Bassam Abdel Razzaq
With lazy eyes from birth, and the harshness of the situation and indifference, the curtain of vision fell on him, but he chose to spend his life learning, attached to the facilities provided by the days to satisfy his desires, which turned him towards reading, knowledge, thought and culture, despite the difficulties that continued to haunt him due to loss of vision, lack of dealing with paper publications, and the scarcity of those that he deals with sensually.
The attempt to stop “M.A.”, who is blind, while wandering between the wings of books, was a kind of inconvenience, especially since he and through a friend of his, he was looking for titles for certain books, and after his search ended and went to the gardens of the Iraq International Book Fair and settled there, we were able to talk to him.
“M.A.” said that he is “interested in philosophical studies and literature, especially novels, but he finds it difficult to get everything he wants or those titles available at publishing houses, and sometimes he gets compact audio copies, but they are very few.”
“Some libraries have provided books for the blind, but they rarely participate in book fairs, and publishing houses do not care about books of this kind and do not print them,” he said.
He explains that “he also has friends who are blind and have the same interest in reading and reading books, and they use other friends who in turn read books to them through group sessions, and that it has become interesting for them, especially since life has returned to normal in the last period, after the Corona virus crisis, and they were able to resume the reading episodes they do.”
The M.A. calls for attention to the provision of books for the blind and their support by the state, and there are countries in the region that have made good allocations for this matter, as these books find a struggle in competition with regular publications in terms of financial returns, and are a financial burden on the owners of libraries and publishing houses participating in exhibitions.
Braille is a writing and reading system for the blind and visually impaired, based on the embodiment of letters on special paper with cantilevered or concave dots that can be felt by touch, and each letter is expressed in a variety of prominent points printed on the paper thanks to a special feather known as a Braille feather.