DUBAI: Nujood Al-Otaibi began losing her hearing at around the age of five. In Taif, the area in Saudi Arabia’s Makkah region where she was born, her affliction was initially mistaken for a common fever. But as the years passed, her deafness became progressively worse and, by the time she finished higher education, she was almost entirely dependent on hearing aids. Al-Otaibi ascribes the lack of public awareness about hearing disabilities in the village from where her mother came to its remote location. “Over the years, I learned how to read lips, which I find is the conversation of the soul,” Al-Otaibi, who turned 32 last year, told Arab News from her home in Jeddah, the city where she was raised and where she now combines her work as a teaching assistant with her passion for art and design.