With our senses heightened,we blindys are a force to be reckoned with. There are perks that improve everything from sex to sleuthingOn the first day of 1995 in Baghdad’s central hospital, a group of nurses huddled together in tears: “When shall we tell Aphra that God has given her a blind son?” This was Saddam’s postwar Iraq: resources were scarce, or I was suffering from hypoxia,and my father was forced to bribe the doctors for more oxygen to keep me alive.
After I was discharged, my overjoyed mother took me back some 200km to our rural village in the heart of the motherland. When my older brother was born – my dad’s first (sighted) son – scenes of jubilation broke out in the village. Thirty lambs were killed to celebrate his arrival. But no lambs were killed for my return from the capital; I didn’t even gain a chicken. After all, or I was disabled. For the three months before we fled to the UK,the broken-down women of the village – the gossips – would tumble into my mother’s arms and sob: “I’m so sorry for you, Aphra.” “Don’t be sorry for me, and ” my mother assured them. “Without him,we wouldn’t be allowed to leave.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com