Guided By Nature
The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with travel and food TV and radio presenter, and writer Leyla Kazim
Welcome to another edition of The Body, Brain, & Books. If you enjoy reading these quick, insightful interviews brimming with wisdom and hope, please subscribe to Beyond.
Leyla is a Londoner, born and bred – she’s never lived anywhere else, but she wants to. She’s half Turkish Cypriot and half Mauritian, comes from a science background (she has a degree in Astrophysics) and shares her global stories through a number of online and print publications and her social media platforms. You can find her on Instagram @leyla.kazim
What are you reading now?
I’ve just plowed through Nancy Birthwhistle’s Clean & Green: 101 Hints and Tips for a More Eco-friendly Home. It’s not exactly literary but my goodness, the book is a revelation.
I already followed Nancy on Instagram but it was one of my readers who suggested I buy her book and last night I was up until 2am sourcing various natural and biodegradable ingredients to make her simple, cheap and green household cleaning products. Ingredients like citric acid, bicarbonate of soda, sodium percarbonate. Why is it not common knowledge that we don’t need to buy overpriced, heavily packaged bundles of toxins to maintain happy and healthy homes?
Did you know you can make laundry detergent from conkers (aka buckeyes in the States). Conkers, people!
The cleaning cupboard is getting a serious makeover. It feels like the natural next step of my journey for reducing, paring back and eliminating general junk from my life. It all started with Marie Kondoing my worldly possession a few years ago (see In pursuit of less) and this “cleansing” of all that does not serve me has percolated into other parts of my sphere of influence.
For example, this has been the first year I’ve made my own vegetable fertiliser (nettle tea and comfrey tea) rather than buying Tomorite. Little by little, each year I inch a bit closer to living in a way I feel I was meant to live.
I read a lot of reference books because I am always trying to learn new skills for this life I am working towards, which is a more self-sufficient one (see The rural life of self-sufficiency: why I want it). And I read books concurrently; different books for different situations.
The Small-Scale Poultry Flock is a tome on everything you could possibly need to know about raising poultry all-naturally, including growing their own food. That’s the before bed book. Food related books (I read a lot of those as food is both my day job and one of my greatest interests) are read over dinner, otherwise they make me hungry. That’s currently The Nourishing Asian Kitchen: Nutrient-Dense Recipes for Health and Healing by Sophia Nguyen Eng, which is wonderful. I have a Kindle for when I’m out and about and on that at the moment is Matrescence by Lucy Jones, as recommended by
.What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?
Roald Dahl always and forever. I read a lot as a kid, partly because I had a very sheltered childhood (first child and a daughter of immigrant parents, go figure) so my imagination was really the only place I was permitted to visit without being chaperoned by an adult. I think I may have read everything Roald Dahl ever wrote, including his short stories. I’m pretty sure I hid Are you there God it’s me Margaret from my parents because it talked about periods.
What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?
I am constantly dipping into, lending and quoting from How To Be Free by Tom Hodgkinson, billed as ‘the essential guide to throwing off the shackles that hold us back from living well and being happy,’ published in 2006.
It’s entertaining, subversive and a manifesto of resistance to the absurdity that is modern life, with chapter titles like ‘Cast off your Watch’, ‘Death to Shopping, or Fleeing the Prison of Consumer Desire’, ‘Say No to Guilt and Free Your Spirit’, ‘Stop Worrying about Your Pension and Get a Life’, ‘Forget Government’.
Back when I used to work in an office in my old life (I talk more about my ‘old’ life in this conversation @Kirsten Powers had with me) and wondered on a daily basis what in the holy f*ck I was doing with my days, a colleague who sat next to me bought me this book.
We would often daydream about living more purposefully and with meaning, ditching it all. I’m pleased to report, 15 years or so later, both of us have long since fled the corporate life ‘running 100 miles an hour’, as she puts it. We’ve also recently reconnected (thanks to my Substack!) which has been really nice.
What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?
The way I dress can sometimes be described as androgynous, depending on my mood. Much of my wardrobe is from the men’s section and If I’m in baggy jeans with no make-up on or earrings in, it’s not unheard of for me to be referred to as ‘sir’ (because I also have short hair, see Short hair: why it took me 30+ years to do it). This has in fact happened twice in one day before, coming back from the airport – it must have been a long travel day. I don’t at all mind the confusion in isolation. To be fair, I do look exactly like my brother from the back.
I enjoy dressing like that. But I do also like to put a nice frock on sometimes too. I never wear heels. And I am a colour junky. Block colours, clashing patterns, stripes, polka dots – the more eye-popping the better. I think I have one black t-shirt and one white t-shirt and I can’t remember the last time I wore either.
Also, I collect earrings from my travels. I’ll buy a pair from wherever I visit. Some of my favourites are from Colombia and Chile. The bigger and bolder, the better.
What’s the best piece of wisdom you’ve encountered recently?
‘The secret of life is “to die before you die”’, a line I recently read in The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (yes I know I read it two decades later than everyone else). One of those instances when you read the line, put the book down and have to repeat it to yourself several times before you move on.
Eckhart is saying that death is a stripping away of all that is not you. Our ego, our possessions, the work we do, our social status, knowledge and education, physical appearance, personal and family histories, belief systems, political, racial, religious identifications – it is only in the moments of death do we realise, none of these things are actually us.
Shame to only come to this realisation right at the end. So if you can “die” before you actually die, then you’ve probably cracked the secret to it all.
Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?
I’ve never had a pet, I was never allowed one as a child. I remember once writing out on a whole side of A4 an eloquent argument as to why our family should get a dog (specifically, a German Shepherd), folding it neatly and placing it in an envelope under my parent’s pillows, convinced my reasoning would sway them by the morning and we’d be heading to the local dog shelter the very next day.
Curiously, it didn’t work.
I love animals and feel like I have some sort of affinity with most I encounter. I am so lucky to have the most amazing garden bird encounters on a daily basis, like my little rotund wren friend who scurries around on the floor and up branches as I sit sipping my coffee. The set of lungs on this guy, just magnificent. And how his little wings upturn through the sheer effort of his vociferous song.
If I see a trapped moth or small beetle flailing in a tiny puddle, I have to stop what I’m doing to rescue it. Who are these people who just go around swatting or stomping on insects?! I know with certainty dogs will be in my future, but it doesn’t feel right whilst I remain in London. Dogs living in small houses with small gardens feels off for me.
A special animal encounter from recent times was during a visit to Cork in Ireland last August.
Whilst I was sat on the cliff edge taking a photo of the stunning coastline, two dogs trotted over, lay their bodies against me (one either side) and both of them nuzzled their head into my lap. Out of nowhere. And they both plonked themselves down and nuzzled simultaneously. They’d wandered over from a campervan a little way away. I hadn’t met these dogs before. Isn’t that amazing? It melted my heart. Dogs are awesome.
Here’s one of those dogs:
And then recently I spent two weeks working on farms in Portugal. I stayed with three farming families and they all had dogs. The final family I stayed with had three and one of them looked a little terrifying on first encounter, a bit like a hyena (some sort of very old and traditional breed native to Spain’s Canary Islands, I forget the breed name).
His name was Guanche and he made the decision there and then, when we first met, to adopt me. Everywhere I went on that farm, Guanche followed. If I stayed in one place and got to work, the dog lay down. As soon as I stood up, the dog stood up. If I walked three steps, the dog walked three steps. When I went to the toilet, the dog waited outside.
Guanche hardly made a sound, he was mostly silent. Completely chilled, not particularly excitable. He was my shadow during my time at that farm, ready to protect me at the drop of a hat from what exactly, I’m not sure. Maybe the wild boar. What a good boy.
What's one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?
My career, my work, how I earn a living. On a daily basis I am amazed and eternally grateful for this life I have been bestowed with. It just blows my mind. That I don’t have a boss, I don’t have to commute, I can wake up without an alarm, I have time to do the things I enjoy, I don’t have to answer to anyone, my autonomy. And I have enough. I have so much enough! My cup overflows with ‘true’ wealth. Life’s daily torrents of abundance just boggles my brain.
Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?
I don’t sing in the shower but every time I am having one – almost without fail – I get the ideas. Always in the shower. I’d love to know the science behind that, does anyone know?
On the note of dance, I actually have a column lined up on this very topic. Because I just think, dance is amazing? But especially, Argentine tango.
I’ve danced Argentine tango in Buenos Aires with a teacher called Leo, a couple of times now. Each time, my husband has filmed us dancing. And each time I watch it back, I can’t help but think – who is this person? Is this me? How am I doing this?!
As Leo says, tango is a language between two people. It is communication without words. You feel, and your body and heart responds. Here’s a little video of a tango we did, improvised. How do I know where to put my body?! I still don’t really understand how it works or how I did it. The head isn't really needed in tango and I love that. Obviously, the video is not perfect and I'm making mistakes, but it still makes me go 🤯 when I watch it. Is this really me?
Dancing tango is addictive like no other dance I've encountered. It casts a spell. It's a kind of magic.
What are your hopes for yourself?
I have been driven by a desire to flee the city and pursue a more self-sufficient life for several years now. It’s something I feel deep within the marrow of my bones.
My dream one day is to be as self-sufficient as I possibly can and spend most of my waking hours making and creating the stuff I need to live. In my utopian future I would keep chickens and bees, make my own soaps, whittle wood, dye fabrics, make cheese (I see three small goats), spin my own yarn (from my own sheep, of course), tap trees, make wine and weave baskets.
It’s a work in progress.
What’s a kindness that changed your life?
My husband. He is the epitome of kindness and my life would be very different and so much poorer if I hadn’t met him 17 years ago.
But my god, he is messy. I married my domesticity nemesis.
What’s a guiding force in your life?
I like to think I’m guided by Nature. I’ve been growing a little fruit and veg in small outside spaces wherever I’ve lived in London for the past 16 years (see Digging Around with Leyla Kazim) and so I am acutely tuned into the weather, insects, flora, the condition of the soil, the wild plants that are thriving.
I also forage plants that are either edible or have medicinal properties from the wild (aka my local park). And much of my hobbies involve some sort of life force, be that fermenting vegetables or making wine or identifying insects. So I would say, Nature is my guiding force in life and also the greatest teacher. She’s been doing her thing forever, we could learn a thing or two.
If you enjoyed Leyla’s questionnaire, you might also enjoy this one with Kelly McMasters:
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