My Blind Man

As though he’d heard me thinking the boy looked about and saw me, stared at me wickedly, and kept walking.

He comes out to beg by the roadside every day. I have seen his house, the one the boy leads him from every morning. It is painted dust, like all the others that line the road. My neighbour’s six year old is right: the man who travels in the sky and shares the dust really takes bribes. Why, even? Why buy water to bathe, when there is a sky-load of dust waiting outside the door just for you!
I am not sure he bathes, my blind man. He never looks like it. However, many people do not bathe too often here so it cannot be the reason I almost never see anything in his yellow bowl.

He was not at his spot today. Business was always bad but it’s getting out of hand these days. Maybe he has taken the cue and gone somewhere else, somewhere with richer passersby, even if it would be a bit farther from his house. I’m not sure I missed him, but I remembered his eyes, closed, and gentle, without a single strain. I never saw eyes that relaxed. You begin to wonder if they ever twitched even when the smoke and dust from passing cars dove into his nose. At the junction, I saw a figure on a sturdy rock, yellow bowl and all. It was he. His shirt looked newly shredded and he was bathed, fresh, for business. And there was something in his bowl, I could see it from across the road.

Just then a boy walked up and took the thing in the bowl.

“I-meela. God bless you” Alma-man smiled, and the corners of his eyes wrinkled and strained with his smile.
“You are welcome,” the boy muttered in a gruff voice and pocketed the money. His trousers were sagging and he was smoking a cigarette.
My blind man shook his bowl, expecting to hear the louder sound of notes scratching the side of the bowl, but he heard nothing. His smile disappeared and his eyebrows lifted. He shook it again, and again heard nothing. For the first time his eyelids lifted and I saw his eyes go wide, they were white like eyes rolled back but you could see the pupils. He turned his head in the direction of the boy’s fading footsteps and a tear dropped from his eyes. I wanted to run across the road and accost the boy, but just then, as though he’d heard me thinking the boy looked about and saw me, stared at me wickedly, and kept walking.

My blind man cast about like he was going to call for help, but he closed his eyes and hung his head.

I looked away and hurried on.