Particularly dear to El Akkad’s development in the West was the freedom to read and write. It is perhaps not surprising that literature and the ability to read literature is fundamental to El Akkad’s story of being enchanted by the West. The split in decency that El Akkad witnesses in the present already existed in the Enlightenment. El Akkad tells us that the student asked him if he understood the meaning of the story. This may include already being part of its destruction, which is what El Akkad in One Day asks us time and again to see.