It was 7.30 pm. The celebration for Father’s Day at the church was over, and we were driving home in the setting sun, happy and contented.

The evening was a little shrouded with a hazy veil. First, we drove past the Saguaro cacti. In the dimness of twilight, they resembled the Sentinel of the Sonoran Desert, watching over all of us, knowing both our told and untold stories. Then we drove past many old houses. The lights of many houses on this side of the Hispanic town were off. To me, these houses are always reminiscent of the good old Mexican Cowgirl days…..freely riding on a horse and …hee haw….. till I saw him…

He was sitting at the intersection, panhandling for a penny or a dollar. I couldn’t get a good look at him as our car was one lane from him, but as he got up and hobbled to the drivers for a dollar or a dime, his face of desperation and exhaustion transcended to me. In a twinkling of a split second, his dark-colored outfit and the hazy sky… all began to merge. The free spirit that I had enjoyed just a while ago was weighed down by the gloomy air.

He is only one of the many panhandlers we see on the road every day. They are real people with real needs. Unlike the deepfakes on social media whose voices are loud and clear to lure many into the rabbit hole of vanity chasing, these panhandlers’ voices are not heard.

The truth is that social media is only a utopia. It is not real.

These panhandlers are real.

Shhh…listen, can you hear the rumblings and groanings of the Saguaro cacti echoing in the Sonoran Desert dusk?

Joquim TR