Some people take good vegetables and leave them bad: the blind greengrocer

‘Everyone has been good to me here. No one has done anything wrong, but some people come who pick good vegetables and leave bad ones, which I have to take home. For me this is a problem. Sometimes goods are sold, sometimes not.’

Blind Muhammad Basheer does not trust anyone to earn halal sustenance. They set up roadside vegetable carts at Abbottabad’s Commerce Chowk, where shoppers buy vegetables using scales themselves and the money is handed over to them.

On his stall is a banner, which reads: ‘Help your blind brother. Please help them by taking vegetables. Use the scales yourself.’

Muhammad Basheer’s eyes were not always bright and he used to work as a car mechanic, but then suddenly his eyes started to hurt and his sight gradually disappeared.

According to Muhammad Bashir, he sat unemployed at home for four years and then a friend of his got him a vegetable cart with the permission of the Cantonment Board, which enabled him to earn a living for his family.

According to Bashir: ‘I got a lot of treatment, I went here and there, I went to many hospitals, but I couldn’t get treatment from anywhere. He just sat quietly at home. Then someone gave me this cart. My children’s sustenance is secured, otherwise I would have had no source of income.’

Muhammad Bashir has two sons and two daughters, all of whom are studying. Their three children are Hafiz Quran reciters.

About his daily routine, he said: ‘I am here from eight in the morning to eight at night. My friends bring me vegetables from the market, which I sell by the kilo. Sometimes two hundred, sometimes three hundred rupees are saved, sometimes nothing is saved. Sometimes even the money is not enough.’

In response to the question regarding vegetable weighing, Mohammad Bashir said that ‘most people come and weigh the vegetables themselves. They tell me that Hafiz should take the money, we have taken so much. So many kilos taken. Take so much money.’

He further said that ‘there are many good people, who give more than one hundred and two rupees with the deal. There are a few people who keep supporting me, come month after month and give me two or three thousand rupees.’

Finally Muhammad Bashir appealed to everyone to come and take vegetables from him. ‘If you take (the vegetable), the hearth of my house will burn and you will also get a reward.’