A thumb brushes under his eye, and he feels only texture: the world is a fold of black and odd, viscous patches of color. His mother presses his head into her chest, her breathing rapid, in mourning; what he gathers is a simple, undeniable fact—he is blind at age two. Taha Hussein was born in November 1889 into modest upbringings, under unfortunate circumstances. Through ailment and disability, he would rise to become one of Egypt’s modernist titans. As a novelist and essayist, Hussein would distinguish himself as the “Dean of Arabic Literature,” and the “the greatest single intellectual and cultural influence on the literature of his period” – a claim supported by his 21 Nobel Prize nominations. As the seventh child in a family of 13, his handling was lacking. Accordingly, when the young Hussein fell victim to an eye infection, his superstitious, low-brow mother led to his subsequent blindness. By not affording him the necessary treatment, but rather unorthodox, oil-based remedies, she unintentionally sabotaged the young Hussein. By 1902 he was sent to an al-Azhar seminary in Cairo, where he received a thorough Islamic education. Joining al-Kuttab, Hussein memorized…
