Watch: The Hands of a Mechanic
The Blind Bike Mechanic premiered at the 2022 Bicycle Film Festival in New York City and Amsterdam.
You know a bike mechanic’s hands when you see them: grease-lined nail beds, calloused palms, and quick dexterous movements. While mechanic Reza Alizadeh is blind, his hands look just the same as any other bike repairman.
He repairs bicycles in a small, dusty shop that serves Meidan e Baar, a poor neighborhood in the Iranian city of Mashhad where the streets are filled with adults and kids on bicycles. Alizadeh relies on his hands and ears to help take care of these people. “When I’m working and a customer comes into the shop, I can hear what he is saying, and where he put the bicycle,” he said. “I feel the bicycle to get a sense of its size, and this helps me diagnose the problem.”
His kind, unfocused eyes gaze from point to point into the distance while he runs his hands over the small bike, registering that it's a child’s. He examines each moving part individually, stopping at the flat rear tire. He sits himself on a low stool with the bike in front of him, and he reaches down beside his hip for a wrench—right where he left it—to begin his work.
As a baby, Alizadeh immigrated to Iran with his parents, who walked for three months to escape Soviet attacks on their home in Afghanistan. Thirty eight years later, he now has a wife, two daughters, and three sons. He’s done odd jobs like selling computer parts to provide for them over the years, until one day he picked up the tools to try to fix his son’s bicycle, and could make his place in the world with a wrench in his hands.
“Wherever I go in this world, it doesn’t matter,” said Alizadeh. “I have this art.” He slides his hands around the wheel until he locates the culprit of the flat, a small shard of glass worn into the tire, and gently works it out of the rubber. As he reassembles the wheel with a new tube, his hands move smoothly and methodically, the choreography of it worn into his fingers over years of tune ups and fixes. He bends the bead back onto the rim until it gives a satisfying pop. He checks his work by tapping around the edge of the tire. With a subtle smile, he holds his finished work in both hands—the hands of an artist.
You Might Also Like
