Eye Opening

Since classes ended, had the opportunity to visit family friends and do some traveling, which has been really great so far. I spent the past few days in Tel Aviv where I went swimming at the beach (Be’er Sheva needs one of those) and wandered around the open air market and artists’ fair. But the greatest afternoon was spent pretending to be blind.

In Holon, the city immediately south of Tel Aviv, the Children’s Museum is hosting an exhibit called “Diolog B’Chashica,” or Dialog in the Dark. The exhibit has made appearances all over the world, but Israel and another country (I forget which) are the only ones where the exhibit is semi-permanent.

My friend Avital and I showed up and the woman selling tickets offered us a tour in English, which we accepted. We were provided with walking sticks for sensing obstacles in our path, and with that, were told to enter a dark hallway with one hand on the wall, one hand brushing the stick on the ground, walking toward the sound of our guide’s voice. Entering complete and utter darkness is strange. My eyes and brain kept searching for light but to no avail. I think my head was even making up some light to keep me sane, but I really couldn’t see a thing. Normally, groups of fifteen are led through the dark maze of rooms, but for me and Avital, it was a private tour in English. Not a bad deal at all, since the rooms aren’t so big and in all that darkness, people often become dizzy or claustrophobic.

Fortunately, the voice of our guide, Meir, was very comforting and his instructions were clear. We spent the next hour or so wandering through a garden complete with cricketing crickets, trees, grass, and a small waterfall, then a hunter’s apartment (where we felt objects in the room and guessed what they were, including a goat’s skull!), and we even went on a short boat ride, where we felt the letters on the back of the boat and discovered that its name is Hannah. Our destination was an open air market where we felt through some fruits and vegetables, pedaled on a stationary bicycle, and discovered a car. Next was an empty room where we lay on the ground and listened to different music, feeling the base vibrating our bodies through the floor. Finally, we were directed to a small café, where we could buy some snacks at the bar and then sit down at a table. We were told at the start of the exhibit to bring a few coins in with us, and it was entertaining guessing which coins we were pulling out (despite my lesser familiarity with Israeli coins as compared to quarters, nickels, and dimes, it wasn’t as challenging as I expected it to be).

As we ate our snacks, we had the chance to ask Meir any questions we’d been pondering as we wandered through a world of darkness. We learned that he’d been blind from birth, having been born prematurely when medical technology wasn’t exactly what it is today. He did one of his degrees in the States, which is why his English was so good. It turns out that Braille is international and is used for many different alphabets (the guttural letter “chet” in Hebrew is written using three “English” Braille letters, t-h-e). Finally, as the tour came to an end, he asked us if we wanted to see him, or if we wanted him to remain a mystery. I hesitated for a second, pondering the idea of leaving the smooth, comforting voice in the dark forever, just as he would remember ours. We decided to see him, and we emerged from blindness, light sneaking around the corridor.

I don’t know how I was expecting Meir to look. I guess from the confidence he exuded guiding us through darkness, I thought he would be a commanding presence, wide shoulders, arms crossed, dark glasses, something like that. But he was a regular guy, gesturing with his hands, quick smiles flitting across his face every few seconds as we expressed our appreciation and bade him farewell. He hadn’t been using a walking stick at all. He said he views his blindness as a technical disability, one of many the human species experiences, and that he thinks ignorance and stupidity are more debilitating than blindness anyway.

It was a little scary and stifling, having no visual sense of space. The walking stick definitely helped, though I kicked Avital while getting off the bicycle and jabbed her with the stick a few times as well.

If anyone makes it to the Tel Aviv area, definitely stop by this exhibit, it’ll change the way you see blindness.