The art of a blind man

The day I met another Ray Charles

A young man in his early 30s had been dragging a metal cane in the form of collapsable tubes that fit together. The boy was blind like Ray Charles and carried a mysterious and unusual smile, save the resemblance to Genius Ray Charles (may his soul rest in peace). Ray Do Brazil (the way I called him) on that day had just resurrected the lost smile of Ray Charles, the Genius. For all intents and purposes, that smile was a beautiful smile; how was it not? A smile that pointed nowhere with his head held high to a sky he couldn't see! A sky that I couldn't even imagine, because the sky of Ray De Santos couldn't have any image but a nuance of absence of light. Comfortably accommodated, or almost, Ray Dos Cometas was strumming a cell phone as if it were a tambourine or a box of matches, playing a samba popular tune.

In the dark and on his way to nowhere, Ray swung his feet frantically in the silence of the blind. He wore plastic clogs that reminded me of Swedish wooden and leather clogs with a phoney embellishment. Ray's clog had no embellishment at all or any adornment, but it was a rounded plastic clog. Ray didn't have bare feet, but he kept the essence of a samba dancer with the swagger of the shoeless. I keep descending with my peers after the subway and taking a bus back home, riding a comet in full descent and thinking about the energy Ray brought to everyone when he looked nowhere and up smiling nervously.

Ray smiled and moaned in a very special language, the language of the heavens and the angels who protect him. Perhaps this song of praise to angels already deaf will cover us with affection and music, the music of silence, the blind, the deaf and the excluded.

Sami Douek
October 26, 2021
Edited September 29, 2026 - For Zahraa Ghaaderi

(photo taken on July 25, 2019)