I’ve been asked on more than one occasion how I go to the bathroom as a blind person, and while I’ve given a variety of answers over the years, I usually respond like this: In the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, everyone goes to the bathroom blind.

We didn’t have running water in the rural interior of Boulemane Province, where I was born and raised, which meant that we didn’t have flush toilets. We didn’t have electricity, which meant that we wouldn’t have been able to see our toilets after sunset even if we’d had them. We did have flashlights, but the women rarely used them for fear of drawing unwanted attention. Plenty of men had nothing better to do after dark than to skulk around outdoors, waiting for women with full bladders and empty hearts to come along and swoon into their arms.