A Day in the Dark: A Small Experiment to Understand the Blessing of Vision
Our hero Islambek Ismailov is blind. Even so, he lives gratefully. Despite not being like ordinary people, he is able to do a lot. Kun.uz correspondent spent a day with Islambek aka, living like him, in order to experience the lives of blind people and their inner experiences.
**A Day in Darkness: A Small Experiment to Understand the Blessing of Sight**
Seeing the sunrise, catching a smile on your loved one's face, watching your child's first steps, noticing an obstacle on the road, reading a book, looking at your phone screen, even pouring a cup of tea without spilling it - most of these are so ordinary for us that we often fail to appreciate them. We perceive sight not as a blessing, but as an integral part of our lives. That is why its presence is not noticeable.
But imagine for a moment: you woke up in the morning. As usual, you reached for your phone. You wanted to know the time. You looked at the screen. But there were no numbers. You rubbed your eyes. You looked again. But the surroundings were not illuminated. The morning light was coming through the window, people had started their daily lives, everyone had gone to work, to study, but you could not see any of this. For you, this morning began in darkness.
How would you feel in this situation?
43 million people in the world continue their lives in exactly the same conditions. For them, the text on the phone screen, street signs, bus numbers, or the expression on the face of a loved one does not look the same as ours. But this does not mean that their lives have stopped. They learn, adapt, work, start a family, raise children, take up a profession and find their place in society in their own unique ways.
And in order to get at least one step closer to this life, a Kun.uz correspondent decided to conduct an unusual experiment for himself - he blindfolded himself and lived with a blind person for a day. This experiment was not conducted to understand the entire life of a blind person in one day, but to feel their life, to convey to the audience their daily life, the difficulties they face, their strengths and a sense of gratitude for the blessing that we often do not notice - the ability to see.
Islambek Ismoilov helped us in our experiment today. Our hero - Islam aka Ismoilov was born in 1983 on the Ghiyos Umarov collective farm in the Keles area of the Tashkent district of the Tashkent region. Islambek aka could see the surroundings, albeit a little, until the age of 6. But later he completely loses his sight.
This situation is natural for any person. But Islambek aka did not give up before this test. He did not lose himself. On the contrary, he continued to study, research and find his way in life. From the age of 6, he studied for 10 years at a specialized boarding school for blind children, School No. 77 "Nurli Maskan".