قَالَ رَبِّ لِمَ حَشَرْتَنِىٓ أَعْمَىٰ وَقَدْ كُنتُ بَصِيرًا
Qaala Rabbi lima hashar tanee a'maa wa qad kuntu baseeraa
and he will say, ‘Lord, why did You bring me here blind? I was sighted before!’
He will say, "My Lord, why have you raised me blind, when I once could see?"
The man still calls God his Lord while lodging the complaint, so the address holds even at the point where everything has gone against him. The reply that follows leaves sight alone and answers with memory, turning one verb around so that the forgetting he did becomes the forgetting he receives. Commentators have read the blindness in more than one way, as literal loss of sight or as the loss of any argument left to make, and the passage leaves the question open.