The Book Collectors

by Delphine Minoui

  After 1,350 days of siege, these citizens thought they had endured everything: barrel bombs, sarin gas, rockets, cannon fire. During 1,350 days of siege, Daraya was transformed into a vast field of ruins. Piles of rubble everywhere. Dried-out olive orchards. Scraps of life in the midst of death. And now Bashar al-Assad has condemned the city to an auto-da-fé, a public burning, ignoring the international ban on the use of napalm. A campaign of mass destruction to make Daraya yield, to erase it from the map of Syria.

  My increasingly rare exchanges with Ahmad, Shadi, and Hussam are limited to the same questions, to which they respond with a few emojis:

  “You okay?”

  “”

  “Hang in there!”

  “”

  Every once in a while I receive a few more images of Daraya, when the internet there starts working again. Once fertile fields rolled over by tanks. Burnt flower buds. Streets blackened with soot.

  Above all, I tell myself, keep writing. Keep the gap open. Warn of the devastation. But the United Nations is paralyzed. Politicians are bogged down in security concerns. Everywhere, the specter of Daesh looms. Some leaders even see fit to renew ties with Damascus to fight this mutual enemy. And the moderate Syrian opposition in all this? Wake up, my poor friend, it hasn’t existed for quite some time! Meanwhile, the hourglass is tilting in Bashar al-Assad’s favor: hands free, scope set on Daraya, he lights the flames with total impunity. Fahrenheit 451, anyone?

  Burning to obliterate. Burning to dehumanize. On August 16, in the middle of summer, the nightmare everyone dreaded becomes reality.

  “The hospital’s been attacked by napalm!”

  This time, it’s Hussam sounding the alert on WhatsApp. Helicopters have dumped their incendiary bombs on the city’s last clinic. The attack left four wounded, who were immediately evacuated. The beginning of the end? Three days later, four barrels full of napalm are again dropped over what remains of the building housing the hospital. This time, the entire structure is consumed by flames. A skeleton burnt to ashes. Patients are transported at the last second to shelters out of danger. In dark holes, everyone becomes a nurse, psychologist, or simple lighting engineer, smartphone flashlights pointed at wounds. A desperate network of solidarity emerges. Parents take turns taking children out early in the morning, before the bombings start. Women hold back their tears as they hum nursery rhymes. Everyone performs their prayers far from the mosque, damaged several times over. Some civilians, who had stayed out of the fighting until now, even join the Free Syrian Army on the front line to defend Daraya from the Fourth Division tanks.

  But the reality is inescapable: the city has been backed into a corner. Doomed to burn.

  “We’ve run out of everything: food, fighters, weapons to defend ourselves,” explains Hussam after a few days.

  Wracked with fatigue and despair, Daraya is dying. For the first time since the siege began, this rebel stronghold initiates direct negotiations with the regime.

  “Our priority is to save civilians. The local council and the Free Syrian Army have accepted the idea of a deal with the government. An evacuation plan is up for discussion. But talks are dragging on and we’re not sure of anything…”

  And what about him, Hussam, how is he holding up?

  “Oh, well, I’m counting the days until I die,” he says, laughing nervously.

  Ahmad has become fatalistic as well, especially since Omar’s death.

  “We no longer bother distinguishing between day and night. We’re in a daze, incapable of thinking. We spend most of our time underground, in the office at the media center. Death is everywhere, ready to claim us,” he tells me.

  They no longer expect anything from the United Nations, other than that it will come one day to collect their bones from the city’s ruins. Unless, he says, they’ve already been burnt to ashes beneath the embers. Once again, humor, though increasingly dark, is essential to survival. In a new photo sent via WhatsApp, a mocking slogan reads: “We hope that the heat of the napalm over Daraya doesn’t ruin the lovely weather for the United Nations delegations in Damascus!” The words are hard and bitter, but they stand strong, one next to the other, perfectly aligned from right to left on pieces of cardboard that serve as banners.

  “Irony is basically our last rampart. When despair eats away at us, we tell each other jokes and turn to shelli,” says Ahmad.

  “Shelli?”

  “Yeah, it’s a popular expression, meaning superficial conversation, gossip, blah blah blah. It’s reassuring, makes us feel normal. Like a safeguard…”

  Shelli. The word lingers on my lips. A familiar taste. Shelli … When I hang up that night, I think of Mustafa Khalifa. Al-Qawaqa’a. The Shell. And I can’t help but see a connection there, even if it’s unconscious, with shelli. That famous protective shell, an armor against violence. A torrent of verbs and nouns hatching beneath the flames of war.

  August 27, 2016. 9:00 a.m. Like gunpowder smoke, the message that was inevitable after four years of blockade bursts onto my phone screen.

  “We’re leaving ”

  It comes from Ahmad, who wrote it early in the morning as he hurriedly packed his bags. In the previous weeks, as their situation deteriorated, Asmaa and I had taken turns maintaining a minimum of contact with the young people of Daraya. Small, friendly words, blinking out to them like fireflies in the middle of the night, to assure them of our support, as limited and far-off as it may be. Then, three days ago, the enclave had woken to silence. No planes. No artillery fire. An unusual and frightful calm for 6:00 a.m. As if clearing the way for yet another tragedy. News spread that an envoy from the Fourth Division had issued an ultimatum to the city’s inhabitants: leave Daraya immediately or end up buried alive there. The city leaders and the rebels unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate for the fighters to stay in Daraya, even without their weapons. Or be relocated to the city of Daraa, then still held by the opposition. At the end of tense talks, the dissidents felt they had no choice but to capitulate. The city had to surrender.

  “There was nothing left to eat, nothing to protect ourselves with. The regime had burned all our farming land. It was leave or die … We had to save our families, at any cost,” explains Ahmad, in a series of texts.

  On August 26, the bitter truce took effect. Buses arrived at the city entrance to pick up the civilians first. Many were lugging old duffel bags in one hand, and leading one or two children with the other. Approximately seventy-five hundred men and women emerged from underground, faces waxen, some in rags, to cross the ruins of their ghost town one final time. Then, beneath the vengeful gazes of regime soldiers, they climbed aboard. Flanked by the Syrian Red Crescent, the buses drove them to the neighboring town of Sahnaya, a few miles to the south. This forced evacuation began four years to the day after regime soldiers killed hundreds in Daraya in August 2012.

  On August 27, the seven hundred or so anti-Assad fighters remaining in Daraya follow, along with their families. Their destination is farther away: the government has decided to send them to Idlib, well in control of anti-Assad forces, 186 miles northwest. Thirty buses, heavily flanked, are waiting to bring them to a new unknown.

  Through WhatsApp exchanges during their departure, alternating between written messages and voicemails, Ahmad explains to me that he, Hussam, and Shadi deliberately chose to go with this second convoy, rather than with the civilians.

  “We wanted to make sure that the evacuation of civilians took place without any problems before we could leave. We didn’t want their deaths on our consciences, especially not those of their children. They didn’t ask to be here. But we stayed in Daraya by choice. It’s on us to assume our responsibility until the end.”

  Their commitment is unfailing. For days, they’ve been expecting death to arrive, like they’re in some hellish waiting room. Terrified as they are, their sense of responsibility has never faltered.

  At 11:00 a.m., another update flashes on my phone. This time, it’s Hussam.

  “This
is it. We’re gathering for the departure. It’s a total mess. People are exhausted.”

  After a final round of discussions, the anti-Assad fighters obtained a last-minute authorization to leave with light weapons, mainly Kalashnikovs. Hussam is relieved.

  “These weapons are protection, if only psychologically. Who knows what’s waiting for us—are they going to try to arrest us? To execute us?” he anxiously confides via WhatsApp, after furtively connecting to the government-run internet network, accessible from the bus departure point.

  A few minutes later, he sends me photos taken on the spot. The last holdouts, faces pale and lips dry, are huddled at the foot of a destroyed building. A film of dust coats their clothes. They’ve placed their meager belongings at their feet. Each resident has been allowed one bag only. Some have resorted to old flour sacks.

  Hussam has just a backpack. He prepared in a rush, filling it with the essentials: a few pairs of pants, a couple of T-shirts, a laptop.

  “And of course, the two books Zeina gave me,” he adds.

  He left everything else behind: cigarette butts in an ashtray, unwashed dishes, a mattress on the floor in the apartment where he and some friends had been hiding out recently, next to the media center. In his haste, he had one final survival instinct.

  “I ripped up my notebooks and burned all the documents that had to do with the revolution. Pamphlets, slogans, everything. I can’t carry everything with me, and no way was I gonna leave traces of our work for agents of the regime.”

  Before heading to the bus, he stopped at the cemetery. He met Ahmad, Shadi, and all the others there, on this ribbon of land that has grown longer and longer over the four years of the blockade. Together, they hummed a goodbye song to the city’s some two thousand martyrs: friends, brothers-in-arms, fighters, neighbors, all struck down by bombs and war.

  It’s nearly 5:00 p.m. After over three hours of waiting, the buses are finally preparing to leave.

  “Leaving soon!” announces a text message.

  I receive a photo taken from inside one of the buses. A blurry selfie with bad lighting, but it’s clear enough for me to recognize their thinned faces amid rows of blue seats. Their features and shirts alike are wrinkled by exhaustion and heat. In the middle of the group, the unshakable Hussam flashes his usual mischievous smile. And still, his face has never looked so drawn.

  Taken just before the bus departs, this is the last image I’ll receive from Daraya.

  For hours, silence takes the place of text messages. A wait, as familiar as it is persistent, stretches out like an elastic band. One hundred eighty-six miles is long. Imagine 186 miles punctuated by control stations, over roads pitted by bombs, along routes shaped by the vagaries of war. One hundred eighty-six miles under close escort, under the menacing blades of regime helicopters.

  And then, upon waking, a sign of life, the call I was afraid to hope for.

  “We’ve arrived in Idlib!”

  It’s Hussam who announces the news. Cast out of his home, his city, but relieved to be alive. Despite his exhaustion, at seven in the morning the young man is already making jokes.

  “When they woke me up, I immediately asked for grilled chicken! That’s how much I’ve dreamed about it. But my friends told me it was breakfast time. They said I’d waited four years to eat chicken, so I could wait four more hours!”

  His laughter is contagious. Behind him, a joyful commotion rings out. I hear the honking of car horns, the jingling of a vegetable seller’s cart, the voices of passersby haggling over a few potatoes. Life, real life. And also the first time that we talk without being interrupted by the roar of weapons.

  After the sounds come the images. During the evacuation, Shadi couldn’t resist the temptation to film, using the camera from the media center, which he slipped into his bag right before leaving.

  In the video he sends, through a slightly cracked bus window, I see regime soldiers in khaki fatigues. Their threatening gazes from faces of marble. The bus starts, brushing past scraggly palm trees, driving down long, fractured roads. Mounds of rocks everywhere. Houses flattened like pancakes. A small sample, reaching me by proxy, of the ravages of the conflict.

  Then the landscape changes abruptly as they go through a checkpoint. I make out a sign that makes me shiver: Mezzeh, the famous military zone from which the Fourth Division soldiers tirelessly penned in the rebels of Daraya.

  Now that they are in regime territory, the road is perfectly paved. Intact apartment buildings stretch out as far as the eye can see. Some curious onlookers on balconies silently watch the procession of buses. The convoy stops, then starts again. Outside, the cars are sparkling. I recognize a few international brands of kitchen appliances on store banners. A portrait of the forbidding Bashar al-Assad is visible in the distance.

  The stream of images breaks off again before resuming, this time with rows of spectators applauding the buses’ arrival, as if they are champions of the Tour de France. The contrast is dramatic. The streets are euphoric, filled with people greeting the newcomers with the “V for Victory” sign. The men clap as the women begin to make ululations. Teenagers hold up welcome signs. Bright faces and gleaming smiles in every direction.

  The book collectors of Daraya have reached safe ground, one of Syria’s last rebel strongholds, and their final destination.

  “This is Idlib,” says Shadi.

  On September 12, two weeks after the forced evacuation of Daraya, a video sweeps away any lingering hope for Daraya’s campaign of resistance. A confident Bashar al-Assad parades through the deserted streets of the ghost city, followed by the attentive gaze of government cameras. The day after his fifty-first birthday, which coincides with the Muslim celebration of Eid al-Adha, the Syrian leader has given himself quite a gift. Surrounded by a legion of political advisers, military officers, and religious dignitaries, he first leads a collective prayer, then dramatic music rises around him as he poses before the skeletons of the dead city. A smile on his lips, he wears a light gray suit, his neck extending from the collar of an open shirt. He reiterates his standard message: “We are determined to take back every inch of Syria from the terrorists’ hands.” With the same warlike cadence, he addresses the “sellouts” and “traitors,” victims of a “foreign plot.” “We are here,” he hammers, “to take back that false impression of freedom they wanted to establish at the beginning of the revolution, and to restore true freedom.” In four years, his discourse hasn’t changed one iota. A narrative woven of the same manufactured threads: “security,” “rebuilding,” “national prestige,” etc.

  Here lies Daraya. Crushed by the boots of propaganda. Over the city’s lifeless body, and those of its hundreds of martyrs, one narrative replaces another. Vengeful. Bellicose. Lacking in nuance. Bashar al-Assad triumphant, describing the bombardment of Daraya as an antiterrorist offensive, for self-defense. Its forced evacuation wasn’t a means to seize new territory, but a vital necessity, he insists. It’s time for Syria to regain its former global standing, to become a nation again. For the state to reassert its authority. For the people to fall in line. A question of life or death. For the sake of the country’s independence. Of an image to be restored. Assad’s famous two options: “Me or chaos.”

  As a new vocabulary washes over Daraya, the first bits of information about the library start to filter out. The books didn’t end up in a bonfire, as Ahmad feared. But it might be worse: after unearthing the secret library, regime soldiers pillaged it to sell the books for cheap on the sidewalk of a flea market in Damascus. Culture at a discount. Four years of saving Daraya’s heritage swapped for a few coins.

  “I heard the news from friends in Damascus. They immediately recognized the books with their owners’ names, which we’d written on every first page,” Ahmad tells me from his new home in Idlib.

  He sends me a photo of the destroyed basement. The shot was taken by one of the rare reporters granted access to Daraya, under the regime’s close surveillance. I recognize the enclo
sed space with its perfectly lined-up aisles and wooden shelves along the walls. They’re half-empty. The remaining books were thrown on the floor, abandoned to dust and darkness. Ripped-out drawers litter the ground, mixed with scattered volumes. In the background, a soldier wearing fatigues tramples the paper wreckage. His back is to the camera, undoubtedly so he can’t be recognized. His intrusive silhouette takes me back to the first image of Daraya I ever saw, the photo from Humans of Syria. What a contrast to the library’s previous calm, to the hope spread by the book collectors. The dream of a better world that never fully came true.

  I question Ahmad, “So it’s over?”

  His reply is instantaneous. “Of course not! You can destroy a city. Not ideas!”

  He continues: “In Daraya, the regime did its best to erase every positive and intellectual trace of the revolution. To Assad, a cultivated and educated man is a dangerous man, because he represents a challenge to the established order. But I’ve grown from this tragedy. I’ve never felt so free, carrying memories that nobody can take away from me.”

  Ahmad takes a deep breath, swimming in his thoughts. He’s not finished. Not yet. This young man who had so little interest in reading just five years ago cites a historical example dating back to the Mongolian invasion of Iraq, something he learned about while reading during the blockade: the destruction of the Grand Library of Baghdad. In that distant era, the conquerors threw scores of books about medicine and astronomy into the Tigris.