The Colors of Blindness
Short story by: Abdel Latif Moubarak
Egypt
The day was setting into a dark gray, like cold ashes falling over the silence of the house.
Layla sat in the center of her spacious living room, surrounded by bare walls—bare except for a few wooden frames that still gave off the smell of old paint. The room had not always been empty; once, it was a stronghold of colors, of huge canvases breathing life, and of wooden palettes that stained her fingertips with gold and lapis lazuli.
But the colors had drained from her life bit by bit, just as the light had gradually faded at the edges of her eyes.
Ever since she fell deeply in love with Tariq, and ever since she handed over her brush and her choices to him, she saw the world only through his eyes. He always told her, “You see things with too much emotion; my role is to protect you from the overload of colors.” And every time he confiscated a painting or stopped her from completing an exhibition, he convinced her he was doing it so her energy would not scatter.
Layla did not know that blindness does not always come as pitch darkness; it can come as a gradual dimming of the light at the hands of the one you love.
She stood up slowly and touched the cold wall with her palm. She was searching for the edge of the frame that once held her favorite painting, Saffron Sunrise. She found nothing but a rusty nail driven into the wood, reminding her that her sunrise had been sold years ago without her knowledge, and the price had been an “investment for their shared future.”
The sound of footsteps coming from the hallway was familiar, heavy, carrying the signature of quiet control.
Tariq entered and tossed the keys onto the marble table, making them ring with a sharp metallic clink. He did not say “good evening.” To him, evening was merely a time of return, not a space for connection.
— “Why are you sitting in the dark, Layla?” he said coldly as he took off his coat.
— “I was trying to remember the shade of blue we painted the study room with six years ago,” she replied without turning around.
He let out a short, heatless laugh: “Blue was a childish choice. We removed it and replaced it with gray two years ago, don’t you remember? Gray is more dignified and suitable for guests.”
Layla’s breath caught for a moment. It felt as though she had forgotten, or that her memory was beginning to betray her just as her eyesight was. Tariq had always reshaped her past and her present; if she said the grass was green, he would prove to her with evidence that it was yellow, until she began to doubt her own senses.
He sat opposite her, leaning in so close it left her no room to escape: “I spoke with the doctor today. He said your optic nerve atrophy responds to rest. There is no reason to leave the house this week; I will take care of everything.”
She did not know whether it was the atrophy dimming her eyes, or if it was the stasis he imposed on her that was killing her while she was still alive.
In the dead of night, overwhelmed by insomnia, Layla slipped into her old studio.
The closed room smelled of dust and the stickiness of dried paints. She opened the drawer of the marble desk and pulled out a small wooden box she had hidden in the deepest corner. It contained only small tubes of oil paint with corroded caps, but it was the only window where she guarded her soul.
She touched the tubes with trembling fingers. She recognized the colors by their texture and scent:
Linseed oil mixed with the aroma of pine meant Solar Yellow.
The thick, sticky texture expressed Crimson Red.
The cold, smooth feel was the Black that now wrapped around her world.
She placed the blank canvas on the easel in total secrecy and held the brush. She could not see what she was painting, but she felt it. She drew broad, turbulent lines, pouring out all the silence of the years and all the words she had swallowed just to avoid making Tariq angry.
The painting began to take a mysterious shape: a featureless face where red and black intertwined in a silent struggle. That was the beginning of her discovery of new colors—the colors of pain that sighted people cannot see.
The following morning, Tariq surprised her by entering the studio.
He stood staring at the wet canvas. He did not shout and he did not grow angry; instead, he maintained a long silence for several seconds—which, to him, was the harshest form of punishment.
— “What is this, Layla?” he asked in a calm tone that concealed obvious contempt.
— “It’s what I feel…” she answered in a low voice.
He approached the canvas, touched the cold red paint with the tip of his index finger, and then slowly wiped it with a paper napkin: “This is not art. This is a confusion of the senses. You are losing your balance, Layla. The illness isn’t just attacking your eyes; it seems to be affecting your mind as well.”
He snatched the brush from her hand mercilessly, then took the wooden box containing the paints she had hidden for years and stuffed it into his bag.
— “For your mental health, you need complete rest from these exhausting attempts. Tomorrow I will take you to the recovery clinic in the mountains. The air there is pure, and the quiet will bring you back to your senses.”
In that moment, Layla felt that the last color in her world—her hope for independence—had been erased with a simple swipe of his thumb.
The car moved along the winding mountain road.
Layla sat in the passenger seat next to Tariq, closing her eyes to escape the darkness gathering around her. The car smelled of new leather and the icy chill of the air conditioner.
— “Tariq…” she called out, her voice trembling.
— “Yes?”
— “Are the trees still green outside?”
He hesitated for a few seconds before answering: “The trees are withered, and the road is dry and gray. There is nothing worth seeing.”
In that moment, Layla cracked the window open slightly. A stream of cold mountain air rushed into the car, carrying the scent of pine, earth wet with morning dew, and the whistle of the wind through the branches. Her other senses played a loud symphony of vibrant life, while he insisted on convincing her that the world was barren and dead.
Layla realized the true tragedy: her problem was not that she had lost her sight, but that she had handed over her right to see to a man who killed joy and saw every bit of vitality as a threat to his control.
The clinic resembled a luxury prison. White walls, white furniture, and nurses moving slowly and quietly.
Tariq left her there under the pretense of “a short period of rest,” promising to visit her every weekend. In her room with the wide window, Layla sat all day facing the emptiness.
The white surrounding her felt like a new kind of blindness. It was not darkness that frightened her, but that absolute paleness that erased the difference between day and night, between memory and reality.
On the third day, an elderly nurse named Suad came to visit her. Suad hummed old tunes while tidying up the room.
— “Why don’t you go out into the garden, Layla? The roses are in full bloom today,” Suad said as she drew back the curtains.
— “My husband said the air here is dusty and that going outside would harm my eyes.”
Suad stopped humming and looked at Layla sadly: “My dear child, I have worked here for twenty years. Our garden is the most beautiful in the region, and your husband always asks us to keep you near the bed. The eye atrophies from disuse, just like a muscle.”
Suad’s words caused a silent earthquake deep within Layla.
Layla walked with hesitant steps toward the garden for the first time.
She guided herself with a small wooden cane Suad had given her. When her foot stepped onto the wet grass, she felt an electric shock surge through her body. She could not see the colors of the roses, but she felt their warmth.
She touched a wall of jasmine and absorbed its deep fragrance, which brought back memories of her childhood, when she used to run through her grandmother’s house and paint on the walls with crayons. She touched the thorny stem of a rose and pricked her fingertip, but that drop of blood brought no pain—it was proof that she was still capable of feeling and living.
She sat on a wooden bench and began to breathe deeply.
She asked herself: “How many colors of blindness have I lived through?”
The blindness of trust: when she closed her eyes to his manipulation.
The blindness of fear: when she believed she could not live without him.
The blindness of doubt: when she allowed him to convince her that her imagination and feelings were merely madness.
These were the “colors of blindness” that had covered her life—colors far darker than the absence of visual light.
When Tariq came to visit her over the weekend, he found her sitting in the garden under the afternoon sun.
She looked different. She wasn’t wearing her usual gray shawl; she had let her hair flow with the wind, and her hands were smudged with dirt.
He sat beside her and said with restrained firmness: “Didn’t I warn you not to go outside? The strong sun harms your weak cornea. Come, let’s go inside.”
Layla did not move. She raised her head toward him, and though her eyes stared at an indefinite point, her gaze was piercing and direct.
— “The world is not gray, Tariq,” she said in a firm voice he had never heard from her before.
— “What nonsense is this?” he replied, trying to divert the subject.
— “You are the one who chose gray. You see the world in only one color: the color of your possession over things. You took my paintings, you took my health, and you tried to take my memory so I would remain dependent on you with every breath. But today, I see more clearly than ever.”
Tariq’s tone shifted, and he moved closer, trying to take her hand: “You’re exhausted, Layla. The medications are making you imagine things…”
She pulled her hand back with force and conviction: “Don’t touch me. A touch that carries no warmth is just another color of blindness.”
That very evening, Layla made the decision she had put off for years.
She asked the clinic administration to prepare her discharge papers—not to return to their house, but to move to a small home she had inherited from her mother in a coastal village. It was a home she had forgotten existed because Tariq had once convinced her to sell it, yet she discovered the deed was still in her name.
When Tariq came to stop her, he found her by the door holding a small suitcase.
— “You can’t live on your own! You’re blind!” he shouted, losing his usual composure.
Layla stood firm and looked toward the direction of his voice:
— “The true blindness, Tariq, was when I had two healthy eyes and could not see your deception. Today, I cannot see your face, but I see my freedom.”
She left behind the web of control he had woven around her for years and walked with steady steps and a regular heartbeat toward the car waiting for her.
In her new home by the sea, the sound of the waves was the symphony that opened every morning.
Her sight had not returned, but the details of her life were rekindled. She sat in the front courtyard, set a blank canvas on the easel, and painted with her hands without fear.
She mixed colors boldly:
She placed Yellow where she felt warmth.
Blue where she heard the roar of the sea.
Green where she breathed the scent of mint from her small garden.
Visitors coming from the village say that her new paintings, despite their irregular artistic lines, possess the energy of an matchless sunrise. They were a living embodiment of a woman who had walked through the tunnel of the “colors of blindness” to discover that light does not come only from the eyes, but bursts forth from a heart that has reclaimed its courage and declared its independence.
Layla had lost her sight, but—for the first time in her life—she could see everything.
