Travelling in time of corona: Margaret Atwood talks about narrow escape from Covid-19

Who doesn’t know Margaret Eleanor Atwood? The 80-year-old famous poet, novelist, essayist and environmental activist wrote the book, The Handmaid’s Tale among her other famous works of literature. For the Read A Letter initiative, Atwood recently shared the story of her close escape from Covid-19 in great detail.

The novel coronavirus was first reported in the city of Wuhan in China. Infected people travelling from the city to various parts of the world, resulted in the global outbreak of the novel coronavirus. That is one reason, almost the entire world is in a government-mandated lockdown and nobody can travel at the moment.

In Atwood’s story, she talked about how she was travelling since January and gave a close miss to the new disease. She started her story by giving an intro, "Hello, my name is Margaret Atwood and my letter is for friends and family members in distant locations. Thank you for all your messages of concern and support. I am thinking of you too and hoping that everything is going well for you or as well as it can go. Despite the annoyances considered, if we are inside a house, if we aren't ill, if the kids and grandkids are alright and if we have enough money to get us through, we can consider ourselves lucky. That is far from being true for everyone. And please forgive me for being so late to reply. It is a strange time and I have been having a strange time as well. I just barely missed the big up curve of the virus and a week later I have found myself marooned in a foreign country."

Here is the letter I did for #readaletter @letterslive, with good wishes to distant friends + family, my narrow escape from #COVID19 + Shingles (don't get it!) and so forth... https://t.co/lpOZHmT8SF — Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) April 17, 2020

She added, "It started well in late January, fearing no harm, I set out with my sister and my brother-in-law to attend the Hay Literary festival in Cartagena, Columbia. When this arrangement was made back in early 2019, I thought that Graeme Gibson (partner) would be with us. I had envisioned getting him to a warm place for February which is the coldest and iciest month in Toronto but as you know he died last September. However, the three of us forged ahead. Anyway, it is a lovely location and true, the festival is or was then very energetic and interesting. Then I traveled on solo to New Zealand and Australia for an 11 city speaking tour with two other people."

She talked about the adventures in Australia along with the fundraising she did there, but she also mentions that at that particular time the novel virus had not hit the countries that she was travelling to.

While talking about the new disease and travelling at that time, Artwood said, "Was I apprehensive? Increasingly so. As time went on, we can all remember where we were at certain abrupt moments of change. The assassination of Kennedy or 9/11 but the Covid-19 crisis unfolded slowly and so did my awareness of it."

"By the time I left Perth, Australia at the beginning of March, the virus was still showing a flat line globally," she added.

Artwood then talked about going to Galway, Ireland for the last job where she was also recovering from shingles. At that time, Galway had not reported any cases of novel coronavirus. Artwood continues, "I cut it very close. I could see when travelling through an almost deserted Heathrow (airport) on March 10 that things were suddenly getting serious. Fortunately, I had a container of hand sanitisers with me, though it leaked all over me in the plane while I was watching Despicable Me."

She continued, "Once back in Toronto, I went straight into self-isolation as the global curb shot almost straight up and here, I remain socially distancing and with sufficient toilet paper, all-purpose flour, yeast and frozen peas."

Artwood concluded, "Will there be another side to this crisis when we can emerge again and take up normal life? Yes, there will be. But, will normal life be the same as normal life before? No, it won’t. We have been given a pause in which we must consider how we have been living on this planet, what the cost of that is and how we might do things better and why we really need to do them better? There is a good side to this bad moment and if you squint hard, you can almost see it, so long, for now, virtual hugs, wash those hands and keep well. We will be together again, then come to think of it, we are together now just in a different way."

The Read A Letter initiative invites people to share memorable life experiences from all around the world and give out the messages of hope, love, respect, support and appreciation.

Across the world, the novel coronavirus has infected 23,29,651 people and over 1,60,000 deaths have been reported.

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