Syria's Secret Library

by Mike Thomson

  Once they had finally managed that job, they went on to the next one. This task looked even more difficult. The books that needed to be rescued were on the fourth floor of a tall, battered building. The problem was it had no usable stairs. It was one thing climbing up the crumbling exterior clinging to wires and shattered masonry, quite another coming down again with a pile of heavy books. But after a fair bit of thought, a solution was finally found after one of them spotted some blankets in the rubble. They tied these around their waist before slowly clawing their way up to the fourth floor. Then, after gathering up the books, they wrapped them inside the blankets, tied a knot around their haul, and then lowered the bundles through the holes in each floor. Arduous and hair-raising though it was, Abdul Basit remembered it as being a good night’s work: ‘Some of the books we got were quite amazing and very valuable. We were delighted.’

  But how, I wondered, did they choose which books to take? Or did Abdul Basit, Anas and their friends just collect whatever they found? ‘To be totally honest with you,’ Anas told me, ‘when we first started setting up the library we were more after quantity than quality. We felt like the more books we had the better, even if some of them were duplicates of ones we already had. But since then we’ve got fussier and now only take ones that we haven’t seen before. Among the books we value most are those which describe how people in other countries have dealt with traumas like ours. We hope that by reading these we can learn the best ways of rebuilding our nation when the fighting has stopped. They give us hope in dark days like these.’

  And of course there were surprises along the way. Anas remembered one particular mission when, in the midst of gathering the books they were suddenly brought to a halt. ‘One of the people with me shouted out, Hey guys, I’ve found treasure here! We all thought he must have come across a really interesting book and we turned around waiting to see what it was. But instead of proudly holding up some cherished work of literature, he was pointing to a large glass object on the ground. Look, he said, I found a jar full of honey! We all thought that was really funny. He had apparently found the honey jar carefully hidden behind some books.’

  Sometimes rather than having to go out and rescue books from all sorts of dangerous locations, the books would come to the secret library. This did not happen much at first, because only a small number of people knew of its existence, but Abdul Basit told me that when word about their literary sanctuary started to leak out, more and more books began to arrive at its door. There were many people in Daraya who shared the same view; that it was better to take their books to a place of safety, than to leave them at home where they were likely to be destroyed by bombs or the weather. ‘Many people have collections in their homes that they would like to share with others,’ Abdul Basit told me. ‘Most have few visitors now because it’s so dangerous to go out, so their books just sit there not being read by anyone. We assure all donors that meticulous records are being kept of where all the library’s books have come from and who their owners are. We put an identity number on the inside cover so they will be traceable if they are ever found outside the library and so whatever happens, we will always know who each book belongs to.’

  Some of the books in the secret library belonged to Abdul Basit’s family. His love of libraries stemmed from childhood, when friends and relatives would come calling, books in hand, at his family’s home. They would lend their favourite ones to his parents, who would lend them theirs in turn. Now Abdul Basit was determined to donate some of his family’s collection to the new library. Their old home had been bombed a few months earlier, but he went back and sifted through the ruins, putting any books that had survived into a large box. Some of the ones he found had belonged to his grandfather, whom he had always been close to, and it was to his home that Abdul Basit went next. His grandfather had left Daraya with his parents before the siege began, but they had managed to speak on the phone. ‘I asked my grandfather if I could take some of his collection to the library so that others could benefit from them. I promised that they would all be well cared for. He didn’t just agree to this, he was overjoyed. He praised all those involved with the secret library and said it would be a privilege to have his books there. I remember he once told me that one of the main measures of a person is how much they have learnt in life.’

  Many of these books were more than thirty years old, but were in very good condition. Abdul Basit told me how proud he felt, knowing that the entire collection had been read by all his family. First by his grandfather who had chosen to buy them, then his mother and father, and most recently by Abdul Basit and his three brothers. And now, he said proudly, ‘all in Daraya can read them too.’

  Having seen photos of the secret library sent to me by Abdul Basit and Malik al-Rifaii, I was interested to know where everything in it had come from. For instance, what about the rows and rows of shelves I could see in the pictures? Some were of dark polished wood, while others appeared to have been hewn from a rougher material. Anas told me that much of the wood had been pulled from walls, ceiling struts and the staircases of gutted public buildings, shops and other businesses. In fact, in many cases, the wood had come from the very shelves that the collected books had been sitting on when they were found. Abdul Basit was particularly keen on this, telling me: ‘We tried whenever possible to bring with us the shelving that the books were on when we rescued them. It felt right to do this because it meant the books would continue to be displayed in the same way their owner had stored them. This, of course, helped solve our shelving shortage but we also did it out of respect for the people from whose homes these books had come.’

  In the early days of the library, the group was very hesitant about taking larger items from people’s houses, even though they had been abandoned and lay in ruins. They felt guilty because the furniture did not belong to them, but then they decided they could treat the furniture like they had the books. The names and addresses of owners were written or carved underneath, and the group did their best to contact the owners to tell them what they had done, and check they were happy about it.

  I asked Anas how he and his friends had managed to transport these, often-large, pieces of furniture to the library. He told me that when possible they borrowed any car they could get and loaded the tables and chairs onto it. This left me with the rather surreal picture of various dilapidated old cars being driven around war-torn Daraya with couches, comfy chairs and desks piled on their roofs. One can only presume that some of this activity must have been spotted by the regime’s snipers, who infested parts of the town. What would they have made of it all?

  What too, I wondered, did others in Daraya make of this devotion to collecting books? In a town whose inhabitants were virtually starving, did some not think that these young, dynamic men should be putting their energies into collecting food instead? I put this to Anas who looked at me down the flickering video link as if I had asked the most ridiculous question possible: ‘Mike, I haven’t come across anyone who has said that,’ he told me. ‘And had they done so, I would have told them that just like the body needs food, the soul needs books.’

  Not, I thought, an answer I could argue with.

  Chapter Four

  The creation of Daraya’s secret library at a time when Syria was being torn apart by civil war may seem bizarre. Yet writing and a love of literature have infused the region’s cultural history for thousands of years. A passion for poetry and prose and the exploration of just about every subject known to man can be traced back millennia. And, perhaps even more significantly, what is now Syria was once home to the world’s first library, established around 4500 years ago–the Royal Library of the ancient kingdom of Ebla.9

  This grand, early library was not home to books as we know them. Paper was only used for such purposes from around the second century AD in China. Instead, the first ordered collections of literature were engraved on clay tablets. Thousands of these were discovered in the palace archives of the ancient city of Ebla, in what i
s now northern Syria.10 They were found in the mid-1970s by an Italian team of archaeologists during excavations at Tell Mardikh, about thirty-five miles south-west of Aleppo. The team unearthed a collection of more than 1800 complete clay tablets as well nearly 5000 fragments. Each one had been carefully arranged, kept upright on wooden shelves and appeared to have been grouped by subject. Clay tags found with the tablets suggest that this reference system was quite sophisticated. The library consisted of two rooms–one housing bureaucratic records, while the other was home to religious writing, literature and texts used for teaching scribes.11

  The tablets were produced using a calamus, a triangle-shaped instrument able to make characters in moist clay. They revealed a wealth of information about trade and the production of goods that were exported at the time, including different kinds of beer. Soon after 2250 BC, the world’s oldest recorded library was engulfed by fire but fortunately, the heat of the blaze acted like a kiln, preserving the writing on those tablets that hadn’t already been baked. Once discovered, the tablets were moved to museums in Idlib, Aleppo and Damascus.

  Yet preserving life and literature in Daraya in the summer of 2013 was increasingly difficult. As autumn approached, life under siege grew harder by the day. Many had thought that after bombarding their town for months, the pro-Assad forces would pack up and leave, having had their revenge. Yet the surrounding sea of green-uniformed men showed no signs of retreating.

  When, during a brief ceasefire, thousands decided to flee to the neighbouring town of al-Moadamyeh, just to the west, many never made it to safety. Local residents told me that those who passed through government checkpoints–mostly young men of fighting age–were harassed, attacked and detained. The old city of Homs and towns in Eastern Ghouta near Damascus were in a similar situation. Not that pro-government forces were the only ones using siege as a tactic. For more than three years, mainly Sunni Muslim rebel fighters besieged the Shia towns of Foua and Kafriya, to the south-west of Aleppo. As in Daraya, this blockade prevented most food, medicines and other aid reaching tens of thousands of people. They too were regularly shelled, though the rebels had no planes to bomb them with. Meanwhile opposition fighters inside Aleppo, which was split between government and opposition forces, sometimes prevented supplies from reaching regime-controlled areas of the city. In an effort to stop such practices the UN called on all sides to allow the transit of food and medical supplies to civilians. This plea was to fall on deaf ears.

  For those who remained in Daraya, life was grim and unrelenting. And yet, there was a formidable sense of resistance to the besieging army, and a huge collective purpose in keeping the town going. Many local men had stayed behind when their families had fled after the massacre, and the younger ones had joined the rebel fighters, taking up front-line positions against the far more powerful besieging government forces. Others set up classes for children, worked on local farms to help alleviate the increasing shortages of food, or did whatever they could to help keep water and electricity supplies running. And there were those who dedicated themselves to alerting journalists such as myself to what was happening inside their beleaguered town.

  Among this group was a former English teacher, Muhammad Shihadeh. I first came across Muhammad on social media and his comments stood out as particularly measured and articulate. There was a gravitas and weight to his words. This impression was further borne out by a photo I saw of him: a man in his mid-thirties, with a small beard and thinning black hair, his eyes filled with a steely determination. He had the look of the kind of teacher you liked and admired at school–kind and good-natured, but not a person to cross. And in the early days of the siege, he had indeed taught English to both children and adults and became widely known as ‘The Professor’, though this sobriquet applied to his approach to life rather than his job. He was a man people of all ages would come to for help and guidance. ‘I would describe Muhammad as a very mature person,’ Anas Habib told me. ‘He is very far-sighted in the way he sees and understands life around him. He’s an extremely calm person. He even walks calmly and sits calmly. He’s the sort of person who wins your respect as soon as you meet him, it’s almost automatic. He’s got this sort of vibe around him.’

  It was that vibe that made me a little wary of contacting Muhammad at first. I worried that he might find my investigation into the town’s secret library rather inconsequential, given the bombs and mortars falling from the skies and the hunger plaguing his community. With that thought in mind, I began our first conversation by asking him how the people of Daraya were coping with the ongoing siege. In a surprisingly relaxed and friendly tone, Muhammad told me that many of the town’s best educated citizens had chosen not to cope with the situation at all, and had ‘got out’ while they could. ‘Many people chose to leave,’ he said, no hint of recrimination in his voice, ‘but I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want my town to be cleared of all its people. That is what has happened elsewhere. People have been forced out by starvation and siege, the same weapons that are being used against us. So although it’s very hard, although it’s very dangerous, I have to stay. There are many strong people, beautiful souls, who are carrying on here, despite everything we are living through.’

  Muhammad feared that if everyone like him left, Daraya would be changed for ever–not just the fabric of the town, its shops, schools, homes and farms, but the very spirit of the place. And as every aspect of life had been stripped to its most basic, his admiration of, and pride in, the strength of those remaining, particularly the farmers, rang clear. ‘Many farmers have been killed or injured going into their fields to harvest herbs or crops,’ Muhammad told me. ‘A lot of them are shot dead by snipers or blown up by shells. Many are maimed, often having to have their hands or legs cut off because of shrapnel wounds.’ And yet, he continued, many farmers still went to their fields, often under the cover of darkness, to harvest whatever they could. The monumental risks they took were helping to keep the town’s people alive.

  Those remaining in Daraya just tried to cope and get on with their lives, no matter how dangerous it was. So children would be sent off to school in the morning even though their mothers know they might not come back. Muhammad Shihadeh spoke about the extraordinary resilience of local people. How during even the most desperate times they carried on, sometimes with the most amazing good cheer: ‘Often when we get back with the body of someone who was killed during the day, we have to wait until it’s dark to be able to bury them. It is a very long wait for their grieving loved ones, but on many occasions that time is filled with laughter as well as tears. We all remember the best things about our departed relative or friend, and sometimes we laugh out loud. Maybe it’s the only way to cope with what we are going through.’

  Food, of course, was an ongoing problem. More so, as the siege went on. In the early days of the war, most families had been able to stockpile reserves of food in their basements. The new town council, created to help the community cope with the siege, also built up large public food stores. Various grains were poured into sturdy containers to make them less susceptible to rodents, some fruits were dried and delicious dates were preserved in salty water. These supplies were aimed especially at helping those locals who had little money and no family links to local farmers. But, as Muhammad explained, by the summer of 2013 these food banks had begun to run dry. Meals had become rare and diminutive, and most people would eat no more than once a day. As stomachs grew ever more empty, people began adding grass and leaves to their meagre brews. Such supplements lacked any nutritional value but they gave people the temporary illusion of being full. Seven people had already died from malnutrition-related conditions, a fact that brought Muhammad close to tears when he told me. When I asked him how people were managing to survive, he replied that, in their characteristically resourceful and defiant way, the inhabitants had turned Daraya into a sort of giant allotment. ‘Just about everyone grows crops wherever they can,’ he said. ‘They spread soil on balconies, rooftops, b
ack yards and even the floors of their homes when there’s enough light from an outside window. Lots of people have also planted parsley, mint, coriander and vegetables in small areas of open land around the town.’ Sadly, he told me, where once the most sought-after grapes in Syria had grown in abundance, there was now nothing but withered vines.

  Defiant and determined people came up with ways to grow food, and to stretch or supplement what was available. But the growing lack of medicine and medical equipment presented an even greater challenge. The rising number of injuries from the bombing and fighting was already stretching Daraya’s medical services to the limit and basic materials such as blood, antibiotics, anaesthetics and even bandages were fast becoming unobtainable. This was exacerbated when pro-Assad forces bombed a medical storehouse; a tactic used by the regime against other besieged areas in Syria, along with the targeting of hospitals. This, as well its refusal to allow aid agencies into Daraya, was designed to help break the morale of those who had stayed.

  It was a dreadful situation to watch, week after week, month after month, year after year. Through my contacts, I could listen to people telling me about the nightmare they were living through, and relay that to the outside world, but it seemed to be doing little, if anything, to help them on the ground. I talked to various aid agencies, as well as the UN, reminding them of the plight of all those besieged in Daraya, but the answers were always the same. We cannot take food or medicines into besieged towns, they would tell me, unless the Syrian government agrees to allow the convoys through their lines. And this was something that Assad’s regime rarely did. They had deployed this medieval tactic with the simple aim of starving and bombarding their opponents into submission, and so allowing aid in would defeat that very purpose. Yet the majority of people living in Daraya–and other besieged towns–were civilians, not fighters. At the end of conversations with people like Anas, Abdul Basit and Muhammad Shihadeh, I could only say inadequate and somewhat meaningless phrases such as ‘look after yourself’ or ‘keep safe’. There was nowhere safe in Daraya. Sometimes I could hear bombs and shells exploding in the background, but those I spoke to just carried on and made little of it, and the distance between us seemed to melt away. Yet we were living in two very different worlds.