by Mike Thomson
Over the following months I got to know a number of people from different walks of life in Daraya. Most were involved in creating the town’s secret library including fourteen-year-old Amjad, the self-declared Chief Librarian; Anas Habib, a dynamic, hard-working, former civil engineering student; Abdul Basit, former business and economics student, and now helping hand at the hospital; Ayham al-Sakka, a book-loving ex-dental student; Homam al-Toun, a former pharmacy student; Sara Matar, who was to become a courageously dedicated teacher, and Rateb abo Fayez, a rebel fighter who not only took his loans from the library into battle, but held a book club on the front line. Each of them took enormous risks in talking to me, each of them was impassioned, determined and utterly devoted to their secret library. All were to become my much treasured, long-distance friends.
When the Internet was working we would talk via Wi-Fi, sometimes managing long Skype and WhatsApp interviews, which gave me a valuable window into their everyday lives. When the Wi-Fi went down, which was often, they recorded audio diaries, or patiently tapped out messages to me on their phones. Sometimes I waited days for answers that I feared might never come. But just like Malik, they always turned up. And it was this group who told me how they had transformed their dream of building a library into a reality.
The group received word that there were many valuable books in some of the homes that had been hit by bombs. Rain, sun and wind were fast destroying these as the shattered buildings that housed them often lacked windows, walls or even roofs. The group were told that some of these books were in small private libraries, of which many in Daraya had known nothing before the conflict. Weeks of enquiries followed, with all involved asking everyone they knew to suggest buildings where such endangered titles might be found. Then, armed with a long list of likely locations, the young men organised teams of volunteer search parties. They set out to rescue as many books as they could find, both for the sake of the absent owners and the community as a whole.
In the weeks and months that followed a treasure trove of books was retrieved from gutted homes, libraries and other buildings. Sadly, it was too late to save some, which had already been ruined by falling masonry or the weather. But day after day prized titles were pulled from the rubble, dusted off and carried back for safekeeping. Among these was a battered copy of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Muhammad Imara’s Marxist interpretation of Islam, compilation works by Syrian poets Adonis and Maram al-Masri, and somewhat aptly, an Arabic edition of Agatha Christie’s The Body in the Library. The piles of rescued books also included complete sets of encyclopaedias, religious tomes, textbooks, novels and pamphlets.
As Abdul Basit and his friends began to appreciate the quality and quantity of the treasure they were amassing, they were inspired by a new idea. Rather than just store these rescued books, why not let people read them? That way the precious books could also provide knowledge and pleasure. Former students could use the books to continue their education, especially if they could find somewhere peaceful and safe to house the collection. Others could come and read simply for pleasure.
This was met with universal approval by the group, but there were concerns. Given that these books did not belong to those who had collected them, people couldn’t be allowed to just come and take them away. The group would need to introduce a method of recording who had borrowed what, as well as where the books had come from. Then, as Anas told me, someone shouted: ‘What about running the book store like a library?’ And just like that, the idea was born.
Nobody can quite remember whose voice made that suggestion. Perhaps its owner was simply too modest to stake a claim to an idea that was to give hope and inspiration to so many–not only to the people of Daraya, but also to people around the world. The naturally poetic Abdul Basit, who could turn even the most mundane memory into a literary feast, hoped it would become a library for everyone. One for the benefit of the whole community, not just educated people such as himself and his friends. He told me: ‘We believed that a place like this could store part of our heritage as well as the keys to our future. It would not only help us to continue our education but be there for anyone who loved reading. We also hoped to use the books we gathered to create a curriculum for local youths. This way they would have some sort of guidance, like we had at university, rather than just randomly reading any books they came across. In short, we wanted the library to become a minaret for Daraya.’
Another person who played a big part in setting up the library was a warm-natured, good-humoured dental student, Ayham al-Sakka. He was involved in many of the earliest efforts to find stock for the library. Whenever we spoke, I was struck by the infectious smile in his voice: ‘Many of the books we rescued are treasured volumes, ones that their owners would have hated to lose,’ he told me. ‘Not only that but the wider community will gain much from reading them. They help us understand the outside world better. This is a golden opportunity not only to educate ourselves but to be able to take our minds off the death and destruction around us. By building the library we are creating a place where people can come and read, continue their education, or just relax. It is an oasis of normality in this sea of destruction.’
One priority, then, was to decide where to put the proposed library, in a besieged town where nowhere was completely safe. Ayham told me: ‘We decided to place the library in a small street in one of the worst affected neighbourhoods. It was a road where nobody lived any more and all the buildings had been extensively damaged. Broken masonry littered the area. After looking around we discovered that the basement of one building was usable, even though the upper floors had been destroyed. This meant there was no sign of life, making it an unlikely target. So this, we decided, was where we would put our library.’
The basement was in a block on the corner of what had once been a busy street near the centre of Daraya. The white stone building that had stood above it was newer than the others nearby, but due to the extensive damage around it and the dust that covered everything, it no longer looked any different. The entrance to the basement was through a big black door at the rear of the building. No signs marked its existence and there was nothing to suggest that what lay below was any less barren than the shattered concrete corpse above it. Yet down those dusty stairs, beneath the terrible destruction, busy young hands were transforming the dingy, dusty space into a literary sanctuary. Overseeing it all was Abdul Basit. His voice danced as he told me: ‘When we had finished converting the basement, our next task was to place a few sandbags around the entrance to help protect the library further. Despite all our efforts the doorway later become quite damaged, though thankfully not enough to stop us getting in.’
The often risky gathering of books had already begun in late 2013, but it would be several months before the library was ready to open. It needed shelves and seats and tables for those who come to read, and a system to keep track of who has borrowed what, and when. It is difficult to overstate the challenges that faced the secret library pioneers. First off, securing the raw materials and tools to make and assemble shelves; then ignoring nagging hunger in order to be able to function, let alone build anything. With only small amounts of food being smuggled into Daraya, hunger was a constant. One bowl of watery soup a day was often all anyone had to eat. Coping with the weather was another challenge–in summer, temperatures can top forty degrees and in mid-winter plunge to near freezing.
Then there were the bombs to contend with. To minimise this risk, most book-collecting missions were carried out in the early hours of the morning, when the regime’s bomber planes were rarely in the sky. But there was no escape, whatever the time of day or night, from snipers.
Homam al-Toun was part of the secret library project from the start. He told me: ‘The fear of being shot by snipers is with us twenty-four hours a day. We have to be very careful wherever we go. The biggest danger is to stand out too much, particularly against the skyline. That means we rarely go through open spaces, because they leave us very vulnerable. Instead
we try to find routes through damaged buildings. These are usually quite enclosed which makes it hard for snipers to spot us. We have to think about this all the time. Become a target and you will be dead in seconds.’
I got to talk to Homam a little later than most of the group, but I soon felt that we had known each other for years. His warmth and helpfulness in response to my constant barrage of questions was touching. Like his friends, his love for the library infused everything he said, but there was never any sense of bravado creeping in or colouring his stories. In fact, I sometimes had to push Homam for more details of the daring exploits he and his friends had got up to during the early days of the siege. Many of these centred on getting books out of buildings that lacked usable doors, without being shot by snipers. ‘I remember really wanting to get into one particular building that had lots of books inside,’ he recalled, ‘but its entrance was watched by snipers. We worked out that the only way to get in safely was by knocking a big hole through the wall at the back of the building. From there we made another hole in the ceiling and climbed up through that to the floor above where all the books were stored.’
Fortunately, this treacherous trip turned out to be well worth the trouble. Homam and his team were greeted by a glorious sight–rows and rows of books stacked neatly along the back wall. Some of them were large and very heavy, others lovingly bound with ornately lettered spines. Their next challenge was how to get this enticing collection back to the secret library. It had been hard enough for them all to get into the building, through holes in the wall and ceiling, when empty handed. Now they had to go back the same way clutching piles of weighty books. But having come this far, Homam and his friends were not about to be defeated by such logistical trifles. He told me: ‘We wrapped the books in blankets, knotted them with ropes and then lowered them through the hole in the floor to the level below. Then other members of our group passed them through the gap in the wall at the back of the building. We escaped, laden with books, along the route we had come in.’
Sometimes the book-collecting parties brought ladders with them, given the difficulty of entering many bombed buildings via the ground floor. Piles of rubble frequently blocked doors and windows and it was often impossible or unsafe to climb over these to the floor above. Teams also brought along a large hammer or metal bar which they would use to knock entry holes in the walls. Anas told me how he and his friends would sometimes go through the side of one building straight into another, to avoid being seen by watching soldiers: ‘Using this method we never actually went outside. We could stay inside the shells of the bombed buildings, using their walls as cover. But we had to be extremely careful. Snipers sometimes followed us in their sights, anticipating the next step we’d take, waiting until we crossed an open area.’
When it was impossible to take a route through the gutted buildings, the library teams had to cross open land. They did this in large groups so they could look out for snipers and give warnings of any danger. They also needed plenty of people to carry the books back, as some were very large. From time to time, the team managed to get access to a car despite the extreme shortage of fuel. To help counter the threat posed by snipers, the driver would hurtle through the streets as fast as possible, making the vehicle harder to hit. There were occasions when the older cars broke down or ran out of fuel, leaving their occupants with two options: either to leave the vehicle and run for cover, or to get out and push it out of sight. Going by what Anas told me, I got the feeling that abandoning their haul would have been a very last resort. ‘I’ll never forget the thrill of having a car full of books,’ he told me, his eyes alight. ‘That beat everything! Absolutely everything!’
Cars, unreliable as many of them were, were essential when rescuing books from more distant places, such as farms on the outskirts of Daraya. Such open places would often mean driving for hundreds of metres within range of snipers or even Syrian army positions. Yet, amazingly, such collections still went ahead. I find it hard to imagine how these young men were able to cope with the mental stress of putting themselves in such danger on such a regular basis. After all, most of those involved were not fighters and some had never even held a rifle. This was what Homam told me: ‘We’ve gradually become more used to the dangers as the siege has gone on. When we get nervous, which is often, we do our best to see the funny side of the situation we are in and laugh about it. If we couldn’t do this, I don’t think we would be able to carry on. Also, it is always easier to do dangerous things when you are in a group. Somehow being able to share the fear lessens it. I suppose it is a case of safety in numbers.’
I asked Anas, the former civil engineering student, whether collecting books, however valuable, was really worth risking his life for. ‘We have no intention of endangering anyone’s life unnecessarily for the sake of gathering these books,’ he replied, ‘however much we want to get them. We always weigh up the risks and try to minimise them as much as possible. If you were to ask me whether we would carry on with a collection if it became clear that there was a 60 to 70 per cent chance that one or all of us would die, I would say no.’
Anas pointed out that when the local library was destroyed he and his friends had tried to rescue books from inside the remains of the building, but despite several attempts they’d had to give up. The risk of being hit by snipers was just too great. This, though, he told me, was one of only a few occasions when the team had been forced to abandon their plans. ‘We believe that building this library is very important, not just for our minds but also for our souls. We are convinced that knowledge rarely comes when you sit doing nothing. It usually follows hard work and sometimes taking great risks.’
Soon after the siege began, a special council was created in Daraya. It aimed to keep all sorts of public services running while bombs and shells rained down. Unusually for a war zone, this civilian-run body had authority over the FSA fighters defending the town, and the two often worked together. From time to time the fighters would volunteer to come along on book collections, particularly when such trips involved going near the front line. Sometimes they even lent their cars to the group, if it was thought that a large number of books could be rescued.
Abdul Basit remembered one rather frightening trip that he and his friends made with the help of local fighters. Their destination was the home of a local teacher who had built up an impressive collection of books. His house had been badly damaged and parts of it were in such a precarious state that they feared the rest might soon fall down. The team had wanted to retrieve books from this house for several months but had been stopped from doing so by the FSA, who thought the task was too dangerous as it was close to the front line. But after much persistence they finally got the go ahead on the condition that some experienced fighters went with them and no lights were used. Abdul Basit told me that while he understood the reasons behind the second condition, it brought problems of its own: ‘We went late at night when the chances of being spotted by snipers were lowest. The trouble was that in the pitch-black we could hardly see our hands in front of our faces, yet we couldn’t use torches or any other kind of light in case they were seen by the regime’s soldiers.’
His group approached the derelict building from the third floor of another house on the left-hand side. This position was less visible to the nearby soldiers of the Syrian army. They could see that getting in to what was left of the house was going to be difficult. The doorway had been destroyed and the lower windows were buried in debris. But, on the advice of the fighters, the group gathered long planks of wood that were lying on the ground. ‘We pushed a plank out through the window of the building we were in,’ continued Abdul Basit, ‘and then guided it through the open window of the teacher’s house opposite. After several attempts, we managed to get it securely in place. As we were on the third floor it was high up and we could see that walking along that plank was going to be scary.’
So scary in fact that the FSA fighters who were with them insisted that only they should try
walking across it. Abdul Basit and his friends were told to stay where they were. Two of the fighters then scrambled along the plank and managed to make it safely through the open window opposite. As soon as they were across they started gathering up the books in preparation for bringing them back across the wobbly plank. Abdul Basit watched, heart in mouth, as they struggled to keep their balance: ‘It was all a bit like some sort of nerve-jangling action movie. As they walked along the plank it wobbled so badly that we were convinced they would fall. And it wasn’t only their safety we were worried about. One loud noise would alert the soldiers and that might have been the death of us all.’
Then in a moment of forgetfulness, one of Abdul Basit’s friends, unable to find the books he had been given to carry, broke one of the cardinal rules. He absent-mindedly turned on his powerful torch. Everyone froze. They might as well have had targets pinned to their chests. A light that bright made them sitting ducks for Syrian snipers. The FSA fighters were furious but knew that shouting at the man to switch off his torch would only make their plight worse. Instead they rushed towards him, intent on snatching the offending light from his hands. But by now the offender, having realised what he had done, was busy burying the torch deep in his pocket. Knowing they must all have been visible from hundreds of metres away, each man belatedly took cover behind the rear wall. They waited and listened for the crack of rifle fire. Eventually, having concluded that they had somehow not been seen, the men, now drenched in sweat, resumed their rescue of the books across the perilous wooden bridge.