The Blind Man and Zaccheus...but if it was today

I was in the crowd that afternoon, pressed shoulder to shoulder on the steps of East Terminal. The whole city seemed to have emptied out to see him, though nobody would admit it later. We don’t do pilgrimages in Fairview, not officially, but that’s what it looked like—streams of people heading toward the station as if pulled by a magnet.

They said his name on the news, on the corner screens, on the lips of teenagers who normally couldn’t be bothered with anything that wasn’t streaming or trending. He wasn’t a politician or a celebrity. He didn’t have a book tour or a billboard. People called him different things: an activist, a prophet, a healer, a fraud. But everyone knew him. And when word spread that he was coming through Fairview on his way to the capital, no one wanted to miss it.

It felt like a concert without music.

Vendors had dragged carts of bottled water and skewers onto the sidewalks. Reporters shoved their mics into the air for soundbites. Even the cops had abandoned their usual scowls and were leaning against barricades, waiting like the rest of us.

I was wedged in a knot of strangers near the lower steps. A man in a suit, smelling of cologne and sweat. A woman with a stroller, bouncing her baby against her chest. Teenagers filming on their phones. Everyone buzzing, restless.

And then—over the noise—a different voice cut in.

“What’s happening?”

It came from the sidewalk. A man sitting cross-legged, his white cane laid across his knees like a warning sign. His beard was patchy, his jacket streaked with grime. He turned his face toward the crowd, eyes cloudy, unfocused. “What’s going on?” he asked again.

Nobody answered. Or rather, nobody wanted to. We all saw him every day in some form or another: at the subway exits, near the dumpsters behind food courts, at the underpass by the river. Men who’d been shaved down by the city until only their hunger showed. Most of us walked past them without even feeling cruel. Just a reflex.

Finally, the guy in the suit muttered, “It’s him. The one everyone’s here to see.”

The blind man nodded, then raised his voice: “Where is he?”

A ripple of irritation went through the crowd. People shifted, tightened their circles. The woman with the stroller whispered, “Don’t start, please.”

But he didn’t stop. He kept calling out, his voice louder each time, as though he knew the man we were waiting for could somehow hear him over the chaos.

We hissed at him, the way people do when they don’t want to make a scene but also don’t want to ignore it. “Quiet down.” “Have some respect.” “Not now.”

But the blind man only raised his voice higher.

Then something strange happened. The crowd in front of us—closer to the station doors—began to split. Not in panic, more like a tide shifting. Heads turned. Cameras shot upward.

And there he was.

He didn’t look like much. That’s the first thing I noticed. No polished suit, no entourage. Just a man in a plain shirt, walking as if he had all the time in the world. People surged around him, but he wasn’t hurried. He didn’t push anyone aside. He walked the way you do when you know people will make space.

I expected him to ignore the shouting, the way important people always do. But he stopped. Turned his head. “Bring him here,” he said.

The same people who’d been shushing the blind man a moment earlier were suddenly helping him up, guiding him forward, almost eager to be part of it. I don’t know why I joined them, but I did—took his elbow, steadying him against the crowd. His hand trembled in mine.

We brought him right up to the man.

And then he asked something so blunt it made me flinch. “What do you want me to do for you?”

Everyone thought the same thing: isn’t it obvious? But the blind man didn’t hesitate. “I want to see again.”

There was a pause. A long one.

Then the man nodded. “All right.”

The blind man blinked, hard. His eyes darted, focused, widened. He gasped. And then he started laughing—loud, shaky, uncontrolled laughter, like a child who’s just seen fireworks for the first time.

The crowd erupted. People clapped, shouted, threw their hands in the air. Phones rose like lighters at a concert. Strangers hugged.

I should’ve been happy too. And I was—partly. But another part of me felt unsettled. Because if this man could really do what we’d just seen, then the city wasn’t what we thought it was. And if the blind man could suddenly see, what came next for him? He had no job, no training, no safety net. Sight wasn’t going to magically feed him.

And if I’m honest, I also wondered: why him? Out of everyone in this city, why him?

The man who healed him didn’t answer those questions. He just smiled and moved on, and the crowd swelled to follow him out of the terminal. The blind man stumbled along behind, clutching his cane like a relic.

And I went with them, though I didn’t know why.

The next day the man moved deeper into Fairview. Nobody knew his schedule, but word traveled fast. By mid-morning, crowds were already gathering along Central Avenue, flowing like a river toward the financial district.

I didn’t mean to go again. I had work, deadlines, bills. But something tugged me back, the way unfinished arguments stay in your chest. Yesterday had felt impossible—like watching reality bend in broad daylight. And I wanted to see what would happen next.

The streets downtown were different. Glass towers reflected the late sun, polished cars slipped in and out of parking garages. This was the part of the city most of us walked past but never into.

The crowd lined the sidewalks, expectant.

We thought we knew what was coming. After all, this was the man who had stopped for the blind beggar. Surely here, in the gleaming heart of the city, he would stop again for someone overlooked—one of the cleaners who scrubbed the lobbies at night, or the food delivery cyclists weaving through traffic. Someone we could cheer for without hesitation.

Instead, the interruption came from higher up.

I noticed him first because people started pointing. On the third floor of a glass office tower, behind tinted panels, a figure was pressed against the window. Short man, expensive suit, staring down at us like a child spying on a parade. At first I thought he was mocking us.

But then I recognized him.

Arthur Kane.

Even if you didn’t know his face, you knew his name. Consultant, lobbyist, fixer—whatever word you used, it came down to the same thing: he made money off our backs. He was the guy who found loopholes in tax codes, the one who convinced city hall to raise fees for basic services while his clients got exemptions. People said he skimmed more than he filed, and it didn’t matter because he was the one who understood the rules. He always walked away richer.

Everyone hated him.

Which is probably why he was up there behind glass, watching instead of joining the crowd. Men like him didn’t dare stand shoulder to shoulder with us. Too risky.

The man—our man—was coming down the avenue now, the crowd parting for him. Phones rose, people shouted his name. And then, just as he passed the tower, he stopped. Tilted his head upward. Pointed.

“Arthur,” he said.

It was so clear that even three stories up, Arthur froze.

The crowd roared with laughter and insults. “Leech!” someone shouted. “Thief!” another added. Middle fingers jabbed the air. People started chanting his name like a curse.

We were ready for a show. We thought the man would shame him, drag his sins into daylight, tell him to pay back what he’d stolen. We would have cheered until our throats broke.

Instead, the man said: “I’m coming to your place tonight.”

For a second we thought we’d misheard. A stunned silence rolled through us. Then outrage.

“What?” “He can’t—” “No, not him!”

It was unthinkable. Guests didn’t choose their hosts, and certainly not like this. Especially not him. Arthur Kane was the reason families were drowning in debt while the city skyline gleamed. He was the one you crossed the street to avoid.

And yet the man stood there calmly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Arthur scrambled, panicked but also oddly thrilled. He disappeared from the window, then reemerged at street level, breathless. He didn’t look powerful anymore. He looked exposed. And still the man waited, smiling, as though none of this surprised him.

The insults flew harder now, aimed not just at Arthur but at the man himself. People felt betrayed. Yesterday he had lifted up the lowest among us. Today he was walking straight into the home of our enemy.

I wanted to leave. I wanted to believe the man had cracked under the pressure, revealed himself as a fraud. But I couldn’t move. None of us could.

Arthur led him through the glass doors into his tower. And that was that.

Hours later, word leaked out. Someone had a friend who worked catering in the building. Others swore they had seen the lights on from the street. Either way, the news spread faster than fire: there was a banquet happening in Arthur Kane’s penthouse.

And the man was there, reclining at his table.

We fumed. We raged in the bars and on sidewalks, refreshing feeds for updates. He was supposed to be the people’s advocate, not a guest in the lair of the oppressor. Didn’t he know what this looked like?

Then came the rumors. That Arthur stood up at his own table and promised to give away half of everything he owned. That he swore to pay back four times whatever he had cheated. Most of us laughed when we heard it. Empty words. Billionaires made pledges all the time. Nothing ever changed.

But the man—our man—had accepted it. More than accepted it. He had declared, “Today salvation has come to this house.”

We couldn’t tell if it was brilliant or reckless, justice or betrayal. All we knew was that the man had shifted the city’s rage from Arthur onto himself.

And we didn’t know what to do with that.

The city didn’t go back to normal after that.

For days you could feel it in the air, like static before a storm. In the markets, in the bus lines, in the long queues at the unemployment office—people whispered about him. Not in the same hopeful way they had before. The tone had changed.

“Did you hear?” someone would say. “He healed a blind man.” “Yeah, but then he went and dined with Kane.” “I don’t trust anyone who eats with that bastard.”

The beggar—Malik, I learned later—was still out there, but not where he used to be. He walked the streets now, no cane, no hand outstretched for coins. Some said he followed the man wherever he went. I saw him once on the corner of Fifth, eyes sharp, scanning everything like he was trying to make up for lost time. He looked alive, but also lost, as though the city had returned him to life without giving him a place in it.

People noticed, but not for long. Miracles don’t feed families.

Arthur Kane was noticed too, though for different reasons. He made statements. Held a press conference. Pledged donations to charities he’d once ignored. Promised reforms in his firm. Most of us scoffed. Men like him didn’t change. And yet, the way he spoke—halting, almost desperate—it didn’t sound like the Arthur Kane we knew. It sounded like a man who had been turned inside out and wasn’t sure how to live in his own skin.

The city was split.

Some said the man had betrayed us, that he’d been a fraud all along. “First he gives a gift to a beggar who can’t even hold a job, then he blesses the thief who robbed us blind. What kind of justice is that?”

Others said maybe that was justice—lifting the lowly, shaking the mighty until they cracked open.

I didn’t know what to think. I’d seen both moments with my own eyes. I’d heard the beggar laugh, raw and uncontrollable, like the sound of someone reborn. I’d also felt the hot sting of betrayal when the man called Kane by name and chose to enter his tower. Both were true, and neither fit neatly together.

One night, a week after it all, I found myself back at East Terminal, standing on the same steps where it began. The station was quieter now, just the usual thrum of commuters. But I couldn’t shake the memory of the crowd splitting, the blind man being led forward, the question that had seemed so cruel: What do you want me to do for you?

It struck me then that it hadn’t been cruel at all. It had been the most serious question anyone had ever asked him. To want sight was to want a new life, and new lives cost something.

And maybe that was the same question he’d asked Kane, only without words. What do you want? Do you want to keep your wealth, your safety, your glass tower—or do you want to live differently? Kane’s answer had sounded exaggerated, ridiculous even. But maybe it was the only way he could show he was serious.

Still, the anger lingered. Not just mine, but the city’s. We had wanted him to condemn Kane, to drag him through the streets, to give us justice we could cheer for. Instead he had taken Kane into his arms and absorbed our fury himself.

I realized then why it stung so much: because if he could love Kane, then none of us were safe from that kind of love either. Not me, not the man in the suit, not the woman with the stroller. It wasn’t the clean story we wanted, with villains punished and heroes rewarded. It was messier. Riskier.

And maybe that’s why the city couldn’t decide what to do with him.

In the weeks that followed, the movement grew. More crowds, more whispers, more arguments. Some said he was the hope Fairview had been waiting for. Others swore he was dangerous, a threat to order, a man playing with fire.

As for me, I kept thinking about those two faces: Malik blinking into the light for the first time, and Arthur Kane flushed with shame in his own tower. Both of them undone, both of them remade.

And us, the crowd, caught in between—unsure whether to clap or curse, unable to walk away.

Because once you’ve seen a blind man open his eyes, and a rich man crack his heart, the city doesn’t look the same anymore.

And neither do you.