Life & Style | People
The world in his eyes
Amar Latif is an infection. His passion for life, travel and adventure has a way of capturing your heart, mind and imagination in a way that makes you want to see the world from his eyes. Only he is visually challenged. Stephen Snowball meets the eye-catcher.
- By Stephen Snowball, Dubai-based freelance writer
- Published: 00:19 May 23, 2008
- I have been blind since the age of 20, but has it stopped me from crossing the globe from East to West, North to South, year in year out? Never! says Amar Latif
- Image Credit: Irfan Naqi/ANM
It's not every day that we are fortunate enough to have our lives changed for the better forever. Seldom do our eyes and lives find someone who at first assures you that life is full of hidden treasures, and then teaches you how to look for them.
Recently I had the pleasure of meeting one of these treasures, and his life is a sparkling one. A soul set on fire for life, crackling outward to ensure he takes a piece of each part of every possible experience, pleading that those in the audience would recast their vision and do the same.
Here is an award-winning entrepreneur, a musician and TV personality: a young adventurer who has accumulated more titles and achievements than most people do in
a lifetime, who is totally blind!
Yet his blind eyes house bonfires. The darling windows to the soul beam invitations and stir ambitious adventure all around him. His barely contained excitement churns from deep within his organic, clearly fertile aura – a supercharged constellation of sparks. Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Amar Latif, a musician who composes thoughts, words, and actions into a melody of celebration.
At the beginning of this month he arrived in Dubai to participate in the Arabian Travel Market, one of the biggest events on the travel industry calendar.
Amar spoke on behalf of his company, Traveleyes, a commercial travel service that caters to the visually impaired.
Few things sound more self-contradictory than "blind sight-seeing"... but Amar spends his time shaking up a lot of preconceived notions. He used his time at the exhibition to illustrate just how versatile the world is, shattering many of the preconceptions that perpetuate inequality.
His description of life and experience reveals internal eyes with sharper vision than most of the more capable ones in the audience, many of whom his words moved to tears by the end of his talk.
And as the lengthy quotations reveal, he is indeed gifted at creating images and sharing vision. In the drab context of a few partitions in a bustling convention centre hall, he wove quilted tapestries describing the depth and density of the Nicaraguan jungle.
He led us through semantic palaces defining journeys over active volcanoes and the spine-tingling descent of a skydive! He led the audience on a more exciting ride than all the coloured balloons and glitzy pyrotechnics of the rivalling booths.
His infectious excitement and vision were an inspiration to all in attendance. He began, "Recall with me the most magical sunset you've ever seen.
Would you be able to tell me about it? Could you describe it, just using words? What was the most spectacular waterfall, canyon, or iceberg that you ever saw? Can you describe that to me?"
He paused to allow the emotion of such memories to re-flood, and the profundity of the experience to re-sharpen its initial impact. "That's what our sighted travellers do for their blind fellow travellers."
Traveleyes pairs visually challenged vacationers with fellow travellers who can see ("sighted" travellers).
"I've walked across jungles, I've climbed a 1,500-metre altitude cable, I've been skydiving! I know what all of those things feel like, sound like.
I know how they smell, and taste and I wouldn't have missed the whole experience for the world!"
The blind adventurer, all bound up in a suit behind a podium, clearly relishes his time in the furthest, most remote and challenging environments. He added, "I have been blind since the age of 20 but has it stopped me from crossing the globe from East to West, North to South, year in, year out? Never!"
A dichotomy of disabilities
Amar built his address around a few key concerns. He of course referenced some challenges that stemmed directly from being blind, such as the peril of trekking across mountain ridges with thousand-foot cliffs on either side, or simply asking the audience whether or not there actually was an audience in front of him!
But where a physical impairment has rendered already difficult activities all the more challenging, he was equally concerned with the sometimes bigger challenge the blind community faces: getting to explore options that are often rendered impossible by stereotypes, misunderstanding, or in some cases, a sheer absence of awareness.
So his discussion of disability was twofold. On the one hand, people are blind. That makes things hard. On the other hand, all the elements of inability are imposed by social obstacles.
The beauty in Amar's work is that he seeks neither sympathy for the blind, nor blames the society of the sighted. The pain he feels for the situation is always quickly supplanted by his unflinching faith in the raw abilities all parties involved contain.
"The hunger for faraway places and the thirst for new cultures is a lifelong condition," he says, drawing on the source of his unwavering passion. "We don't ever grow out of it. And when my time will finally come to an end, to end this amazing thing we call life, I hope to meet my end in a departure lounge, clutching an outbound ticket to eternity."
Amar's flair for the dramatic runs throughout his work. He's even been known to scale down buildings in Batman costumes! "I've got a pair of eyes that don't work, but I've got a passport full of colourful rubber stamps, a suitcase full of travel bugs, a lifetime contract with jetlag, hundreds of customers, and I've got sand in my shoes – and it feels pretty good!"
Now as far as Amar understands it, he is but the first ripple of an emerging niche market set to make waves in the travel and tourism (and ‘adventourism', if that's a word) industry. "There are a million of us out there! And we're coming your way, maybe with our eyes closed, but with our minds, hearts and wallets wide open!"
Well, to be precise, the number is closer to 160 million. A global community itching for international interaction, for action and independence.
And Amar is intent to make room for them.
Ever anxious to dispel negative stereotypes, he reminds those listening, "We aren't just a pile of disabilities, we're people, and we want sensory experiences. We don't want everyone to start dishing out sympathy. We're easy. We only want a good time.
"No one's going to be asked to build whole new facilities, we've got more sense then that," he says, adamant to communicate that Traveleyes is not a charity or business of bullies looking for a social reinvention of the wheel.
He continued to explain that, "Blind people just want a bit of the action! We want to know: can we touch it? Does it smell good? Can you show us how it's made? We love it when you explain! We didn't come here to complain!
And, we've got money!" It seemed as though the business angle of the presentation, the angle many at ATM are rightly concerned with, would return to Amar's comments as a sort of afterthought. "Do you want some?" he toyed with any travel agents in the audience, "then show us some funky parts of the world, and keep it crunchy!"
BBC 11: Blind, Brave, and maybe a little Crazy!
A few years ago, Amar set out on a 566-km expedition across the steamy, snake-and-crocodile infested jungles of Nicaragua! He was part of an 11-person team of variously disabled individuals who were involved in the making of a four-part TV series called Beyond Boundaries for BBC.
"I've still got the sore feet," he jokes, "and the bite marks of at least 1,000 mosquitoes, but it left me with a determination to move mountains."
The series was a huge success and was picked up by the Discovery Channel, and has been shown around the world ever since. And so has Amar! "I learnt so much from that expedition.
Not only about jungle survival, but about what a blind guy can achieve! This adventure, other trips, and Traveleyes, all stemmed from the fact that I am blind but I want to see the world!"
After somehow successfully completing the expedition (amazing!), a new sense of necessity overtook his passion for blind travel. Yet at the time there were no real options for him to give outlet to these dreams.
He realised that if there's something that doesn't exist, you've got two choices: "either you do without it or you have to build it yourself. And so I decided to build Traveleyes."
Mission Independence: coming to an attraction near you!
A most intriguing revelation lay hidden among all the colourful descriptions of distant travel and foreign adventure. He says, "I am in the business of providing options, especially to those who traditionally have had few." The option that most blind people seek, Amar says, is independence.
Well Amar has set about this very goal. And day by day generates more enthusiasm which translates feed into a cycle of opportunity and action. As Traveleyes grows, the vision gets clearer and the options grow wider.
"So when the sun slowly sets, sending glorious colours over the majestic Arabian desert, when the sparkling gold waters lap up on the sandy shores with nature's intricate soundtrack, and date palms sway gently in the breeze, and the legendary culture and hospitality of the Arabs begin to unfold," Amar's love for the world and travel overflow with each syllable exploding, "here in this land, the meeting point of mighty Africa and fascinating Asia, here or indeed in any part of this stunning world of ours, you'll find me, my blind and my sighted travellers: there with a mission! As there's a huge world out there," the orator continued, his audience transfixed at the edge of their seats, "and we suspect that it's an absolutely magnificent one!
Blind eyes are raising up and focusing an optimistic gaze on the tantalising horizon!"
"Blind travellers are keen to join the feast. The world atlas is our menu, and it has bred an insatiable appetite. We've had the starter course with holidays nearer to home, but we're now choosing the main course, and believe me, we're not just travel hungry, we're ravenous!"
"So, you want to talk travel?" he asked the crowd, "Talk to Traveleyes. We like to think we cover the world pretty well.
And because every mountain already has a textured finish, every pineapple has a skin that is already naturally in an exotic Braille, and because every ocean wave that crashes onto golden shore comes complete with 3D surround sound, crystal clear... well, our Braille fingers are flipping through credit cards and itching for airline tickets!"
"So, watch out!" he says with an ironic grin he flashed through the many sight-reference-ridden expressions he enjoyed playing with, "not only are there blind travellers coming your way, and in some good, growing numbers, but there's this wild, bald Scotsman running out in front of the gang, and he's already here! And he'd love to talk to you!"
"Why don't we all just put on the positive glasses, and look together to the future," his relentless optimism found a last pocket to burst out just as he drew to a close.
"Now," a final remark in a playful tone, replete with meaning yet certainly geared to all the travel market company heads at the exhibition, "I don't mind being blind, but I'd hate to be shortsighted."
– Stephen Snowball is a Dubai-based freelance writer
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