Yesterday, I spent three hours in the humble pursuit of reaching workplace and driving home again. I have slowly become aware that I spend more time in a car in an average week than on any other single activity except sleeping. More than eating, certainly, and it’s rare I have three hours per day in which to write, learn or read.
So I decided to turn my eyes fully to the life of the streets, and this is what I saw.
8am. The first intersection of the day. As usual our minibus was besieged by the halt and the lame, the blind and the limbless, their cries and imprecations just audible within our sealed bubble, above the orchestra of car horns and the sugary pop music playing on Radio Today. But wait a moment. There was a man I had never seen before, being led by a young girl in grimy rags. As he approached I looked at his face. It was unlike any living face I had ever seen. This man had no eyes. No, not the milky, opaque stare of the merely sightless: I am telling you he had no eyes.
In the sockets there was a leathery curve of emptiness, and at the back of the emptiness two livid holes of crimson. They were the colour of human insides: this was not a colour you should ever see on the surface of a human body. I was looking into a man. There were no acid burns on his face: my driver quietly offered the suggestion that perhaps his eyes had been gouged out. We wound down the window and tremblingly offered him a shiny coin. He blessed us, wandered on to the next car. His face was turned upwards, towards the sun.
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