The light which cannot see
Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Nadia Al Najjar’s novel explores disability and history.
By Marcia Lynx Qualey
Photographs are a visual media: flat, identically smooth objects where touch, taste, sound, and smell tell us nothing. But in The Touch of Light by Emirati novelist Nadia Al Najjar, we experience old photos with the novel’s blind protagonist, Noura—whose name means “light.”
The Touch of Light was one of six novels shortlisted for this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Like others on the shortlist, Al Najjar’s book offers a new lens on the region’s history. Here, we see the past century through Noura’s turbulent family story, with an emphasis on more-than-visual ways of experiencing the world.
Although fascinated by the nature of sight, Al Najjar did not want Noura’s blindness to feel symbolic or abstract. In the years before she began to write, Al Najjar did her research. She read up on the region’s history, beginning just after the First World War. She visited the neighbourhoods in which she set her novel, particularly in Dubai and Manama. And she immersed herself in the experiences of the blind. “I met with blind people, especially those who lack visual memory and lost their sight at an early age,” Al Najjar says. “I downloaded apps for the blind. I read works by Helen Keller, plus Taha Hussein’s The Days, and I watched documentaries about blindness. I only began writing after I felt ready to tell Noura’s story and to explore, along with her, the texture of light.”
Along with light’s touch, we also experience other forms of synaesthesia, as well as heightened awareness through other senses. But Noura cannot use her other senses to understand the historical photographs that anchor the novel. To connect with these—and ultimately, with her family—she needs help from an app on her phone.
Although fascinated by the nature of sight, Al Najjar did not want Noura’s blindness to feel symbolic or abstract.
Noura has grown up distanced from her Emirati family. A genetic disorder caused her to lose her eyesight as a young child, and her father abandoned their small family to remarry. Noura is raised in her grandfather’s home, where she lives with her disappointed mother. She forms a close bond with their housekeeper, Evelyn, who helps Noura in her daily tasks with an intimate matter-of-factness.
When the novel begins, Noura is already 30, still searching for her place in the family and in the world. For Noura, each photograph opens a window into the past.
The app describes one early photo as “probably a group of people in a boat.” This mechanical uncertainly contrasts with the bright, confident tone of the historical narrative. The door to the past is wedged open by careful fact, but it requires imagination to bring it to life. Once we’re in the door, we meet Noura’s great-grandfather, Ali, as he works for his uncle and helps care for his brother Abboud who lives with a cognitive disability. In a novel that centres disability, Al Najjar crafts a particularly tender portrait of this brother who dies, tragically, in a fire.
Although set decades apart, Ali’s story and Noura’s share many parallels. Both must try to survive difficult families and connect with others during a time of social and technological change. In Ali’s time, the discovery of oil remakes the pearl-diving communities of the Gulf. For Noura, new technologies open her world more intimately, including the app that she uses to “read” family photos.
At the end of The Touch of Light, Noura’s life is brimming with new opportunities, but we aren’t told what will happen. Perhaps Noura will find love with her self-conscious cousin Saif, who’s also passionate about photographs. Or perhaps the future, like light itself, might bend in a different direction.
Photograph of the author by Kheridine Mabrouck
