Kicking The Blind

'You know how many years men have spent here for committing sin of HND? You will wonder why I am sounding so aghast. It is simple pal. An antelope who entered into a trap was shouting, people were saying; why are you crying, you are almost dead inside the trap. It says it was crying not because of itself but because of other animals in the bush that they might not enter the same trap.’ As he was employing this image to describe his situation, I studied him more intensely. He was tall. I was a bit above his navel in height. When he stood, his legs were not straight. It was O-shape. He was light in complexion. I listened carefully to him and I looked at his physique, he actually looked like an antelope himself. The rain drizzled. Droplets hit me through the holes on the roof and windows of the danfo bus I was seating. I was dreamy. Dreamy not because I was being rain-beaten but because of what my mind was seeing through the fractured window. I was inside the tattered yellow painted danfo bus in Iyana Ipaja Garage going to Ogudu. I beheld inside the mizzling rain, a man kicking a blind beggar with annoyance and frustration. The blindman held his bearer stick ponderously and let out occasional pain in response to the intermittent kicking. My memory drew back to the Iranian folk proverb, if you see a blind man, kick him; why should you be kinder than God? If you see a blind man, kick him. Why must you be kinder than God who created him? This was a physical manifestation of this saying. Then my mind worked recessively on different stages of blind kicking. I dwelt on the increasing numbers of blind kickers. The avalanche of helpless and hopeless blind ones kicked. I asked myself: must the blind truly be kicked? Why must we kick the blind? Why must we not kick the blind? Why are there blind people in the first instance? Who are the blind?