The Book Collectors Read online

  So far, yet so close. With a war between us.

  Istanbul, October 20, 2015. On my computer, the Skype icon bounces amid a peal of ringtones. Ahmad’s face appears. He has “good news” to tell me: Abu el-Ezz, the library codirector, is with him. He’s doing better. After weeks of convalescence, this is the first time he’s left his hospital bed. Our virtual meeting is taking place at the media center run by the local council, which speaks for the opposition to the regime. The center’s not very far from the book-filled cellar. The internet connection here is more reliable, the generator less capricious. For security reasons, Abu el-Ezz doesn’t want to video chat. I concentrate on his words, let them paint a picture for me.

  “Books are our way to make up for lost time, to wipe out ignorance,” he says softly.

  Abu el-Ezz is twenty-three years old, just like Ahmad. Like Ahmad, his engineering studies were interrupted. Like Ahmad, he’d never been a bookworm. At college, he says, the required reading verged on caricature. Countless sheets of paper wasted to honor the memory of the former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000. Countless sentences written to flatter the ego of his son Bashar. And so much white space, pages deliberately emptied of the memory of political prisoners, tortured dissidents, and challengers who disappeared without a trace. So many unwritten stories, mutilated dreams, and buried critiques—voices vanishing under the weight of a machine built to lie and to kill.

  “Before the revolution,” he continues, “we were fed lies. There was no room for debate. We were living in a coffin. Censorship was the glue of our daily lives. They hid reality from us. We were told that the Assads, father and son, were the representatives of God on earth. In the many official homages paid to them, we had to affirm loudly and clearly that we were willing to sacrifice our blood and soul for them. I remember one slogan we had to repeat at school: ‘Assad forever.’ He was the master of the country, of time, of thought.”

  Behind the screen, Abu el-Ezz talks with the strength of a survivor, revealing both his fragility and resilience. I can’t even imagine the pain tormenting him. But he wants to talk about his new passion, books, not complain about his health. He dares to believe in the good they can do. Words can’t heal physical wounds, he says, but they have the power to soothe mental ones. And indeed, the simple act of reading is a huge comfort to him, one he discovered as soon as the library opened. He likes to wander through pages. Skim without end. Lose himself among the periods and commas. Navigate unknown lands.

  “Books don’t set limits; they set us free. They don’t mutilate; they restore.”

  I ask him what genre he enjoys most. He responds that he’s a little interested in everything. His reading choices are eclectic, varying from analyses of political Islam to Arabic poetry to psychology. He references a book by the American author Tony Robbins, the title of which he’s forgotten, which talks about personal fulfillment, the quest for self, and how to build your own solid identity. The opposite of what he experienced under Assad.

  “Reading helps me think positively, chase away negative ideas. And that’s what we need most right now.”

  And what about the other library regulars? What do they read? What subjects capture their interest? At first, explains Abu el-Ezz, everyone was getting their bearings, dipping their toes in. A book is like a precious relic that you’re examining for the first time—it can overwhelm. The most curious ones pick a text at random without much hesitation. The shyest visitors, those unused to reading, are nervous, intimidated by the idea of even touching a book cover. But thanks to word of mouth, certain books start to gain popularity, sparking trends even in war.

  “That’s how most of our borrowers ended up reading The Alchemist,” explains Abu el-Ezz.

  “The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho?”

  “Yeah, it’s one of our most popular books. People pass it around. Some have read it a couple of times.”

  Maybe this international bestseller appeals to the library’s patrons because it uses simple words to describe a notion familiar to them: self-discovery. A Spanish shepherd’s journey from Andalusia to the Egyptian pyramids speaks to them. Daraya’s young revolutionaries hear in this book an echo of their own perilous odyssey. They cling to it as if to a compass, perhaps because it contains a treasure particularly precious in their eyes: the idea of limitless freedom.

  They read as therapy but also to make up for lost time. Among Abu el-Ezz’s generation, which has only ever known the rigid dictatorship of the Ba’ath Party (in power since the early 1960s), the thirst for change is striking.

  “Most of the readers are like me. They never liked books before the war. Today, the young people of Daraya have everything to learn. It’s like all of us are starting over at zero. At the library, people ask me for books about ‘democracy’ all the time.”

  “Democracy,” a word once taboo, is now perched on everybody’s lips. Another book, placed prominently on the shelf, has proven particularly popular: Kitab al Ibar (The Book of Lessons), by Ibn Khaldun.

  “Our readers have all skimmed this massive book at one point or another. In it, a fourteenth-century Tunisian historian uses his own experiences to try to determine the causes for the rise and decline of the Arab dynasties.”

  In the midst of revolutionary uncertainty, this forerunner of modern sociology offers, if not solutions, at least ways to think about issues as fundamental as governance, power struggles, and economic development—essential fodder at a time when the shape of the future Syria is endlessly questioned.

  As I listen to Abu el-Ezz, I realize the extent to which books are helping transport these young Syrians somewhere else. No partial views, no censorship, but rather a new world filled with words, stories, and reflections. The residents of Daraya are inspired by these narratives, reappropriating them at times. They are a source of intellectual sustenance too long withheld.

  Before saying goodbye, I ask Abu el-Ezz if he thinks he’ll go back to work at the library once he recovers from his injuries.

  “Of course!” he responds, as if it were obvious.

  For him, the library is not only a place of healing but also somewhere he can breathe—a hopeful page in the dark novel that is Syria.

  Dozens of other readers take their turn on my screen. One by one, their colorful descriptions of beloved books unfold like pieces of parchment. They spend hours telling me about the love poems of Nizar Qabbani and the writings of Syrian theologian Ibn Qayyim. They share their new passion for the theater of Shakespeare and Molière. For the novels of Marcel Proust and the South African writer J. M. Coetzee. For children’s nursery rhymes. They talk tenderly about Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. Praise the medical textbooks that help them better treat the wounded. These are all books that survived the war, which they picked at random from the shelves of the new library, windows ajar within the confines of Daraya. From afar, I hear their voices disintegrate under bullet fire. Unshaken, they claim these writings as their new ramparts. They’ve memorized entire passages when, before the revolution, they would have been incapable of quoting a single line. The conflict causing bloodshed in Syria has paradoxically brought them closer to books.

  Reading is the new foundation for the bubble of freedom they’ve constructed. They read to explore a concealed past, to learn, to evade insanity. Books are their best way to escape the war, if only temporarily. A melody of words against the dirge of bombs. Reading—a humble human gesture that binds them to the mad hope of a return to peace.

  In the shadow of war, language is all that remains. It trembles with every word—words of wisdom, hope, science, and philosophy—that resists the gunpowder. Perfectly arranged and classified on the shelves, these words are strong. They stand tall, imbued with truth. They offer food for thought, a sea of ideas. The entire world in arm’s reach.

  This fascinating resistance through books reminds me of an Iranian hairdresser I met fifteen years ago in Tehran’s working-class southern district. She had transformed her beauty salon in
to a reading space for women. It reminds me of the book-bicyclist I encountered one day in the traffic jams of Cairo, who aspired to raise education levels by distributing free books. In Daraya, reading also offers a way to learn, to uncover history, defying time and ignorance.

  This paper warfare is especially dear to me because it echoes a personal addiction. A book enthusiast, I remember trembling during my first visit to the Library of Alexandria, which had endured fire and destruction on countless occasions. I have dreamed of a trip to Morocco ever since reading that the library in Fez, the oldest in the world, had been renovated. Libraries have something simultaneously subversive and calming about them. I’ve always loved to roam between rows of shelving, breathing in the smell of old paper, listening for the call of pages.

  In Istanbul, a city blessed with quite a few grand libraries, story time in the library section of the French Institute is sacred. My daughter, Samarra, and I never miss a session. At home, she’s even made it into one of her favorite activities: every weekend, she lines up her dolls in her bedroom, selects a few stories, and plays French Institute. I like to cite a recent World Bank study, reporting that people who read books live longer and are happier. Do books hold, if not the key to happiness, at least the power to make us believe in it?

  As the library in Daraya takes form in my mind, I continue to assemble emails, text messages, and photos to get a better idea of the town in which it’s hidden. I sort through the images, scribble down dates, scan for the slightest detail, and decipher acronyms and logos, on the lookout for the tiniest geographical markers—anything to fill in the outlines.

  On Google Maps, viewed from a distance, Daraya looks like any other Middle Eastern suburb: rows of grayish buildings lined up like LEGO blocks. Seen closer, they’re nothing but skeletons, piles of rubble mixed with sheets of rusted metal and broken windowpanes.

  Gradually, I’m able to sketch a map of the isolated enclave. Here at last is Daraya, an open-air prison less than five miles southwest of Damascus. To the west, Moadamiya, another rebel-held suburb, also surrounded by the regime. To the north, the Mezzeh military airport perched on a hill, which Assad’s Fourth Armored Division aims to defend until the end.

  I open a dictionary. In Syriac, an ancient dialect spoken by the Christians of Iraq, Syria, and Iran, daraya means “many houses.” What an ironic twist of fate for a town with so few buildings left standing. Sometimes the bombings are so powerful they dig craters into the very pavement. The deserted streets in every photo are just as striking. Metal shutters closed, schools abandoned, bakeries at a standstill. Daraya is a phantom town, orphaned by most of its inhabitants. Out of 250,000 before the revolution, only 12,000—nearly 2,000 of whom are combatants—remain, explains Ahmad. Every time I get him on Skype or WhatsApp, I pepper him with questions. About the color of the sky. About the sound of war. About the smell of explosives. He’s incredibly patient. His voice, barely discernible during our first exchanges, quickly becomes more confident. His words are less hesitant, his speech smoother. You can sense the strength filling him when he talks about his home.

  Whenever the connection is lost from the force of yet another explosion, his voice comes in jerks and starts, blanketing my desk in Istanbul with small, unstitched words, defying the roar of helicopters, seizing rare lulls to slip in a coherent sentence. For hours at a time, he tells me about Daraya. Its diversity. Its two churches where the Christian minority practices its religion unimpeded. Its famous white grapes with long and sugary seeds. Its fields so fertile that the regime wants to reclaim them. But in this agricultural suburb, known for its sweet wine, even the flower buds are now an endangered species.

  A term comes to my mind: “urbicide,” resurrected by the architect Bogdan Bogdanovich during the Balkan wars. Yes, urbicide is quite right: the destruction of a city by any means. We watch in the West, powerless, as a war machine gathers steam. It demolishes dreams, devours landscapes, and crushes everything in its path to impose its own blueprint. This destruction is physical, geographic, and demographic. Erasure by force is a classic strategy of this world’s tyrants, and Syria’s president looks to have mastered it.

  But why is the regime so focused on Daraya?

  One night, in the course of one of our many conversations, I ask Ahmad this question.

  Why, yes, why is the regime putting so much energy into turning this one city into a laboratory of terror?

  Shaking his head, Ahmad takes his time before answering. “Because Daraya is not like other cities.” Then he adds, “To understand its civic resistance, which stretches way back before the revolution, you have to dig around its past.”

  And Ahmad begins to tell me more about his town.

  It was back in the 1990s. The country was slowly recovering from a 1982 massacre in the city of Hama, carried out by Hafez al-Assad’s regime. The tragic event, intended to crush an attempted uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood, resulted in the deaths of between ten and thirty thousand people, though no exact count could ever be established. Despite the scale of these atrocities, they were quickly buried, left unsaid. Cell phones and the internet didn’t exist yet, and the government had a stranglehold on information. The mere rumor of the killings was enough to reinforce the system of fear maintained by Assad’s Alawite dynasty since it took power in 1970. In Daraya, the city of “many houses,” 142 miles from Hama, the massacre was spoken about in hushed voices only once the doors were closed, the curtains drawn, and the children in bed. As elsewhere in Syria, the word “regime” (nizam) was uttered in whispers. Privately, Syrians would vaguely refer to “security” (amn) or perhaps the “state” (dawlé). But when the sun emerged, the night would swallow these words.

  And then, in the late nineties, some thirty activists from Daraya broke the wall of fear. They held secret meetings in the same mosque, one of their rare refuges. The imam presiding there was a progressive cleric. Seated cross-legged around him, the activists would study the Quran and read banned works by religious dissidents. In particular, they spent hours dissecting the writings of Jawdat Said, a Syrian Mahatma Gandhi and one of the first Muslim thinkers to engage with the notion of nonviolence. Contrary to the “terrorist” label they would inherit much later, these men were advocating a form of Sunnism favoring dialogue and tolerance. Their only weapons were a few secretly gathered books.

  One day, they decided to take action by launching a series of public initiatives inspired by their readings: awareness campaigns to protect the environment, neighborhood mobilization to clean the streets, a battle against corruption. Thanks to their studies, a new kind of civic movement began to stir.

  Ahmad hadn’t been born yet when the Hama massacre occurred. He is also too young to remember the Daraya activists. Nonetheless, when he talks about this legendary period, it’s with the precision of a good student. “This siege paradoxically forced us to open the doors to our past. I’ve learned a lot since 2012,” he confides.

  He has one person to thank for these belated lessons in Daraya’s contemporary history: Muhammad Shihadeh, a companion of the siege, thirty-seven years old. Ahmad and his young friends have nicknamed him “Ustez”—Professor—because he teaches them English in the basement library. The name is also a sign of respect for this older man who was one of the pillars of Daraya’s famous resistance group, known as Daraya Shebab (Daraya Youth). Between barrel bombings, sometimes in the deep of night, Ustez opens up to his young students. He talks of the first faltering steps of Daraya’s nonviolent resistance, its discreet insubordination toward the regime more than a decade before the Arab Spring spread to Syria. Ahmad never tires of listening to him. Ustez is, in a way, the mentor of whom he’s always dreamed—a bearer of knowledge, the likes of which the Assad clan never tolerated, neither the father, Hafez, nor the son, Bashar, who, when he took power in 2000, quickly quashed emerging hopes for a more democratic government during a short-lived period dubbed the Damascus Spring. For hours on end, Ustez patiently describes disappointed hopes, aborted a
ttempts at change, and the resilience of the dissenters. Thanks to his lessons, a new world looms on the horizon: a world of questioning, dialogue, and tolerance.

  “We owe him a lot,” says my young friend.

  Ahmad wants badly to introduce him to me, but regular bombings make this impossible. For now, Ahmad focuses on passing along his mentor’s ideas. As if reciting a forbidden poem, he proceeds, soberly and precisely, to recount Ustez’s shared memories, for the sake of remembering.

  April 2002 provided an opportunity to hold Daraya’s first protest. Israeli forces had just invaded the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Ustez and his associates gambled that they could mobilize the population. Fearful of retaliation, they held the demonstration in silence, with just a few signs carried aloft. Some denounced the Israeli invasion. Others called for general “change.” In many cases, the slogans borrowed from Quranic verses that could be interpreted as “God can do nothing for you until you change yourself.” Even more implicit was the idea that the problem wasn’t Israel, or even Assad directly. As Ustez later explained to Ahmad: “Our problem was our cowardice, our lack of education, our lack of courage to get things moving.” That day, more than two hundred people, including a dozen women, participated in the procession. The police kept their distance. Without batting an eye. Forty minutes of freedom stolen from the dictatorship. A tiny victory over fear.

  Ahmad talks and I keep quiet. He lays out the stories of those years with a blend of envy and admiration. The exactness of his account is the mark of someone who wants to grow from the experiences of others.

  One year later, in 2003, the U.S. intervention in Iraq reenergized the demonstrators. This time, they organized a civil campaign to boycott cigarettes manufactured in the United States. On April 9, once again, people took to the streets for a silent march against the occupation of a neighboring country. For once, their mobilization echoed the regime’s stance. Damascus was also opposed to the American operation. The mufti of Syria, reputedly close to the authorities, even declared a fatwa in favor of jihad in Iraq. The dissenters of Daraya therefore felt comfortable, safe even, in demonstrating.