When he was little, I kissed Rafi continuously, licked his stomach, stuck my tongue in his ear, tickled him, squeezed him until he gasped, laughing at his beard of saliva, his bib looking like an Elizabethan ruff. I loved the intimacy: the boy's wet mouth, the smell of his hair, as I'd love that of various women. 'Toys,' he called his mother's breasts. 'What is thinking?' he'd ask. 'Why do people have noses?'Around the age of six, Rafi would wake up early, as I tended to, while Josephine slept. I'd sit at the table downstairs, making notes on my patients, or I'd prepare a paper or lecture I was giving. He brought me his best pens to borrow, the help make my writing 'neater', as he put it. He'd sit with me – indeed, often, on me; or on the table – listening to music on my CD player, through headphones bigger than his cheeks. He liked Handel, and when he got excited he said, 'Daddy, I feel as if I've got people dancing in my tummy.'We bought identical green coats from Gap, with fur-lined hoods, which we wore with sunglasses and trainers. Big Me and Pigmy, I'd call us, thinking we looked great. When he was smaller, I'd walk fast for miles across London with him in his push-chair, stopping off at coffee shops to feed and change him. It's easy to speak to women if you have a baby with you. It was like being the companion of a celebrity. Strangers greeted him; people constantly gave and bought him things; women fed him, talked to him. He disappeared into their midst like a rugby ball into a scrum, and returned reeking of numerous perfumes, his hair standing up and his eyes staring, his face covered in biscuits.
Hanif Kureishi, Something to Tell You
