Growing up in a small Lebanese village, Bassim's blindness limits his engagement with the materials taught in his schools. Despite his family's love and support, his opportunities seem limited. At thirteen years old, Bassim leaves his village to join the Institute for the Blind in a Beirut suburb. There, he comes alive. He learns Braille and discovers talents he didn't know he had. Bassim is empowered by his newfound abilities to read and write. Thanks to his newly developed self-confidence, Bassim decides to take a risk and submit a short story to a competition sponsored by the Ministry of Education. After winning the competition, he is hired to work at the Institute for the Blind. At the Institute, Bassim, a Sunni Muslim, forms a strong friendship with George, a Christian. Cooperation and collective support are central to the success of each student at the Institute, a principle that overcomes religious and cultural differences. In the book, the Institute comes to symbolize the positive changes that tolerance can bring to the country and society at large. The Boy Who Saw the Color of Air is an important contribution to a literature in which people with disabilities are underrepresented. In addition to offering a story of empowerment and friendship, this book also aims to educate readers about people with disabilities.

Abdo Wazen is an award-winning author from Beirut, Lebanon. In addition to writing poetry and novels, he is also a French-to-Arabic translator and well-known culture editor of Al-Hayat newspaper. His first collection of poems, The Locked Forest, was published in 1982. Since then, Wazen has published a number of other poetry collections, and a memoir, An Open Heart, after he had major heart surgery in 2010. He has translated the poetry of Jacques Prevert and Nadia Twueni into Arabic. In 2005 he received the Culture Journalism Award from the Dubai Press Club and in 2012 he won the prestigious Sheikh Zayed Book Award for his young adult novel The Boy Who Saw the Colour of Air.

Abdo Wazen's profile page

Nouha Homad has had a career as university professor teaching English and comparative literature, and French and Spanish language and literature. She is a writer, editor, certified freelance translator and artist. Syrian by birth and parentage, Homad grew up in Paris, Madrid, Rome, Cairo, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, and Damascus absorbing languages and cultural experiences along the way. She has since lived in Beirut, Amman, Washington DC, Tripoli, Aberystwyth and London, and Montreal among other places, and this has continued to enrich and influence her cosmopolitan vision. She lives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Nouha Homad's profile page