Noor
This morning, with thanks to the Australian Cricket Team, morale seems particularly high in Michael's Care Home, New Delhi. The staff and clients of the AIDS hospice and mini hospital, squash up on the old cast iron beds of the main ward and watch Australia (32 for 3) squirm live on TV.
Between overs, one of the care workers disentangles himself from the jubilant add break highlights recap, and bounds up to me with a piece of paper in his hand. The paper, though of creamy, freshly minted quality, is already softening along the fold, a sign of being read and re-read many times over.
We stand next to the bed of Noor, the patient who I came today to visit, and share the contents of the page. On this day of victory, its contents make me cry.
Before that though, let me tell you about Noor.
Noor is about 45. Tall. Muscled.
My earliest memory of Noor is in the kitchen of 'Sahara', the heroin rehabilitation centre to which Michael's Care Home is attached. Long hair in a ponytail, white singlet with sweat crescents under the arms. Hoisting kilo upon kilo of rice or hovering above the perpetual dhal pot, bini (local cigarette) smoke trailing from his lips as he tossed in onions. A tomato.
He ran a slick kitchen. Vital, sunny-windowed place. The sort of kitchen you feel drawn to. I remember leaning against the bench top, sipping water and listening to Phantom of The Opera on his radio in one ear and instalments from his 15 year saga with the Afghani Embassy in the other. Noor was an Albanian refugee, somehow made it through Afghanistan to India where he wound up in heroin rehab.
Despite the smallness of the Sahara kitchen, Noor never shooed me away. He churned out three meals a day for all present at mealtime, the aroma of his cooking as reliable as the sun.
Brown and ambiguous, we made jokes about 'The Noor Curry' then.
The details of how Noor went from staff member at the men's rehab centre to patient at Michael's Care Home are foggy. It happened around Christmas time. Alcohol was involved. A fall. Brain haemorrhage. Emergency surgery.
Now a piece of his skull is missing and a thick line of cable stitching closes the place where his brain was exposed. His long black hair is shorn and the