Myopic man and his star map
There used to be a Uzbeki man suffering from extreme myopia. He still sees the light and the profile of things but lacks the accuracy needed for functioning daily life. But he is very obsessed with stars in the night sky. He can dimly see the starlight pouring down on a bright night.
So he asks his friends to guide him into the field every weekend and let them describe the stars to him. With the light, he can see through a palpable sky and get closer to his understanding of the picture of the universe.
Luckily he has got good friends who, though blast annoyance to his face, nevertheless tirelessly tell the position, distance, lookalike, of all the stars meticulously to him. These good friends figuratively painted the sky blue to him.
This is how one of the friends, Kalid Usmanov, describes the stars and the sky on a summer night. He told the man: onlook, up from horizon on the direct west, about 10-degree from the intersection of our minaret and the horizon, there is a small white star. Further from it, if you go further west but 25-degree tilting north, you will see another equally small star. From here, two k-stars surround the small star, one to the east by 30-degree and six centimeters apart if you put your index finger-tip on the small star and rest your palm on your nose.
This is how another friend, Tursun Iliajan Barlikuv, describes the stars and the night sky on an autumn day. He told the man: the moon is twenty centimeters from the minaret tip to the north direction by an angle of 25–30 degrees. In the direct north of the moon lies a bright star that is Venus by 15 centimeters. Their combined brightness has cleared the sky free of other smaller stars, but very tiny ones can be seen to the west by 15 degrees and 5 centimeters…
Many friends have spent many tireless nights recounting the position and distance of stars to the man with more descriptions and days and nights bygone. Gradually, a star map has formed in the mind of the myopic man. Unlike normal-sighted people, the myopic man does not have a colorful visual of the sky that is dotted by numerous shining objects. Shinning as they are, the stars for normal-sighted people are very chaotic in layout, and their positions are rather meaningless. For others, the stars and the night sky are just beautiful and alluring. Enough to elicit fantasy and thoughts of romance. That’s it for normal people, they only see visual prettiness in the night sky. But for this myopic man, he has vividly memorized a detailed, meticulous, carefully laid out map with great technical accuracy about the trajectories, orbits, and time-specific positions of all common stars and planets. Whenever he thinks of stars, he forms a picture with numbers and lines and dots before himself.
Having this capacity, many considered him supernatural. More conservative people in the village who don’t like him start to spread rumors that he’s a reincarnated shaman. One day, the man sees from his memorized map five straight lines rising from the west wall of the sky. These five lines connect Uranus with Venus, Venus with the Moon, the Moon with Jupiter, and Jupiter to Saturn’s 3rd Moon. These five lines formed a pentagon star, the brightest ever seen to common eyes. This is the symbol of Sheytan. Sheytan now has risen, the man was taken to hell and became a general guarding the gate to the hell.
