In 2019, I wrote this short story based on true events...and now I’d like to share it with you.

“ …I spotted him months ago. One morning when all was still so quiet and innocent...the creak of rattling from the street disturbed this morning idyll. I looked out of the window what could this nose be? And there was HIM, the Old man. He was pulling a suitcase on wheels behind him. It was old and junk, it was only half-rolled...so that was the noise. The old man limped along, pulling the suitcase with the bags hanging on it. I thought he was going shopping because in those days, curfews were still in force and people went shopping once a week with big bags or suitcases. I felt sorry for him, he walked very slowly because of the limp and later I noticed that his head was shaking. He was always nodding.

The next week he came again and he kept coming again and again every week and then the spring have past and then the summer but he just kept coming, as later it turned not for shopping but to collecting from the trash. Lately I often saw him sitting on the steps of the opposite house, for resting. Yesterday was the same.

In the mornings, when I'm in the kitchen, I can just see him down the street from my small balcony. There he was sitting the same place again, but this time he had a big suitcase with him, although it was just as shabby as the last one but very empty.

She had been wearing winter boots since spring but they were never laced up and I could see his swollen ankles and feet and I could understand how painful to lace them up would be. Yesterday he had 'new shoes' on his feet to go with the 'new' suitcase. It was s sports shoe but he wore it like a slipper because of the swelling. He leaned back on the stairs and pulled a piece of cigarette butt out of the top pocket of his shirt and lit it, but it was only two puffs, but seemed that was just enough.

Then two women in masks passed by him. They probably didn't even notice the old man, because one of them put a dirty handkerchief on the box on the wall (just next to him where he was sitting on the stairs) and they just kept going without even glancing at him. The old man followed them with his eyes. Then a little boy and his father passed the old man, both of them wearing masks. The father was on the phone, and the boy was just walking with him but neither of them looked at the old man. I was making breakfast watching all this and was wondering if I should bring the old man a cup of tea. I called H. into the kitchen and told him my intention and asked his opinion if wether the old man would mind. H. said he that was sure he wouldn't.

“Alright then” - I thought - next week I'll get some paper cups and bring him tea in the morning. Later I watched him getting up from the stairs with great difficulty, nodding and limping, rattling his suitcase as he shuffled off.

Today I remembered that last week I saw him sitting on a bridge in the blazing sunshine, a little dazed, with his “faithful companion” the Suitcase. I looked up as if I was seeing an old acquaintance and was delighted at the unexpected encounter. He knew nothing about me and that I knew of him, of his existence and I recognised him. I don't know wether he is a good person or not, why he is in this situation but I am touched by his fate, although he is 'invisible' to many, I can ‘see’ him… and today I it turned out that others can ‘see’ him too.

Because H. told me that he heard yesterday someone offering him soup from the street and he accepted it. I was so happy because sometimes I feel hopeless, in an inhuman huge city where everyone becomes invisible, where everything melts into one big insensitive selfish mass, but sometimes there are moments like these. These moments that are about the other person, about compassion, about giving without interest and they make this is how they turn the invisible to visible.