Thursday, November 16, 2006

A vision for the Sightless


He stares at me with profound enthusiasm as I speak to him of my friend’s engagement. His round pupils become dilated at once and, following the direction of my voice, gaze deeper into my soul as I narrate to him the special occasion of a friend’s engagement ceremony he had missed. He nods his head up and down to reassure me of his responsiveness and understanding of what is being discussed. He pictures, all in his head with great detail, every word that I announce to him.

Alla! hadaad arki lahayd siduu Maxamad u lebisnaa waad yaabi lahayd, I say, shedding light on the colourful event, not thinking about my words, using them metaphorically to enlighten him. Just after completing that sentence it struck me, God! How could I be so vain to talk to a blind man of what wondrous thing I see or the brilliance of colours and clothes when all he stares into is darkness and nothing but blackness constitutes his daily life?
How could I have been so heedless of my words when for him only blackness stretches far and wide and reigns supreme in his life? How could I talk to him of things for which he cannot catch their glance? To this day, I kick myself for that, and regard highly of my Friend, whose world is categorized by the amalgamation of different voices. All praise due to Allah for his Blessings!
He ne'er had seen one earthly sight;
The sun, the day; the stars, the night;
Or tree, or butterfly, or flower,
Or fish in stream, or bird in bower,
Or woman, man, or child.

W. Wordsworth

p.s I pass my greetings to all the Somali Bloggers around the Globe, and Thank you fair ladies of SomaliBlogs for the addition. ;)

10 comments:

Firefly said...

Welcome Shafi!

Anonymous said...

Hey Shafi,

What exactly did you do to those girls for them to add you? I know they're very anti-men ;)

NATIVE said...

Karibu Shafi!

Flower.of.Chaos said...

Hey Shafi,

Welcome aboard!

p.s. Ignore the envious one above me. :)

Anonymous said...

Yea Native Female, as FOC said, stop being envious girl. :D

SleepDepraved said...

Wlc shafi. Behave angel ;)

Anonymous said...

Salaam,

Thank you all sisters!

Angel Eyes, Come on, They are a lovely bunch, not anti-men!

Native, am i right in saying Karibu back? or is it Karibu sana?

NATIVE said...

Shafi: Asante(which translates as thank you)would be fine as reply.

Lool...I had to look back twice and figure out what was envious about welcome in swahili...lool

Angel eyes: u r cheeky! :D

wasmaniac said...

How do u know that he stares into darkness or blackness? For all i know, if i close my eyes when there is light, then am staring into redness...probably my eyelids, right?...but the blind havent closed their eyes...but i have a feeling that they dont stare into darkness or blackness...

*By the way, wlc sxb. They finally decided to give these place a masculine touch...

TheAdvocates said...

Eebow, Shafi, a belated WELCOME horta.

About the blind state of the man, I've heard of a story where a blind man who has developed his own interpretation of the physical world and its images and colours has been treated to see again! The result was confusion for the man. He could tell head from tail. What he imagined turnout to be exactly the opposite and everything became nightmarish! The opticians had to put the man back to his blind state just to restore some sanity to him.

So, contrary to the poet's stanza, the blind may imagined seeing in an abstract manner- not really what we know as seeing but to them such seeing makes a sense of life.

Oh, I don't know! Demoralizing to image not being able to see colours