#figureheads
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…
