you just how much this music means to me, I really do need to explain it at length. The 1972 movie version especially is as close to my heart as any music is. I found in this a deep, profound insight into my own complicated relationship with the figure of Yeshua, the concept of the Messiah, the story of the Gospels and man's relationship with God and all with KILLING guitar playing. So another time we'll talk about it in more depth. Hmmmmm. We have a lot to talk about.
Actually, all of this, these important life changing discoveries that happened in my brothers little council flat in Catford, were on my mind as I sat with his body in that hospital room, and spoke to him, comforting him as he began his journey back to ….I don't know.
I don't know what it is, but I know it's somewhere.
After I left his room I met the rest of the family in the hall of the Intensive Care Unit and we all started to make our ways home. My sister was staying with my mum, and no had had told my mum, and my little sister couldn't do it alone so I went with her back to our mums.
That talk with our mum was rough.
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In the Islamic tradition the body of a deceased person must be buried within three days of the day of death. We don't have funeral directors or huge services. The local mosque takes care of everything, and the imam, whom might most easily be described as the Muslim version of a priest albeit with no function as intermediary between the Muslim and The Creator. In Islam ones relationship with God is actually a personal one in strict theological terms, although as with all institutionalised religions it doesn't play out that way irl. So My brother's funeral was on a cold Tuesday in very late November. Before the burial it's customary for the eldest son and other male relatives to help with the washing of the body. So four is us including my other brother met at the mosque and helped the imam wash my oldest brother's body. It was too much for his son, so he stayed away. It was the second time I've helped to wash a dead body. The first was my fathers, when he died in 2001.
Once the body had been ritually washed we all helped place him in the coffin, and a lid was placed on it. Mosques usually follow tradition by having men in one room and women in another. The idea was that the coffin would be placed in the ladies area of the mosque and the female members of the family could come in and view the body and say their prayers before the other female mourners came, after which the coffin would be moved into the men's section of the mosque. The coffin would be open to the shoulders so that those who wanted to see him could do so. I elected to stay with the coffin in the women's section for two reasons – I felt like a custodian of....something. I still don't quite know what. And on a more tangible level I wanted to be in the women's section because I don't believe in gender segregation. It's a tradition in many cultures of Middle Eastern origin and at many family gathering s the women go to one room and the men to the other and I always, without fail, go first to the women's room for a while to give it to the patriarchy and show solidarity to my sistahs who, without fail, are glad to get away from their man for a while.
My mother, my older sister, my younger sister, my brother's wife and my niece arrived early so they could spend time saying their prayers and crying. It was pretty rough. I'd opened the coffin lid so that they could see his face. Through the tears they remarked at how peaceful he looked, almost smiling. There were lots of tears. My mother, sister in law and older sister seemed inconsolable. When the other women arrived there were more tears and high, intense emotions. I watched it all, every now and then looking at my brother. I'm not sure what I was thinking, or even if I was thinking at all. In the section where the men sat the atmosphere was quiet and thoughtful, although some were in tears. At about 1pm there was the call for mid-day prayers, and I went to the main hall, where about 60 or 70 men gathered to pray. I stood and said my own words, quietly, and then sat down to watch the men pray. I find communal events like this fascinating. So much of the culture of communities is based on their religious heritage. Of course, some take it more seriously than others. I find it ironically interesting that no matter how militant the aetheist, they still take Christmas off. Surely if one is that committed to #truth one would just keep working? I suppose it's a pan-species human trait to put relaxation and dessert before principles.
Once the coffin had been viewed by both the men and the women it was carried out to the car park and put in the imams car to be driven to the cemetery. About thirty men or so arrived at the cemetery where a grave had already been dig ad we all helped lower the coffin, and first the male relatives helped to shovel soil back in and then everyone helped. It was all a bit chaotic, quite unorganised but also quite moving that the whole community of his friends and relatives, some of whom had travelled quite far, came to help and say their goodbyes. I found the chaos and informality quite comforting actually. My own funeral I want to be a bright, joyous and celebratory event, a real goodbye with dancing and music, because I'll make sure I don't come back here, and if I do it'll kicking and screaming, shouting 'No! No! NO!”
Just like I did this time.
When the men had left my siblings arrived. The four of us and my nephew stood around in the cold, damp cemetery and looked on, thinking our own thoughts. It was actually the first time we had all been together in one place since my dad died in 2001. In fact, both he had been buried in the same cemetery, about 200 feet away. I'd been thinking for quite a few months that I hadn't visited my dad since his funeral, and that I should take some time to go see him. Of course, I didn't know that I'd end up seeing him because of another death in the family. So we all walked over to my ada's grave. I'm not sure anybody had been there since he died. Again, quite revealing about my family.
Finally we left.
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You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned his name. That's because I never called him by his given name. In the culture of my upbringing certain family members have 'honorific' titles, so the eldest son is always called Bhai, which means Eldest Brother. In the photo below are all my siblings, my mum and my step dad. I think it was taken around about 1970 or '71. It may well be the only photo of all of us together except that, quite symbolically, I'm the only one not in the photo. My guess is that I'm the one taking it.
But do you see the guy on the very left, in the sharp suit, with the Michael Caine glasses?
That's my Bhai.
