Syria's Secret Library

by Mike Thomson

  Another tactic used by the regime was to do what they could to limit access to something everyone needs: clean drinking water. Before the siege, almost every home in Daraya had been connected to the mains water supply but the government wasted no time in wrecking that. When word got around that the water was still flowing in one neighbourhood, people from all over Daraya would rush there with barrels, buckets, bottles and every kind of receptacle, before staggering off home with their precious cargo. Most made frequent trips knowing that such good fortune was unlikely to last for long, which indeed it did not. The government would soon cut supplies to the lucky area, leaving locals with nothing but water from wells. Many of these had been hastily dug and their water, though good for washing in, was dangerous to drink without boiling first. And to boil water, you need electricity and by now there was rarely any available because the mains supplies had also been cut. Some people, too thirsty to wait, drank the well water anyway, only to come down with all sorts of stomach problems, some of them serious.

  Without power or fuel, it was impossible to run much-needed generators. Without these, the besieged town’s hospitals struggled to care for the injured and sick. But the ever-inventive people of Daraya managed to come up with their own solution. Anas, who had studied civil engineering during his all-too-brief student days, told me: ‘We made a kind of fuel from melting old plastic containers, most of which were too full of holes to carry water any more. We broke them down into small pieces, put them into a barrel and then heated the contents on a fire to a very high temperature. After a while it would turn into a kind of oil which we could use for fuel.’

  I could imagine the terrible smell, and the thick black smoke that would have accompanied this process, but such factors must have seemed a price well worth paying in order to get the generators going. These enabled well water to be boiled more easily and provided a few hours of heating and light for hospitals and homes during the long, grim nights under siege. We mostly think of Syria as a hot country, where keeping cool is the prime necessity, but that is only half the story. In winter, temperatures can drop below freezing and life can be very hard without any heating. Anas told me about a day earlier that year when he had been forced to shelter from the bombing in a ditch near his home: ‘I had been in the ditch for the whole day,’ he said, discomfort etched on his face, ‘and I had to stay there because of the heavy shelling. When the bombardment finally stopped, I crawled out and went back to my house. It felt like my limbs had frozen. I lay under three blankets but I couldn’t warm up. Hours later my feet were still like ice; the cold seemed to have penetrated right into my bones.’

  Under such ferocious conditions, it would have been easy for the people of Daraya to fall into a dog-eat-dog type of existence, where only the strong survived. Yet there was clearly a concerted effort among those remaining to watch out for each other; for the children, the elderly and the badly injured. Inevitably, some people, who had friends or relatives working on farms, had more access to food than others, yet from what I heard, most shared their supplies with those who were struggling. And when the planes halted their orgy of destruction, neighbours would come out of their basements and help clear up the streets, removing debris from people’s kitchens and front rooms–a scene of devastation that was a sad reminder of calm and settled family life blown apart in seconds. Clearing up put people in extreme danger, but that didn’t stop them trying to make homes and streets safer for each other. And while they were out, people would also look for places to plant seeds, even if few of them ended up growing.

  Living under ongoing bombardment was unbelievably stressful. At any moment, you, a loved one or friend, might be killed. But, as Muhammad told me, people developed ways to help keep themselves calm at such times: ‘Some people try to control their fears with little exercises that keep their minds busy, such as counting how many shells they hear each day. Others guess what time the helicopters will come over their homes, or when they think bombs are about to drop, which they judge by listening to the sound the helicopter’s engine is making. We all try to deal with this nightmare in our own different ways. Otherwise we would go insane.’

  These individual efforts to look after the community helped give everyone a sense of purpose, but as life became more fractured and fraught, a more co-ordinated plan was needed to keep the town running. As mentioned before, Daraya had created a new town council. This example of wartime civic democracy was in itself unusual, as its leaders had been democratically elected, a first in Syria for more than four decades. In addition, the council’s 120 members and representatives were selected by ballot every six months. And despite the siege, despite the incessant bombing and snipers, despite the lack of food, fuel and medicine, the council somehow managed to carry on functioning. Not only that, but it also worked in partnership with the FSA, whose fighters reported to the council, so in Daraya, it was the civilian leaders who were making most of the local decisions, not the men with guns. A rare situation in times of conflict.

  Daraya’s council had various departments, each with its own responsibilities, although they all co-operated with one another. In this way the roads were regularly cleared of debris; goods from bombed shops were distributed to those in need; rubbish was collected and, when possible, safe drinking water was delivered to people’s homes. The council ran workshops that taught people how to repair their cars, though with little fuel for vehicles these became somewhat redundant; a sewing service for repairing clothes; a relief registration office; a soup kitchen; three primary schools and a medical clinic. All pretty remarkable at the best of times, never mind during a siege. I think that what surprised and touched me most was the work the council carried out in repairing the windows and doors of bomb-damaged homes. An estimated 60 per cent of Daraya’s buildings had already been either totally or partly destroyed, and that number was growing every day. Yet here were dedicated council workers busily replacing the windows and doors of homes that might not even be standing the next day.

  Daraya’s council also ran its own media department, watched over by Muhammad. Its primary job was to document human rights abuses by the regime, and to spread word of the town’s plight. With his excellent English, Muhammad was able to alert the outside world to what was happening–when it was willing to listen. The hope was that international outrage might persuade President Assad to stop the bombing and allow aid convoys in.

  The Syrian government would doubtless have liked to cut Daraya’s communications with the outside world. In fact, I had often wondered how people there had been able to stay online, given the terrible destruction all around them. From what Abdul Basit told me, their secret was down to an odd combination of luck, ingenuity, silver foil and a pan lid. ‘In areas of Daraya that are close to three nearby towns,’ he said, ‘we can get the Internet because of the mobile phone networks operating there. But unfortunately these barely reach central areas of the town, so we’ve had to invent a technique of boosting the very weak signal we get. This involves taking the top from a pan, covering that in silver foil and then drilling two holes through it. We then place the lid on the roof of a building and feed a silver wire through each hole, before trailing the wires all the way down to the basement. We then place our phone next to the silver wire and this is how we manage to get online.’ All I can say is that it certainly worked. Although there were many times when I could not get through, on some occasions the line was so good we even managed to talk over video links. I don’t think this book could ever have been written if it weren’t for the ever-resourceful Abdul Basit’s silver foil and pan lids.

  But despite the council’s attempts to reach out, few in Daraya still had much hope of outside help as 2013 drew to a close. After all, nobody had intervened the year before, after one of the worst massacres of the war. The rebel cause was dealt another blow on 11 December 2013 when the United States and UK suspended ‘non-lethal’ support for the Western-backed FSA in northern Syria after reports that an alliance of Islamist rebels h
ad seized some FSA bases. The fear was that arms given to moderate FSA rebels might now fall into the hands of extremists linked to al-Qaeda. Despite this, Muhammad showed no signs of bitterness. Instead he busied himself with the council’s website, putting up photos of the devastation that he had taken with his much-prized SLR camera. He told me: ‘At least I feel I am doing something useful to help the situation.’

  The work of the council was vital, ensuring there was at least some food to eat, water to drink and emergency fuel for the hospital. While these were vital to keep people alive, other less practical things were also needed to boost morale, especially among children and young people. With this thought in mind many locals volunteered to get the town’s mini football league running again. The people of Daraya had always been passionate about football, but the league had become yet another casualty of the siege. All that changed when local youngsters decided to start playing again. They split themselves into a range of different teams and then drew up a fixture list. Most matches were held at the town’s largest school, even though it was badly damaged and did not have a grass pitch to play on. Muhammad told me that the games would take place–bombing, shelling and snipers permitting–on a large, hard surface just behind the main building. There was even a trophy for the winning side.

  Football-mad youngsters often used breaks in the bombing to resume their roadside matches, and school yards echoed with the sound of running feet, excited yells and balls being kicked. Nor were the people of Daraya going to let bombers and snipers keep them from getting fit. One well-attended gym near the centre of town provided a range of basic equipment including dumbbells, weights and a treadmill. For less sporty children there were singing classes in both Arabic and English and, movingly, some of these sessions were videoed and posted online.

  Muhammad told me how he and his friends also did their best to enjoy themselves whenever possible. When there was bombing, they would spend evenings gathered together in somebody’s basement, or chatting outside when the skies were clear. Sometimes they would sing old pro-democracy chants dating back to the 2011 protests, or belt out traditional folk songs. This, he explained, helped people rekindle memories of life before the siege, generating ‘a mixture of nostalgia, excitement, sadness and happiness, all at the same time. It is another thing that helps our people get through.’

  Like Abdul Basit, Muhammad wasn’t medically trained, but in between his work for the council and the community, he too spent much of his time helping out at the local hospital, doing what he could for the surgeons and doctors. The rest of his time, it seemed, regardless of the carnage around him, was spent doing the usual household chores. ‘I live with around ten people in a shared house,’ he told me. ‘I do the washing, which is always piling up, and then spend time in long queues to get food for our daily meal. We all take it in turns to do the cleaning, washing-up or repairs to the house. We have to do most of these things during the hour or so a day when we have electricity from the generator.’

  It is strange to picture everyday life carrying on as normal in times of siege and war. Obviously it has to, although the mundane tasks are hardly the sort of scenes you read about in historic accounts. When I mentioned this to Muhammad, he didn’t react. All I heard was silence. Just when I was beginning to regret having made such an apparently silly comment, he smiled and said: ‘War is only the superficial face that you see first. Underneath that, there is so much humanity, so much else taking place. There may be death but there is also normal life here too.’

  Muhammad was a great supporter of the secret library and helped on many of the trips to rescue books. He had experienced the repressive censorship of the Assad regime when at primary school. He and his classmates were only allowed to read officially ‘approved’ books, and even these were in limited supply. The situation had improved when he reached high school, but even then certain subjects, or elements of them, were kept off of the syllabus. ‘We had plenty of history books,’ Muhammad told me, ‘but these all dealt with ancient history. There was nothing about more recent events in Syria. In the classroom, we would learn about the glorious old days of Islam, but when it came to questions about contemporary history, there was complete silence. We would never get answers to our questions. The teacher would just pass over the subject very quickly.’

  Even when he reached university, Muhammad continued, it was impossible to study recent Syrian history or politics properly. Books on such subjects were simply not available and lectures on them non-existent. The government had informants all over the university who looked out for anyone reading ‘subversive’ books, or involved in what were considered subversive activities or conversations. This kind of surveillance was backed by the secret police who kept photographic evidence of those taking part. Many students were later arrested and Muhammad knew of others who were refused their graduation certificates after completing their degrees. They were never given any explanation, effectively making their several years of intensive and demanding study worthless.

  The censorship didn’t just apply in schools or universities, but permeated society; so much so that, ‘unfortunately, it became self-censorship,’ Muhammad said. ‘People knew where the line was and would therefore not buy or sell books that clearly crossed it. They simply avoided publications that would not have been approved by the regime. This was the case whether the books were Syrian or foreign.’

  Like Muhammad, members of the secret library group had mostly known only repression and censorship, so it was important to them that their library contained a wide range of books. During a call with Anas, he told me: ‘We don’t ban any books. We are open to those on all subjects. We believe that by excluding books we may not agree with, we would just be helping to raise ignorance. If we want to sharpen the intellect of our generation and their understanding of the world, we need to let them think for themselves. We even have some “explicit” books here, containing information on sexual interaction and how sexual intercourse takes place.’ Such literature, he explained, was kept on the highest shelves for married couples or those who were officially engaged. If readers wanted to borrow these books, they would need to speak to one of the library staff first. Presumably, I thought, not fourteen-year-old Amjad, who at less than five foot tall would struggle to reach them.

  Abdul Basit, who had joined the conversation, expressed pride in one particular book-rescuing mission at a Christian church in Daraya: ‘Some of the building was still on fire when we got there. The flames had become so fierce that the firefighters with us had to stop to deal with the blaze. When we eventually managed to get into the main part of the church we found a room in the back filled with boxes and boxes of assorted religious books, many of them bibles. Despite the fire we managed to get all of them out of the church to safety. Some are now in this library. It doesn’t matter to us that they are Christian books rather than Muslim ones. Whether they were in a church or a mosque, we were just pleased to save them.’

  I was delighted to hear this story. I knew that Abdul Basit and his library friends were all religious, and I feared that their generally very tolerant attitude to life might not extend to this issue. But clearly this was not the case. Divisions over religion in Syria, as has been the case in so many other parts of the world, have been the cause of so much bloodshed. Whether it’s Sunni Muslims against Shia Muslims in the Middle East, Protestants against Catholics in Northern Ireland, or Christians against Muslims elsewhere in the world, the result has been the same.

  The discussion I’d had with the men about censorship also resonated deeply with me, especially Muhammad’s regret that after a time people began to self-censor, avoiding publications they might previously have had access to. Given the brutality of the Syrian government’s security forces, it did not surprise me that most people behaved in this way. Decades of repression were bound to have had a huge impact. I still marvel at the courage of the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets right across North Africa and the Middle East during the Arab S
pring, bent on deposing all-powerful dictators. They must have known what would follow if their protests failed, yet they still went ahead.

  As the people who compiled Daraya’s secret library told me, being found with a book disapproved of by the Syrian government could lead to a jail term or worse. That is part of the reason they all so enjoyed being free to read whatever they liked, even though gathering the books under fire could have cost them their lives.

  History has some stirring examples of how societies combated the censorship of literature. In Germany during the 1930s, Nazis tried to confiscate all Jewish books and newspapers, as well as anything critical of their ideology. They did not destroy them all, however, as Hitler planned to create a museum filled with books and artefacts of what would be the extinct Jewish race.12 In response Jews set up secret libraries in the ghettoes of occupied Europe, many of which were underground. The secret library of the Theresienstadt ghetto had over 60,000 books.13 And in Vilna (Vilnius), teenager Yitskhok Rudashevski wrote with great pride about the day the library loaned its 100,000th book, on 13 December 1942: ‘Today the ghetto celebrated the circulation of the one hundred thousandth book in the ghetto library. The festival was held in the auditorium of the theatre. The reading of books in the ghetto is the greatest pleasure for me. The book unites us with the future, the book unites us with the world.’14