Chapter 1
I always thought I was above everyone else.
Not because anyone had ever told me so.
No one had ever spoken to me.
I had simply drawn that conclusion from where I was placed.
I was an eye.
Set in a face I did not know, I sat in a place from which I could see the world.
I saw the hands.
I saw the feet.
I saw the stomach.
And sometimes, the tip of the nose.
That was all.
For me, that was the world.
Hands that touched things.
Feet that walked.
A stomach that rose and fell.
And that little piece of the nose that was always at the edge of my vision.
I never knew what was behind me.
I never knew what was beside me.
I never knew what was happening on either side of my face.
And most importantly, I never knew that I was not alone.
Because I had never seen another eye.
So it seemed natural to think that I was the only one who existed.
I was the first thing to see the world each morning.
When sunlight entered through the window, I saw it.
When night came and the lights went out, I was the last thing watching the darkness.
When the human cried, I saw the tears.
When the human smiled, the world seemed brighter to me.
When the human was afraid, I was the first to sense that the world had changed.
Little by little, a thought began to grow inside me.
At first, it was small.
Then it grew.
Then it became so large that there was no room left for doubt.
I thought I was the most important part of the body.
Perhaps the only important part.
---
Years passed.
I saw many things.
Mornings when the sun slowly moved across the wall.
Nights when the ceiling disappeared into darkness.
Rain.
Snow.
Streets.
Trees.
People.
Children running.
Old men walking slowly.
Women carrying shopping bags.
Men returning home tired.
I saw everything.
And every time I saw something new, my pride grew.
I would think:
“If I did not exist, what meaning would any of this have?”
Hands could touch things, but they could not see what they were touching.
Feet could walk, but they did not know where they were going.
The stomach could feel hunger, but it could not see its food.
But I could see.
I introduced the world to the body.
So surely I was the most important of all.
One day, a hand came in front of my face.
For a few moments, it covered part of my world.
I became angry.
Inside my mind, I complained:
“You again? Move away.”
But the hand did not move.
It was busy fastening the buttons of the clothes.
Then it rose and moved the hair aside.
Then it washed the face.
Then it rested gently against the cheek.
I saw all of this, but I never gave the hand credit for any of it.
To me, the hand was merely a servant.
The feet seemed even less important.
Whenever they walked, I looked down at them from above.
I thought:
“They only need to carry me from one place to another.”
When the ground was wet, the feet slipped.
When there was a stone in their path, they stumbled over it.
Sometimes they grew tired.
But I never grew tired.
That was why I thought I was better than all the rest.
I did not take the stomach seriously either.
Every few hours, a sound came from inside it.
I laughed at the sound.
“Hungry again?”
But the stomach never answered.
No one answered.
And I mistook their silence for proof that I was right.
In my mind, everything had its place.
I was above.
The hands were below.
The stomach was lower still.
And the feet were below everything.
How certain I was.
How wrong I was.
---
One day, for the first time, I thought about the tip of the nose.
I saw it every day.
A small piece at the bottom of my field of vision.
Sometimes sunlight fell across it.
Sometimes a drop of rain rested on it.
Sometimes, in cold weather, warm breath passed beside it.
But I could never see the whole thing.
I thought:
“Perhaps it is just another part of the body that belongs below me.”
Then I laughed.
Because I thought I knew almost everything.
I did not know that only a few centimeters away from me was a part of a face I had never seen.
I did not know what a mouth was.
Or lips.
Or cheeks.
Or eyebrows.
Or ears.
I did not even know that there was a face.
Because I had never seen myself.
---
Sometimes, at night, I thought about the future.
I would tell myself:
“One day, everyone will understand that I am the most important.”
I imagined that the hands would finally respect me.
The feet would understand that without me, they meant nothing.
The stomach would understand that I was above it.
But none of them knew any of this.
They did not even know what I was thinking.
And I did not know what they were thinking.
Each of us lived inside a world of our own.
And I had mistaken their silence for agreement.
---
One day, the human stood by the window.
Outside, a group of people had gathered.
Hands were raised.
Feet moved together.
Mouths opened and closed.
Voices came through the glass.
I could not understand every word, but I could see the emotions on their faces.
Worry.
Hope.
Anger.
Fear.
And something I still did not have a name for.
The human remained by the window for a long time.
Then turned away.
The hands put on clothes.
The feet put on shoes.
And the body went outside.
This time, when we entered the street, the crowd seemed larger than ever.
People stood together.
Voices came from every direction.
I watched their faces.
For the first time, I felt that perhaps the world was larger than my field of vision.
But I still did not understand that this thought was about me.
---
That night, the human came home.
A light was turned on.
Then the human walked toward a room where we rarely stayed.
Something was hanging on the wall.
A mirror.
I had seen mirrors before.
But I had always seen them from an angle that showed only part of them.
This time, the human stood directly in front of it.
And so did I.
For the first time...
I saw myself.
At first, the image was blurry.
Then it became clear.
There was a face in front of me.
Cheeks.
A nose.
Lips.
Eyebrows.
Hair.
And then I saw something that shattered everything I had believed for all those years.
Another eye.
Right beside me.
I froze.
It was looking at me.
I looked back.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Inside my mind, I asked:
“Who are you?”
It did not answer.
Because, like me, it could not speak with words.
But it did not need to.
The image itself was the answer.
It was an eye.
Like me.
Just as close.
Just as far.
It had lived beside me all those years.
And I had never even known it existed.
Suddenly, I thought about my position.
All those years, I had believed I was above everyone else.
But now, in the mirror, I saw that even within the smallest territory I called my own, I was not alone.
I was only one of two eyes.
No more.
No less.
---
I looked at the nose.
For the first time, I saw all of it.
The same thing whose tip I had seen for years.
Then I looked at the mouth.
The lips.
The cheeks.
The ears.
The eyebrows.
All of them had been beside me for years.
I simply had not seen them.
That night, a question formed in my mind for the first time:
“If I do not see something, does that mean it does not exist?”
I had no answer.
I looked at the hand.
This time, I did not look down on it.
I realized that the same hand that sometimes blocked my vision had been protecting me all those years.
The same hand had washed the face.
The same hand had wiped away tears.
The same hand had carried food to the mouth.
The same hand had shielded me from harsh light.
I had only noticed the parts of reality that suited my pride.
I had ignored everything else.
And stranger still, I had judged the very things I had never truly seen.
---
That night, I could not sleep.
For the first time, instead of watching the world, I thought about myself.
I had never really seen the world.
I had only seen a part of it.
And from that tiny part, I had made judgments about the whole universe.
When morning came, my way of seeing had changed.
The hands were no longer beneath me.
The feet were no longer unimportant.
The stomach was no longer merely the part that became hungry.
And the other eye...
It was no longer my rival.
It was part of me.
We were two windows.
Two ways of seeing.
Not two kings.
---
Days passed.
Every time we stood before the mirror, I discovered something new.
I understood that a face was not merely a collection of separate parts.
Everything depended on everything else.
An eye could not remain open forever without its eyelid.
A mouth could not eat without the hands.
Feet could not walk without the body.
Hands sometimes did not know what to touch without the eyes.
And I...
Without all of them, I was only an eye.
An eye that had imagined it was the whole world.
---
A few weeks later, we went out into the street again.
There was a large crowd.
People stood together.
The voices were loud.
I looked at their faces.
In every face, I saw eyes.
Two eyes.
Like me.
But none of them were exactly alike.
One looked tired.
One was filled with tears.
One was calm.
One was worried.
One was hopeful.
For the first time, I understood that seeing was not simply looking.
Everyone sees the world from where they stand.
Everyone experiences part of the truth through their own window.
And perhaps my greatest mistake had been thinking that because I could see, I therefore knew the truth.
The crowd began to move.
The voices grew louder.
The human was among them.
I watched the faces.
Suddenly, everything became confused.
People moved.
The human lowered their head.
I could see only light, shadows, and movement.
Then came pain.
Sudden.
Intense.
The images trembled.
The lights stretched.
The faces disappeared.
And then...
Darkness.
---
At first, I thought it would last only a few moments.
I tried to see again.
But the image did not return.
There was light.
But no shape.
There were shadows.
But no faces.
Everything was blurred.
Then the darkness grew deeper.
For the first time in my entire life, I could not see the world.
I was afraid.
Not of the darkness.
But of losing the one thing around which I had built my entire identity.
I heard footsteps.
I heard voices.
I heard breathing.
Hands touched my face.
And for the first time, I understood how much I needed them.
The same hand I had once called a servant was now resting gently against my face.
Not to take anything from me.
But to comfort me.
---
Days passed.
I could no longer see the mirror.
I could no longer see the window.
The street.
The trees.
The people.
But I began to hear things I had never listened to before.
The sound of rain.
A door opening.
Footsteps.
Breathing.
Laughter.
Crying.
Hands moving something across a table.
The beating of a heart.
All my life, I had imagined that I was the one showing the world to the body.
Now I understood that the body could show the world to me as well.
Just not through sight.
Through sound.
Through touch.
Through scent.
Through memory.
Through love.
---
One night, we stood before the same mirror again.
Of course, I could no longer see anything.
But I knew the mirror was in front of us.
The other eye could still see.
It said nothing.
But I could feel its presence.
For years, I had believed that if one of us was more important, it had to be me.
Now the thought seemed almost laughable.
The other eye could see.
I could not.
But it was not complete on its own.
It too depended on the same face, the same hands, the same feet, and the same heart.
We had never been two kings.
We were two parts of one life.
Two views from one face.
---
Some time later, the human sat before the mirror again.
I could not see the reflection.
But I built it in my mind.
A face that was now familiar to me.
Two eyes.
One nose.
One mouth.
Two ears.
Hair falling across the forehead.
And a hand resting beside the face.
I thought about how strange it was.
I had lived inside that same face for years and had never even known that there was a face.
I had lived inside a world I did not understand.
And I had been proud of not understanding it.
---
If you ask me today what my greatest mistake was, I would answer:
Thinking that because I could see, I therefore knew everything.
I was only an eye.
A small eye in a human face.
But one day, I imagined I was the entire world.
I thought that whatever I could not see did not exist.
That whatever was below me was less valuable.
And that whatever was unlike me mattered less.
Until the mirror showed me:
No one sees the whole world from a single angle.
Not even me.
---
Years later, I still sometimes think about that night.
The night I saw myself for the first time.
It is strange.
The first time I truly understood myself was so close to the end of my sight.
Perhaps if I had seen the mirror sooner, my life would have been different.
Perhaps I would have understood sooner that the hands were not my enemies.
That being lower did not make the feet worthless.
That the stomach was not only there to feel hunger.
And that the other eye was not my rival.
Perhaps I would have understood sooner that no part is complete on its own.
But perhaps...
Everyone must one day stand before their own mirror.
Sometimes the mirror is not made of glass.
Sometimes it is an event.
Sometimes a failure.
Sometimes the loss of something we thought we would always have.
And sometimes, darkness.
A darkness that forces us to see the things we spent years refusing to see.
---
Now I can no longer see.
But if I were given another chance, perhaps I would not look for great things.
Not the sky.
Not the streets.
Not tall buildings.
Not crowds.
Just once, I would want to see that face.
The same face I had lived inside for all those years.
I would want to see my other eye.
I would want to see my hand.
My feet.
My nose.
My lips.
All of them.
Not from above.
Not from below.
Just as they are.
Beside one another.
In one face.
In one body.
In one life.
And if I could see that image again, I would no longer say:
“I am above everyone else.”
I would say:
“I was only one part of this world.”
And then, perhaps for the first time, I would close my eyes.
Not from fear.
Not from defeat.
But to understand that even when I cannot see, I am still not alone.
And in the quiet darkness I had feared for so long, I would tell myself:
“I am not alone.”
