THE BOOK COLLECTORS

An extraordinary story about the passion for books in war-torn Syria.

Minoui, a Middle East correspondent for Le Figaro, opens with the story of a photograph she saw in 2015 on a Facebook page called Humans of Syria. Taken in Istanbul, it shows two young Syrian men standing in an enclosed room with thousands of books on shelves all around them. Their city, Daraya, was surrounded by Bashar al-Assad’s troops and was being regularly bombed; yet here was a secret, underground library. “Amid the bedlam,” writes the author, “they cling to books as if to life.” How was this possible? Minoui contacted Ahmad, the photographer and one of the “cofounders of this secret haven.” He told her about his devastated, bombed-out city and the books found in destroyed buildings. The author tells two stories: one about the library and the other about a city that had been starved and attacked since 2012 and whose population went from 250,000 to 12,000. In 2013, Ahmad and some friends began collecting books and hiding them underground in a damaged building. They built shelves and organized the books. “From the ruins,” writes Minoui, “a fortress of paper would arise,” an oasis that became popular not just for the books on all kinds of subjects—including much-needed medical textbooks—but as a place for people to gather, talk freely, and learn. They even started a small magazine. More bombs fell, some loaded with sarin gas. The building housing the library was hit, damaging the books, but the dedicated keepers glued pages back in. After 1,350 days of siege, they were struck with napalm. In 2016, the city surrendered, and its people evacuated. The library was pillaged, the books sold “for cheap on the sidewalk of a flea market in Damascus….Four years of saving Daraya’s heritage swapped for a few coins.” It’s an agonizing tale, but readers will be appreciative that Minoui has brought it to light. Shelve this one next to Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Heartbreaking, inspiring, and beautifully told.