On Brotherhood and Blindness

TLC (Teaching and Learning College)

On Brotherhood and Blindness

March 19, 2025 at 12:16AM

In this short personal essay, Salar Abdoh recounts the summer of 1972—during the Munich Summer Olympics—when he was sent to England for an eye operation. At the hospital, he meets an Arab boy, whom he refers to in this piece as Khalid. (He does not remember his name; at the time, their friendship did not require names.) The two boys bond despite not speaking the same language, instead connecting through “touch and laughter and exquisite youthful mayhem.” The friendship is short-lived, though. Post-surgery, as Abdoh heals, he ends up pushing Khalid away.

This piece was published in collaboration with Stranger’s Guide, as part of their joint Complicating Colonialism series.

Khalid became my brother. It took all of an afternoon for that to happen. To this day I don’t know what his sickness was and why he was there. We were often in trouble, doing the things none of those British boys would dream of doing. The apparent unfairness of the corridor, as opposed to a ‘real’ room, was the ticket that allowed us to roam the hospital at will. We haunted its stairways, smiled and laughed when the nurses scolded us, with words we did not understand, for not staying in our beds. Our language was the language of brotherhood. I spoke no Arabic and he obviously spoke no Persian, and English was not yet ours to share. We spoke with gestures. With hand signs and the hungry eyes of boys who grow in each other’s estimation with every new mischief they accomplish together. Sometimes we would stick our heads in the room of those British kids and each of us, I’m certain, knew what the other was thinking: “Thank God we are not the prisoners of that room!”

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from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/03/18/on-brotherhood-and-blindness/
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