"I am not blind" by Mohamed Omer

In a corner of the world, far away from both you and me, a small village woke up to a strange truth: their eyes were gone.

The news spread quickly past the dry mountains that had long concealed their hunger and thirst. Every news outlet reported on it. 

Breaking news: A VILLAGE OF PEOPLE WITH NO EYES

News like this is bound to cause polarization between believer and doubter. Comments ranged from “How bizarre, how tragic” to “How exaggerated is this?” And the conversation mutated from “How can we help?” to “How can we believe?”

Despite that, soon the charities came.

They arrived with crates of supplies and teams of volunteers. They distributed canes and recorded instructions. They posed beside villagers for photographs meant to inspire donations elsewhere. Their footsteps unaware that these streets had been trampled by other boots, those who didn't come to “help”.

The villagers accepted what they were given, some grateful, others reluctant. The help brushed lightly over their lives, gentle as a hand that never quite touched the skin. No one asked why the wells had dried decades ago, or why the village's fields lay fallow despite the fertile rivers that flowed elsewhere. No one asked about the darkness that preceded blindness.

In the end, the residents of that village died of hunger and drought, not blindness.

To this day, the curious case of the Caucasus village has yet to be deciphered. Was it a curse, a disease or simply something never meant to be understood?

Nevertheless, the last trace of these people was a single sentence written the day before the ‘blinding,” it said:

“You took our sight for not seeing the world the way you do.”