Read an Excerpt
Blindness & Autobiography
Al-Ayyam of Taha Husayn
By Fedwa Malti-Douglas PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1988 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06733-9
CHAPTER 1
BLINDNESS I: RECOGNITION
The reader of al-Ayyam, especially one acquainted even superficially with the life of Taha Husayn, cannot help being aware that the author, and thus the central character, was blind. It is no surprise, therefore, that this physical handicap and conflicts surrounding it play an important role in the text. But when we speak about blindness, we should distinguish between different levels of the handicap. First, there is blindness as a physical defect, the absence of sight. We can thus speak about the personal viewpoint of the blind person regarding his handicap. How does a blind person conceive of himself as a man without sight? We have a second level, the social one, that deals with the view of society towards blindness. What are a given society's conceptions of blindness, and how does it articulate them — apropos of the social role of the blind, for example? We can therefore speak about blindness as personal reality — "personal blindness" — and as a social category — "social blindness." Society's own conceptions can exist outside the handicap itself, or outside the blind person's conceptions of his handicap. As a rule, however, social conceptions affect personal ones and vice versa, creating a dialectical relationship between the two.
One example will illustrate some of these points. The most common occupation for a blind individual throughout Islamic history was that of Qur'an reciter. Yet, although there is a clear relationship between the physical reality of blindness and the social role of Qur'an reciter (reciting a memorized text can be done without vision), the social role is not a necessary deduction from the physical reality. It is independent of it. Despite this, the existence of this occupation as a possible social choice affects the personal conception of the blind individual, since he can either envision himself in the role of Qur'an reciter or reject it. But one way or another he must define himself, and his nature as a blind man, in relation to this social role.
The basic concern of this study is the literary text, not a theoretical assessment of the problems of blindness. Thus it is the literary manifestation of the two levels of blindness in the text of al-Ayyam itself that will occupy our attention. The phenomenon of blindness will be analyzed through individual passages in which the narrator discusses the handicap. Our analysis is not directed to the reality of the life of Taha Husayn, blind Egyptian intellectual, or to the elucidation of his biography, but rather to the workings of the literary text. Therefore, when I speak of Taha Husayn, I am speaking of the historical individual, the author of al-Ayyam. But when I speak of "the youth" or Taha, I am speaking of the central character of al-Ayyam.
For an autobiography, al-Ayyam possesses a distinctive characteristic: it is narrated in the third person. I shall discuss the implications of this below. The third-person narrator usually refers to the hero as "the youth" (al-fata or as-sabi) or "our friend," or, less often, "our young man" (sahibuna, sabiyyuna). The three parts of Taha Husayn's text represent a chronological development in the life of its central character. In general, the first volume deals with his upbringing in the countryside, the second with his experiences in the Azhar, the third with his university studies in Egypt and abroad. There is a clear progression from the childhood of the protagonist to his eventual appointment as a professor in the university.
Al-Ayyam, however, focuses on specific issues, frequently dealing with them outside the normal chronological sequence of events. Blindness, of course, possesses a development in the text, but, as we shall see, this development is not necessarily chronological, but essentially thematic.
When the narrator treats an incident related to blindness, he endows this incident with significance not only by choosing to present it, but also by choosing the place in the text in which to discuss it. There are therefore two important analytical criteria: first, the choice of an incident, and second, its textual location. By extension, we can speak about the arrangement of events in the text. The textual arrangement of specific events sheds light on the development of blindness across the three volumes of Taha Hu sayn's al-Ayyam.
Ihsan 'Abbas, in his important work Fann as-Sira, calls al-Ayyam "a conscious picture of the conflict between man and his environment," a picture in which the author describes the various stages of his life, using it as "the best example of triumph over the environment." 'Abbas's perceptive comments are only directed to the first two volumes of al-Ayyam, since the third was published after Fann as-Sira. And yet, with certain exceptions, the third volume can also be seen in this light. This environmental conflict does operate in a general way, but for the most part it is the reflection of a far deeper and more specific conflict, that between personal and social blindness. And it is this conflict that guides the development of the work, especially its treatment of the visual handicap.
The first volume of al-Ayyam, as we said above, describes Taha's childhood in the village. But as far as blindness is concerned, this volume generally reflects a position in which the central character is not envisioned as a sightless person. This is not to say that the central character is endowed with physical vision. Rather, we are talking about the textual representation of the blindness of the central character. What will become evident from the analysis of the blindness-related incidents in the first volume is that, with a few exceptions, the hero's treatment as a blind person is equivocal. We will also see that the phenomenon of social blindness is not as well developed in the first as it is in the second and third volumes, and as a result, the conflict between personal and social blindness is relatively de-emphasized.
On the opening page of al-Ayyam, the reader is told that the hero ignored "the reality of light and darkness" (1:3). As a first indication of the nature of the central character, this reference is, to say the least, ambiguous. The reader cannot ascertain from it the precise state of the hero's vision. Someone with no previous knowledge of Taha Husayn's handicap would remain ignorant of it. The second reference tells us of the hero's "dark" eyes, into which his mother dropped a liquid, which caused him pain and did him no good (1:6). The issue is not much clarified until the differences between the central character and his siblings are enumerated. They are able to do things he cannot, and he himself heard them describing things of which he had no knowledge, so he knew that they saw what he could not see (1:18). This is the first textual indication of the blindness of the central character, or more correctly, of the fact that he differed from his siblings with respect to his vision.
The narrator's perception here is more personal than social. There is, however, one extremely important passage in the first volume that involves both the social and the personal aspects of blindness. This is the incident that provides the central character with the means to identify himself with Abu al-'Ala' al-Marri, the medieval blind poet, an identification that persists throughout the three volumes al-Ayyam.
One day, while eating, the youth decided to take up a piece of food with both hands rather than with one. His brothers began laughing and his mother crying; his father, on the other hand, told him in a calm but sad voice that that was not the way one did things (1:19–20). Using this incident as a point of departure, the narrator then informs us that the youth began to deprive himself of various types of food, which he did not touch again until after he was twenty-five years old. The youth claims that the incident helped him to truly understand what the storytellers told about the poet Abu al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri. Further, he repeats that he understood completely one of the conditions of Abu al-'Ala' (tawran min atwar Abi al-'Ala'). But this in itself does not suffice, as he makes the point a third time about completely understanding these conditions in the life of Abu al-'Ala' "because he saw himself in them." Before the discussion is over, the narrator adds that, for this reason, the young man also went out of his way to eat by himself in Europe and did not cease this practice until his wife broke him of it (1:20–22).
Textually, the full identification of the youth with Abu al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri has been made, since he states not only that he understood these conditions (and repeats it three times!) but that he saw himself in them. What is the importance of this identification? Three points are in order. The first concerns the location of this identification in the text. The incident with the food clearly took place during Taha's early childhood, at a time when the protagonist would have had no knowledge either of Abu al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri or of the stages and conditions of his life. Biographically, to understand the blindness of the hero during his childhood, we would have to detach the reality of the incident (i.e., eating with both hands) from the commentary on that incident (i.e., the identification with Abu al-'Ala'), because this commentary reflects, chronologically speaking, an assimilation of later knowledge by the protagonist. Yet the narrator chose this exact location in the text to insert the discussion relative to Abu al-'Ala'. And interestingly enough, this falls in the fourth chapter, fairly early in the work. The reader, of course, cannot isolate himself from the commentary, and therefore must accept this identification. From this textual point onwards, a link persists between the youth and Abu al-'Ala', even if often only unconsciously.
The second point about this passage is that the identification with Abu al-'Ala' carries significant resonances from the Arabic literary tradition. Al-Ma'arri was not only one of the greatest Arabic poets; he was also one of the most profoundly pessimistic, and his pessimism was clearly linked to his blindness. He was contemptuous of organized Islam, declaring about the gift of life: "My sire brought this on me, but I on none." The identification with al-Ma'arri is a bitter one.
But there are further resonances in this incident. The social sharing of food was a quasi-sacred rite in Arabic tradition; those who ate alone could be suspected of miserliness." It was nevertheless recognized that the eating habits of the blind were not always appealing and that their techniques were necessarily more limited. The tenth/eleventh-century polyhistor ath-Tha'alibi reveals that after the seventh-century poet Hassan ibn Thabit became blind, he would ask his friends if this was "the food of one hand" or "the food of two hands" before reaching out to eat something. The Qur'an itself admonishes the faithful to eat with the blind.
The third and final point concerning this passage relates to social blindness. The self-inflicted prohibition of certain foods and the subsequent eating alone in a special room both point to a social phenomenon. The protagonist places himself outside society with respect to eating. Furthermore, the identification with al-Ma'arri plays a social role in addition to its personal one for the youth, since Abu al-'Ala' possessed a role, distinguished from his literary one, as a figure known for his blindness.
However, the identification with al-Ma'arri, and by extension the assimilation into a given social category, that of the blind, does not dominate the first volume as a whole. Despite the discussion of Abu al-'Ala' and the protagonist's psychological relationship with him, Taha is not driven to identify with other blind characters, or to empathize with their condition. This can be seen in several passages in volume I: on the kuttab teacher Sayyiduna, on a girl named Nafisa, on the hero's blind grandfather, and on Qur'an reciters.
It seems that the teacher Sayyiduna was blind (darir), except that he could see a glimmer in one of his eyes, which permitted him to perceive blurred objects without being able to distinguish them. According to the narrator, Sayyiduna was quite happy with this, and "he used to deceive himself and think that he was among the sighted" (1:31). This assessment demonstrates not only an absence of sympathy towards Sayyiduna, another blind individual, but also a certain amount of contempt in the reference to deception. There is no association by the narrator or the hero with Sayyiduna's condition, but rather a distancing from it.
In this passage, however, we hear not the views of the blind hero, but those of the narrator; and of course, because the work is narrated in the third person, the narrative voice and that of the hero are structurally distinct. Though the question of the relationship between the narrator and the hero will be treated in detail in Chapter 6, two points can be briefly adumbrated here. First, since the work as a whole falls within the autobiographical pact, the reader understands that there is a kind of identity between the narrator and the hero, and second, there is no indication in the text that the hero does not share the narrator's harsh judgment. Furthermore, this scorn towards the kuttab teacher is repeated by the school monitor. This pupil hated Sayyiduna and belittled him because, though blind, he feigned vision (1:49).
One of the students in the kuttab, Nafisa, was also blind. When the school monitor appointed Taha a monitor as well, thus bringing the blind girl under his authority, he treated her in the same manner that the monitor treated him, with exploitation and extortion (1:54–55). This example demonstrates the same distancing from a blind character noted with Sayyiduna. The reader glimpses no identification with, or empathy towards, the blind girl by the protagonist, despite the fact that her social position as a blind student in the kuttab was similar to his.
A similar situation pertains with the hero's grandfather, the blind shaykh (1:26). He is mentioned only briefly, but the sentiments of the young man towards his blind relative are those of hatred, with no sympathy or empathy.
This distancing from the visually handicapped is present in yet another passage, about blind Qur'an reciters who performed in various homes (1:86). In this case, these itinerant blind figures are slipped in between other similar social categories without any change in tone or any suggestion that they share a special condition with the hero of al-Ayyam. Contempt is added to this distancing when the narrator describes their knowledge of the holy book. "They understood it as they were able to, not as it is nor as it should be understood. They understood it as Sayyiduna understood it ... ; or they understood it as the young man's grandfather understood it ..." (1:86–87). These figures are all blind, and they have all misunderstood the central text of their culture.
Those cases in which some connection, no matter how fine or elusive, is made between the protagonist and blindness deal almost exclusively with personal blindness. Even in the passage on Abu al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri, the major impetus for the identification is personal, flowing from the youth himself. The protagonist understood the stages of Abu al-'Ala' "because he saw himself in them." No one else suggested this identification to him.
This is not to say that the social level is missing from the first volume. In a discussion of the young Taha's affinity for magic and mysticism, the narrator notes that he was "driven to this" by his father, who would ask him to recite a certain passage of the Qur'an, believing it to be more efficacious coming from a blind youth (1:105). This passage is crucial to the development of the first volume of al-Ayyam for a number of reasons. First and foremost, we finally have a clear textual expression of the blindness of its hero. The word "blind" (makfuf) is articulated for the first time with reference to the protagonist. Hence the quasi-euphemistic treatment of the young man's blindness comes to an end. Secondly, there is a clear social level in the role of the blind youth as intermediary with the deity. The source of this role, of course, was the father — i.e., it came from outside the youth himself. But rather than reject this role, the young man conformed to it. As we shall see, this was not to be Taha's consistent reaction to the social roles offered him.
But the significance of this passage transcends its subject matter. It acts as a marker in the text showing that a crucial line has been crossed, a taboo broken in the treatment of blindness in al-Ayyam. The attribution of the word "blind" to the protagonist seems to permit, from that point onwards in the text, unambiguous articulations of the blindness of its hero. It is, for example, only after this reference that we read about the onset of Taha's blindness, chronologically a much earlier event. In a section discussing the illness and eventual death of the young man's sister, the narrator inserts a brief passage that describes how Taha became blind: he was afflicted with ophthalmia. After a few days, the barber was called, and he gave Taha a treatment that brought about the loss of the use of his eyes (1:120).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Blindness & Autobiography by Fedwa Malti-Douglas. Copyright © 1988 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
