Bobuq Sayed
Smoke Screens
'But they are bad for you,' she says. And she is not wrong. I cannot tell her that smoking is not the only way I have tried to kill myself. That dying is not so bad when it is glamorous and prolonged.
The truth is that displays of concern for long-term health draw my ire. Asbestos was built into the walls and ceilings of our council housing estate. My mother’s brain produced so much cortisol after leaving Afghanistan in the dead of night that it gave her lifelong insomnia.