Blind Man's Beauty, The Story of a Boy Born Blind & The Little Girl Who Grew Him Up

By J. A. Hailey

CHILD. GIRL. WOMAN!
A STORY YOU'LL NEVER FORGET.
When a blind boy is born to wealthy rural parents, a girl from a poor branch of the family is brought to live in their house, as his caretaker and playmate.
At the time she takes the blind baby on, the girl is herself a child, only four years old!
All who see and know her over the years, growing the boy up while herself growing up, marvel at the good fortune that has brought her into his life.
But money is a magnet, and the unscrupulous will do anything to usurp her position.
This is the tale of Gul Mohammed and Fatima - BASED ON A TRUE STORY!

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. A. Hailey
• Release date: Nov 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005388737

Book preview

BLIND MAN’S BEAUTY

The Story of a Boy Born Blind

& The Little Girl Who Grew Him Up

(Based on a True Story)

J. A. Hailey

COPYRIGHT AND MORAL RIGHTS BELONG EXCLUSIVELY TO THE AUTHOR.

©2022 Indiependent Publishing

This is a fictionalized version of a true story known to the author. The characters and events described herein are imaginary, and are not intended to refer to specific places or to real persons, alive or dead. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

1

In a village in Pakistan, sometime in the mid-20th century, a throng of landless farmers, crowded with their families on the dusty road in front of a large iron-gated property, erupted in cheers and praises of God, when the armed men within the compound began firing their shotguns into the air.

The new father was soon roaring out a stream of orders for the feast to be prepared, dutifully invoking God’s name, for these things are only done right when done in the name of God. The news was twice as good, as Dost Mohammed’s wife had, after years of barrenness and miscarriage, finally delivered a healthy living baby, and by the grace of God Almighty, the child was also a boy!

But one man’s feast is another animal’s death, and the mullah, striding purposefully, long knife in hand, was just a hundred paces away, hurrying to slit the throats of a dozen fat sheep lined up against the house wall. The sheep shuffled quietly, heads bowed, as if aware of the impending fate, and submitted silently to the blade, to fall where they stood, legs jerking in their death throes as the blood from the first combined with the blood of those after, and so on down the line, to form a red puddle in a shallow depression.

And now the landless farmers stepped forward to claim a carcass apiece, for the butcher’s work that would entitle them to some meat and the sheepskin as payment. They would still be guests at the feasts over the coming days, for which more sheep had been earmarked to die, again undertaking the work of butcher, and perhaps even receiving some monetary compensation for the labour, and for the blessings they would shout out whenever the new father came into sight.

The baby boy, soon to be announced as having been named Gul Mohammed, had been born into a wealthy family that had historically been privileged landowners in the area. Its current head was Dost Mohammed, the new-born’s father, a generous and truly respected landlord.

He was rich in the way that a villager would be affluent, ranking nowhere near the levels of wealth of industrialists and tycoons. And though he would have had regular annual monetary income from agriculture, it was the value of the thousands of acres of land he owned that counted as his fortune.

Dost Mohammed was not the overall chief of the clan, but since they had been around for centuries as overlords in their areas, they had family connections through intermarriages in every corner of the district, and as such were untouchable in the territory.

Bestowing a period of general celebration, for all the people who lived in that village, was incumbent on the new father, practically mandatory, and for the next three days, none of the less fortunate would have to spend anything on food and drink, as the road in front of the family house was converted into a huge dining area, with sheets laid in long lines on the ground, on which volunteers would shortly commence serving the hungry, from food cooking constantly in huge cauldrons, stood over fire pits dug into the ground.

But then the mood became dark, and the creeping shadow settling over the celebrations, turned into darkness on the second day of feasting, as the rumour making the rounds was confirmed to be fact when the doctor from the nearby town visited and checked.

The baby, Gul Mohammed, had been born completely blind!

2

The celebrations were instantly ended, and the cooking fires put out, but the people stayed on for an all-night vigil, in many sessions of special prayers led by the sheep-killing mullah, seeking God’s intercession in the matter.

But no resolution to the tragedy was expected immediately, even with divine intervention, and the following day the congregation, numbers swollen with the entire population of the village in attendance, dispersed after the dawn prayer.

The remaining provisions reserved for the feast were distributed to the landless and the needy, and the village emptied out until only its regular inhabitants remained.

But this was a time before telephone communications had become commonplace, and people from remote parts kept arriving, unaware that the celebrations had been brought to a premature end, and that the festive atmosphere had been replaced by general gloom.

The late arrivals were fed, given sleeping arrangements for the night, if the return journey would be exceptionally long and tough to undertake immediately, and then seen off by a deputed villager, when they departed, after being rested and fed again.

Many had turned back partway on the journey, as information of the misfortune had reached waystations on the road, but others, coming across country, and not by road, kept arriving uninformed.

One such group came over the fields, riding on carts pulled by donkeys led by the minders, and was made up of a father and mother accompanied by two children, an infant boy in the mother’s arms, and a bright-eyed little girl of around three sitting next to her.

The woman was a distant cousin of Gul Mohammed’s mother, from a poverty-stricken branch of the family, living in a village about three days’ walk away over the fields.

While they had not actually grown up together, and the gulf in financial circumstances would have anyway ensured a fair degree of segregation, the cousin and the blind child’s mother had sometimes played together as children, and so they clung to each other and wailed as one at the terrible calamity.

Oh, Nurjehan, why? Why has God punished me so? howled the mother. Why, even after denying me a child for so many years?

I will stay for a few days, Husna, to help you out as you learn to look after a baby, although God knows that I have no experience of caring for such a helpless one as yours. I’ll send Ayub away, after he has eaten and rested for a couple of hours, but I’ll keep Fatima, this little one, here, and we can stay for a few days to help out. You decide when you no longer need me, and I will leave at that time.

Please stay, Nurjehan. I need all the help I can get, as I am not only a new mother but also the mother of a truly very badly handicapped baby. But how will your little girl be able to help, so small?

She is three, and she already helps me with the baby in my arms. But right now, because your baby is so new to the world, and altogether without any strength in his neck, all she will do is babysit. If your boy was at a slightly advanced stage, and had control of his neck, I would be able to entrust her with sitting cross-legged and having the baby in her lap, to rock or bounce for comfort, like she can with her little brother. Stops the crying.

Nurjehan and her two little children stayed for almost a week, and though nothing had really improved on any front when they did return to their village, a few new daily routines had been established, with which Husna could manage the blind baby’s care slightly more simply.

The return was a journey the longer way around by road, in a mix of vehicles for different stages, all paid by Husna.

The father, Dost Mohammed, had kept an eye on what was going on around his newborn boy, and had noticed the girl child’s fascination with the blind baby, as she watched him closely while he suckled contentedly at his mother’s breast, and continually offered her services towards his care. The mother had finally tried her out, to find that she was capable of patiently sitting and rocking him in his wicker cradle, caressing him when he was crying, and holding a bottle to his mouth when told to, roughly the same portfolio of interactions she was allowed with her baby brother.

In rural society, the primary purpose of marriage is to bring children into the world, and in all cases of childlessness the blame is apportioned to the woman, the stigma being that of infertility, a serious failing, often going straight into the bracket of divine punishment.

The concept that the man might be incapable of causing pregnancy, simply does not arise, and can never be even hinted at, leave alone spoken aloud.

Child blindness would also count as a failing on the mother’s part, of something wrong in body or soul, because a child born blind could quite possibly be manifestation of punishment from God, and because the man has to, as always, be considered blameless in every respect, it would leave the mother as the only blameworthy person in the business.

Such a calamity could lead to another great calamity, from a set of potential human retribution available to the husband, the lesser of which is beatings and other humiliation, potentially resulting in divorce, and the greater of which can even be severe physical punishment that might culminate in murder.

On that count, Husna was lucky on two fronts, both contributing to her immunity from the chastisements available to her husband and his family. First, she was related to her husband, and was therefore of the clan, and second, she came from an important branch of