Taha Hussein proves to us in his book “The Days” that obstacles are imaginary, that vision does not require sight, and that ambition has no limits.
He stresses that the lazy person is the one who blames his weakness on fate, that a single word may hang over a person until his death, and that persistence despite all his first defeats achieves the desired result.
Taha Hussein's entire life was evidence that knowledge is a temptation for the mind, an incentive to learn more, and a never-ending path.
He was not wrong to describe Taha Hussein as a sighted person among the blind. Through his days in this book, he shows us Egypt, which he did not see with his eyes but heard with his ears, and he shares with us... His diaries are a movement of movement day by day, and he introduces us to the difference between life in the countryside and Cairo in the finest details. We see, hear, smell and taste what he experienced until we can almost inhale the scent of beans, bread and tea and taste molasses and boiled wheat. Due to the precision of his description, we can differentiate between the sounds of villages and cities in the markets and neighborhoods, the call of the minarets and the pattern of conversations exchanged between different people according to their society.
Through his diaries, we learn about the newspapers that existed at that time, the sheikhs of Al-Azhar and the university professors, describing the Egyptian environment with all its classes, starting from the owners of the tarboosh to the street vendors.
He wrote about his life as a child between the mosque and the Kuttab, moving with the boys between the alleys and shops of the countryside, then he moved to the corridors of Al-Azhar, its columns, its lessons and its sheikhs. He mentions the story of his introduction to literature and his fascination with it, and then his transfer to the university after he was tempted by the various sciences there. In all of this, he explains his difficulties as a blind, poor man who possessed nothing but a tongue that asked questions and an unparalleled ambition. He was the one who opened the door of the world to himself with his questions and endless discussions with every sheikh and professor he heard from.
In the last part, he takes us on his journey to France, mentioning its difficulties and obstacles, how much he struggled to obtain his scholarship, and how this journey changed the future of his life. During this, he goes through the events of the war, independence, and strike, and mentions all the difficulties he faced and the challenges he overcame for the sake of knowledge, and he touches on the people he met and who played a role in his life by name.
Although his book is considered an autobiography, starting from his childhood until he obtained his doctorate in France and returned to Egypt, he did not write it in the first person, but rather relied on the third person in the voice of the young old man, and this is what gave the biography a third dimension that brought it to the world, as no one mentions Taha Hussein without mentioning his days.
In his book, he relied on the senses of smell and hearing, and I felt that he neglected the sense of touch, as he did not mention his reliance on it in any way.
The book is approximately 500 pages long and is divided into three parts.
Perhaps what I liked most about his personality is that he did not regret anything he did or said because, as he explained, “he did not respond in what he said or did except to what his conscience called him to do, without fear or dread.”
In the end, we can say that he is a man who lived with his ears and took his blindness as a challenge to achieve what he wanted.
Written by Batoul Watfa
Written by Batoul Watfa
