I Need Not Have Suffered With A Cure Only Inches Away

by Rana Asfour

The past three days have seen me struck down with a flu that has completely floored me and is turning my life into a nightmare robbing me of even my few hours of sleep as a long suffering insomniac. It feels like I'm dying.

Before you think it, I realise that my self-indulgent drama pales in the wake of current catastrophic world events such as Hurricane Harvey in Houston and now Irma on its destructive path to Miami as I type. However, with a capital H if you please, Bob Marley once said, 'A man is a universe within himself'. Some will of course argue that I've taken this quote out of all context in order to unashamedly use it  (or abuse it - your choice) for my own personal exoneration from a crime that can only be described as self-indulgent - and they are most likely right. However, in defence, I ascribe my unhinged and unbalanced reasoning to a blockage in all brain ducts responsible for 'seeing the big picture' brought on by a diminished oxygen supply to the brain as a result of influenza's worst affliction on my being: a blocked nose. I have been reduced to a snotty, snivelling, barely functional human being, highly contagious and wracked with a cough that renders a twenty-a-day smoker to a fumbling amateur.

And yet, as I wallow in a sea of pity surrounded by soggy tissues and Strepsils I cast my eye around my bedroom and spot a salvation that had been there, right under my blocked and swollen-red nose all along. A few months ago, at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature I purchased a book called appropriately 'The Novel Cure' written by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin. Aiming straight for the Index of Ailments at the back of the book I scroll down until I find the word 'flu' and then it's off to page 173

'The Novel Cure' - the cover I own is different than the one in the link.

These brilliant women have found a strange coincidence they write - a breakthrough I insist - 'that no medical doctor or scientific researcher has yet noticed, or even studied: the moment a flu patient begins to read an Agatha Christie novel marks the commencement of their recovery'. They recommend 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd', the novel that confirmed Christie's genius as a writer of detective fiction.

Their reasoning? They maintain that the aches, chills, fever, sore throat, runny nose - 'all these are nothing compared to the determination to work out the guilty party before Poirot'. Deliciously, under 'Common Cold' they list other books that can help a flu sufferer and are perfect when combined with a warm blanket and a hot drink. Some include 'Memoirs of a Geisha' by Arthur Golden, 'The Devil Wears Prada' by Lauren Weisberger, and my personal favourite 'The Secret Life of Bees' by Sue Monk Kidd to name a few. They even have an entry for 'Man Flu' under which they recommend 'Les Misérables' - told you they were geniuses  - as if one needed a scientist to prove that one?!

And one last word for those of you who are shaking your heads right and left believing that nothing ever really beats a cold, they've got an entry just for you: It's also under C for 'Cynicism' or frankly under K for 'Killjoy'.

Oh and I'll have you know I'm feeling much better already :)