11/09/2025
This one is nice...
Damascus, 1889.
A French photographer named Tancrède Dumas wandered through the winding streets of the old city — a place where the call to prayer echoed beside church bells and the scent of cardamom filled the air.
Then he saw something that made him stop.
A blind man carrying his friend — a man who could not walk.
No drama. No urgency. Just two souls moving as one.
He raised his camera and captured a moment that would outlive them both.
According to stories passed down through generations, the man who could see was Samir, a Christian storyteller unable to walk. The man who carried him was Muhammad, a Muslim sweet-seller who could not see.
Each morning, they ventured into the city together. Samir guided Muhammad’s steps — “Three stones ahead… a turn to the left.”
And Muhammad gave Samir legs to stand on — his strength, his motion, his freedom.
At the café, Samir would tell tales from A Thousand and One Nights, his words painting worlds that Muhammad could not see but could imagine. When asked how he never tired of the same stories, Muhammad smiled and said,
“I don’t just hear the stories. I hear him. And that never gets old.”
They were opposites by every measure — Muslim and Christian, blind and seeing, walking and carried.
But when someone once asked how they could live so differently yet so peacefully, Muhammad placed a hand over his heart and answered,
“Here, we were the same.”
No one knows what became of them. History kept the photograph but lost their names.
Yet that single image still whispers across time — a reminder that dependence is not weakness and that our humanity is stronger than our divisions.
Two friends. One could see. One could walk.
Together, they showed the world how to be whole.
~Ifestory
