I Look, I See, I Write

Having decided to spend a chill day today, I was blissfully scrolling through Instagram, knowing that my only workout of the day was going to be walking across the road to grab myself an oat latte later in the morning. I was scrolling and scrolling when I saw one of my favourite influencers (this term somehow strikes me — don’t we all influence someone one way or another?) share in her story the new book by Cat Stevens, “On the Road to Findout”—  an autobiography.

Coincidentally, I had been listening to Cat every day that week,  songs from Muslim Cat and before. Also, coincidentally, a few weeks earlier at a BBQ party, someone I met asked if I knew him. I nodded, thinking to myself, “Who doesn’t?” So, I had a Cat theme going on in my life for the last few weeks. And when I saw that his autobiography had just come out, fresh off the press, I had to have it.

But I had little patience to wait days for it to arrive from Amazon. Plus, it was a hefty book, and I wasn’t sure how it would fit into my oh-so-mobile lifestyle. I knew too well that I had to say goodbye to many of my books when relocating from the UK. Or worse, sell them on Vinted for one fucking pound. Normally, one pound wouldn’t even be enough to make me walk to the post office, but sometimes you do things you don’t want to do, out of desperation.

Back to Cat. Since it was a 560-page book, no joke, I decided to scroll through the free preview version on Google Books to get a sense of it before deciding whether or not to buy it. The preview was 56 pages — which, to me, was very generous. I started reading from the small screen on my phone. A few pages in, I realised I actually had a tablet, so I continued reading there. A few more pages in, I decided I wanted some coffee to go with it (definitely not the kopi I had at home), so I made my way to my local coffee shop, ordered myself a big oat latte, and dived into little Cat’s life.

Revert people have always greatly captured my interest. What makes them choose Islam, against all odds? As someone who was luckily born into a Muslim family, I never had to look around. Even when I did, I always had the comfort of my religion surrounding me. Even when I wasn’t feeling so close to it, I knew it was always there — and there’s a certain comfort in knowing you have something you can count on. In a world where everything is constantly changing, it’s nice to have a constant.

So, to me, not having that, or maybe having it for some time but then feeling the need to change and go searching for it, always felt like the biggest effort ever. So Cat always felt like a fascinating person. Of course, his songs are already amazing, so there’s not much to say on that front, really.

But when you’re reading someone’s autobiography — which I’ve probably done only a few times in my life — you meet a whole new aspect of their life. An unravelled one. The one you wouldn’t see on screens. The one only those who can bear with hundreds of pages get to find out. And it was similar for Cat, too. Only a few pages in, I found out that he came from a mixed and somewhat complicated background; he wasn’t originally British as I thought, was sexually harassed when he was a little kid, and had his parents separate when he was young because his dad had an affair.

These details are nothing like listening to his famous “Wild World” while wandering around. When you put a story behind all those shiny lyrics, the experience is elevated in my eyes. I respect artists much more when I know they’ve been through struggles. I mean, of course, I know we all have, it’s the playbook of being human, but knowing it is different. I need not only to know but also to see that you’re human just like I am, to be able to connect. And to me, connection is everything.

While reading about his childhood and more, it also made me think about my own book — my autobiography, if you will. The one I started when I was 29 and told myself would be my 30th birthday gift. But having passed 31, I still don’t have a publisher. I don’t even have my book edited as a whole yet. Yes, I have almost 200 pages, all nice and shiny, but someone (that someone being me) needs to get her ass down and do the job.

Sometimes I meet people and they’re like, “Oh, you’re writing a book! How cool. I can be your editor if you want.” With all due respect, I cannot possibly trust another human being to edit my work. A first reader, yes — I already have a few friends who offered that early on. But writing in two languages and often all over the place, it’s simply not possible for someone else to edit my precious baby. That’s why I have to find the time to do it myself. But I’m stuck. I don’t know how to bring the pieces together. In my head, it all makes sense, but they don’t follow a chronological order or the same format, so it’s a bit tricky. Though I have more time on my hands now compared to the past two years, I still haven’t done it.

But Cat’s book made me realise another thing. Even though he’s a world-famous artist, he didn’t hesitate to share his life story with the world, without sparing the most private details. He’s a 77-year-old fella, and frankly, he must have realised that no one gives an absolute fuck about you other than you. Of course, when people read, they’ll have opinions. But that’s about it. Everybody is so busy and self-centred to give an actual fuck about your life, at least not as much as you think.

And if anything, it made me respect him even more. Learning about someone’s vulnerable side doesn’t have the catastrophic effect we think it would. The same applies to me as well. Plus, there will probably be only a handful of people who’ll make it to the end of my story while I’m still on this earth. And after I’m gone, I couldn’t care less. So, nothing to be worried about, really.