HETAUDA, Nepal (AP) – Raj Kaliya Dhanuk sits on a wooden bench, barefoot, with a tattered sari covering thin arms as rough as bark. Thick clear tears bleed from her eyes, milky saucers that stare at nothing. For nearly a year, cataracts have clouded out all sight from the 70-year-old grandmother’s world.

With no money, she assumed she’d die alone in darkness. But now she waits quietly outside the operating room for her turn to meet Nepal’s God of Sight. “I am desperate. If only I could see my family again,” she whispers in her native tongue.

“I feel so bad when I hear the baby cry because I can’t help him.” Dhanuk and more than 500 others – most of whom have never seen a doctor before – have traveled for days by bicycle, motorbike, bus and even on their relatives’ backs to reach Dr. Sanduk Ruit’s mobile eye camp.

Each hopes for the miracle promised in radio ads by the Nepalese master surgeon: He is able to poke, slice and pull the grape-like jelly masses out of an eye, then refill it with a tiny artificial lens, in about five minutes. Free of charge.