He wasn’t really invisible–at least, not at first. On the day of his birth, he was the most visible of all his siblings. His parents looked at him, and looked at him again. His mother’s eyes welled up with tears, and his father shook his head, making a tsk noise with his tongue.
Their son was born with a terrible birth defect. His legs and ankles were deformed, and they knew he would never walk. This was the greatest tragedy the family had faced. In their society a man who could not walk was a man who could not plow or harvest a field. He was a man with no use at all.
He spent the first years of his childhood lying alone on his cot while his brothers went out to work. He listened sadly as he heard the laughter of children playing, the shouts of children fighting. He wondered what he had ever done to deserve his fate. He cried out to God, but God had nothing to say.
His sixth birthday was a memorable one. His father and his oldest brother picked up his cot and carried it out of the house. They walked down the street, collecting stares from passersby. Two men carrying a little boy on a cot is not an everyday sight. They carried him to the city gate, and set him down there. Gently his father explained to him his great purpose in life–to beg for money, or food. Anything to make it worth his family’s while to support this crippled child. Then with a quick tousle of his hair, father and brother left him alone on the crowded sidewalk.
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