i shall follow you as a blindman

Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges, one of the finest writers of the 20th century, started his professional life as a fowl and rabbit observer at the Buenos Aires market. After working as a librarian at the municipal library, and with no little talent, he was appointed editor of the culture section of 'Critica', where he published a series of stories later collected into his first book 'Historia universal de la infamia'. 

Blinded due to a hereditary disease, Borges started to make a living as a literature professor at the University of Buenos Aires. On his way to work, he would wait for one of the students to help him cross the busy street. One day a student whispered in his ear, 'I am helping you out of respect, but I detest you for your unequivocal resistance to Peron' - who by the way was elected three times, although, or because, he smuggled Nazis out of Germany to his country. Crossing the street, Borges replied, 'I can understand you. Don't forget that I am also blind.'

Borges knew how to use his blindness as a creative tool, often claiming that his retreat into his inner world enriched his imagination much better than did the sighted world. But it has not helped 85-year-old Rina - an artificially-respirated blind woman, hospitalized in a geriatric center in Natanya – torn apart from her live-in helper with the characteristic viciousness of a fanatic government afraid that some 'goyishe' blood may flow in its clotted arteries. 

For four years Dorga served 'Mama' with a loyalty only a foreign worker knows. Feeding, washing and changing the diapers forced on Rina at a mature age, brushing her teeth in the sink as if they were the jewels of her wedding left back in Nepal. Since then Rina desperately mutters in her waking hours and during her sleepless nights, 'Dorga…Dorga…Dorga' - like a jilted lover yearning for the liberating encounter. 

Although the issue of the foreign workers touches all aspects of our lives - from the high price of veggies to that of building - I have so far refrained from writing about it due to its social sensitive. Experience has taught me that a professional magazine must remain within the boundaries of consensus, even - and especially - when it isn't afraid of critical writing. But lately I've been thinking that this ethnic topic expresses the greatest gap between the Israeli society that is willing to lay itself on the line to prevent the deportation of children, and the dense government that forces us to accept, with the silence of the lambs, coalition commitments with disastrous impact on our lives - especially the welfare milieu, where the amount of Israelis willing to work there is approaching zero. 

As Rina was hospitalized beside my mother in the artificially-respirated ward, I was state-witness to her sad case.  However, the case of Borges, who didn't give in to the fascist regime even in his blindness, teaches me that if we remain silent and let the government do as it will, we too shall go blind, but then there will be no foreign worker around to help us cross the street. 

PS see article ahead