Syria's Secret Library

by Mike Thomson

  Anas said that as soon as he had mentioned The Tears of Men, other treasured books flooded into his mind. It was not just being able to read and hold the ones he cherished most, he told me, but the memory of having all of them around him. ‘I miss so many books, but most of all, I miss the secret library itself, the place I read them all in. We were truly blessed to have had that throughout those terrible, dark times. In some ways I love it now even more than ever. I suppose it’s human nature to only truly miss what you have when it’s gone.’

  I asked Anas if he had managed to buy or borrow any books in Idlib. He sighed, as if defeated by the question. There were, he told me, several bookshops there that sold a wide variety of titles, but he could not afford to buy them. As for libraries, he added, he had yet to come across one. Sometimes it was possible to get hold of some children’s stories and school textbooks, but there was little else available unless you had money. To get around this problem, many of Anas’s friends from Daraya had been reading online PDF copies of publications, which they could also share with others.

  The line went quiet for a while. In the silence I could hear the sound of a motorbike followed by a deep boom that sounded like an explosion. I asked Anas what was happening and whether he was all right. He laughed, before reassuring me that it was only people next door doing some rebuilding work. That, he said, was the sound of creation, not destruction, a welcome change in a land that seemed to have forgotten what peace was like. As I was thinking about this I heard Anas rummaging around in the background. ‘I’m currently reading a great book that is helping me feel better,’ he told me. ‘It was written in 2012 by a man from Daraya. He was hit in his spine by shrapnel during an air raid and became paralysed.’ This did not, on the face of it, sound like the kind of book that would cheer anybody up. Anas told me that he had met the author briefly at the hospital where he worked as a volunteer. Doctors there had not been able to do much for the man, as they had few medicines and little in the way of the advanced equipment needed to care for him. It was clear that he would never be able to walk again, and perhaps not even manage to sit upright. His prospects seemed awful but, fortunately some of the man’s friends managed to get him smuggled out of Daraya so that he could get the medical treatment he needed. Now, living in Jordan, he had written a book. ‘Amazingly, given the fact that he was paralysed, this book is not about despair, it’s all about hope,’ said Anas. ‘In fact it’s called Mountains of Hope. The chapters have titles like: Don’t Be Sad, Don’t Give Up, Never Stop Smiling and so on, it’s very positive. On its front page are the words: “The lanterns of hope. If we lose hope we lose life.” His book is an inspiration to me.’

  I made a mental note to find out more about this man and his story. Meanwhile, I wanted to ask Anas more about living in an area that contained so many different extremist groups, some of which had links with al-Qaeda. ‘Of course, it is completely different here,’ he said, ‘but I have had no trouble so far. There is great symbolism attached to Daraya because of its long fight against the regime, so anyone from there is usually held in high regard in Idlib. Even the more extreme fighters tend to want to help rather than harass us.’

  Anas added that he and others from Daraya had also been doing their best to integrate with the local community. They had arranged to meet members of Idlib’s council, and were already developing a good relationship with some of them. Also, he said, there were many others in the area who, like people from Daraya, wanted President Bashar al-Assad’s ruthless regime replaced by a democratically elected government that promoted civil rights and freedom of speech. Anas sounded very tired but otherwise seemed to be bearing up well considering all he had been through since we last spoke. He warned me that Internet access in Idlib wasn’t much better than in Daraya, but we cheerfully agreed to speak again, technology permitting, in a few days’ time.

  On 3 October 2016, a text arrived from Sara Matar. It had been more than a month since I had last heard from her. I had tried to make contact on many occasions but the line would never connect. So I gave up on trying to call her and texted her a long list of questions in the hope she might be able to reply to those when she next got online. ‘Dear Mike,’ she wrote back. ‘Life here has made me forget many of my dreams. I have even begun to forget that I am a woman, with a past and memories and a family. Life here makes me feel that I am just a doll with no feelings. Your questions brought life to me again.’

  Like Anas, Abdul Basit and Muhammad, Sara was also in Idlib province, but deep in the countryside away from their base in the main town. She had settled in a camp near the Turkish border reserved for people from rebel-held places like Daraya. Bombing there by government planes was less common than in Idlib’s towns, but the area was still far from safe. In some ways, she wrote, living there was even more frightening than in bombed and besieged Daraya: ‘Here we live in fear of militant groups who often fight each other. We constantly worry about being caught in the crossfire or kidnapped.’

  To help me visualise the camp, Sara sent me a photo she had taken of it on her mobile phone. A sea of speckled canvas, thousands of sky-blue and white tents stretched to the hilly horizon. There were no trees, bushes or grass, just acres of reddish-brown stony soil that turned to dust in summer and got everywhere. It covered the washed clothes slung over makeshift washing lines, hung in the air like clouds of inanimate mosquitoes, and clung to the faces of little children. In winter, she told me, pools of water would litter the ground and the wind, with nothing to stand in its way, would whip across the barren landscape.

  There was comparative safety there, though, and some food and water, but this could never be a home, it was even colder and less comfortable than her bomb-damaged house in Daraya. ‘I still haven’t adjusted to life in Idlib,’ she wrote. ‘Sometimes, in my worst moments, I feel we are living the life of the dead here. I try to gather my strength, live in the present and understand the people around me. But inside of me, there is an emptiness. I hope this feeling will go away soon.’

  Sara went on to describe the fear she felt in her new and alien home. Before, although at constant risk from bombing and shelling, she at least had the company of people she knew and loved. They all shared the same goals, the same deprivation and the same hopes for the future. But here, in this rural exile, there was little such camaraderie or sense of purpose and she actually missed life in besieged Daraya. But it was the young children she had taught that she missed the most: ‘We would all sit together, sometimes night and day, while the bombs fell outside. I never felt afraid when I was caring for them. I even enjoyed it. We were so close. It saddens me deeply that most of the children I taught, and the colleagues I worked with, have been displaced by the war. I wish we were together again.’

  Like other evacuees I had spoken to, Sara talked of the rousing reception local people had given her convoy on arrival in Idlib. Everybody seemed to want to help. People offered to show her to her new home and offered her food and water, but Sara made it clear that she had more of an appetite for something to read. This, it seems, did not go down well: ‘When I asked the people who met us if they would give me books instead of food,’ she wrote, ‘they looked utterly shocked. I explained that I hoped to set up a small library, so that we could feed our brains as well as our bodies. They just stared at me. I remember one man saying: “How on earth can you ask for books when you’re a refugee with nothing? Come on, be serious now!”’

  Like Anas, Sara said she had been looking everywhere for a library, but had not yet found one and had resorted to trying to download PDF books from the Internet. This, she said, had proved hard, given the great difficulty of getting online, and even when she managed this she struggled to cope with the small print. Years of trying to read books in a dimly lit basement had, she believed, damaged her eyesight. All this was clearly not helping her state of mind. There was no secret library to escape to in Idlib, and there were few people she knew to talk to. Most of the children she had taught and longed to see again
had been sent to different camps, far from hers. Like her friends, she ached to see her family again, after nearly four years apart. Most of all, she said, she longed to hug her mother. ‘Sometimes,’ she wrote, ‘I wake in the night with a happy, warm feeling and can’t think why. Then I remember. I had dreamed that my mother was here with me.’

  That same evening in early October, a cool autumnal breeze jostled the late summer leaves, an early warning of darker nights to come in London. As rain began to fall I hugged the lapels of my jacket, chin on chest, walking faster. All around, the heavy rush-hour traffic fumed and honked, as weary London commuters struggled home. Just after I had crossed a busy road, a middle-aged man clutching a large carrier bag charged past me, shouting excitedly. Dropping the bag he threw out his arms as a grey-haired woman in front turned towards him. Screeches of delight followed as both hugged like long-lost lovers. After narrowly avoiding tripping over the abandoned bag, I stumbled into the cuddling couple. Both seemed oblivious to the collision, just as they were to the gusting wind and the driving rain. On regaining my balance I automatically mumbled a few words of apology, despite harbouring a grumble that it wasn’t actually my fault. Yet I felt strangely happy to be some part, albeit accidental and unnoticed, of this evidently heartfelt reunion. As I walked on home, I thought again of all those from Daraya, now refugees, who were desperate to be reunited with the ones they loved. The recent words of Abdul Basit were the first to come to mind: ‘The only member of my family that I’ve seen since the siege began four years ago,’ he told me, ‘is my little sister. She is five years younger than me and got married and went to live in Turkey. She came here to Idlib briefly for a few days soon after I arrived here. It was so wonderful. Yet this brief pleasure made me miss the rest of my family more than ever.’

  During the four years of siege in Daraya, Abdul Basit had been separated from his large and close family, but took comfort from still being in his home town, the place where he grew up with them all. Since being evacuated from Daraya, that link was gone, and he clearly felt the separation even more strongly than before. ‘I feel I hardly know who I am today, it’s as if I don’t have a past any more. I’m in exile from my own life, not only my home.’

  Like Sara’s parents, Abdul Basit’s mother and father were living in an area of Syria controlled by the Syrian government. Also like her, he feared that because he had stayed in a besieged rebel-held town and spoken openly of his hatred of the government, this would make him a ‘terrorist’ in the eyes of security services. He feared they were monitoring his family’s phones, so dared not call his parents in case this made them ‘terrorist’ suspects too. He sensed that his mother and father were proud of him, and comforted himself by remembering the understanding looks on their faces when he had told them he wanted stay in Daraya, as the regime began tightening the siege. There was pride in their eyes amid the tears and the fear. He told me how he missed them both, as well as his brothers and sisters, every minute of every day and prayed they would be reunited soon. Abdul Basit’s voice began to quaver with emotion. For the next minute or so he was unable to talk at all. Finally, he asked if we could leave the raw subject of his family to another time, before adding softly: ‘I hope this never happens to you, that you have to live without your sisters, brothers and parents. To know they are there, yet you can’t see them, you can’t even talk to them. It is so painful.’

  Keen to change the subject, I asked him if he had been able to buy any books since the last time we spoke. He told me he had acquired a copy of the Holy Quran and a book entitled Historical Men, both of which, he hoped, would help him further his education. This, he announced, was just the start. He was now scouring the streets for others. Books on history, business and economics were top of his shopping list, partly because he hoped to be able to finish his university degree. Though it seemed that Abdul Basit’s love of the lighter side of life, which first showed itself in his love of comics as a child, was as alive as ever. ‘Since I’m being open and honest with you,’ he said, ‘I must admit that I also like reading less serious material, too. For instance, good comedy books help take my mind off the hard life that I’m living in Idlib now. I love to laugh.’

  One of Abdul Basit’s favourite writers, he told me, is Aziz Nesin, a Turkish author who wrote satirical books about everyday life. Nesin also wrote amusing novels, but these tended to be too expensive for him to afford. Or at least, he then clarified, to cost more than he was willing to pay. There had been a sudden change in Abdul Basit’s voice, tinged with an air of excitement that had been missing before. For some time, he confided, he had been saving any money he could get his hands on for a very special purpose. Just for once, this did not involve books: ‘I can’t spend the little I have entirely on books, because I need to save up for a very big event in my life. Mike, I’m planning to get married. Everyone tells me that I’ll need money to do that, especially here. Unlike in Daraya, I don’t have relatives living nearby, so I can’t rely on help from anybody else. I’m hoping that my fiancée will soon be able to come to Idlib. Though I do worry about her safety. Getting here can be very dangerous.’

  So, that long-ago marital wish list Abdul Basit had drawn up, and those dangerous trips to visit his fiancée, had all been worth it. The young woman so specially selected for him by his mum and big sister, was hopefully to become his wife. That is, of course, if he could find a way of getting her safely to Idlib. An image came to mind of the rose he had tried to send her from besieged Daraya, which government soldiers had cut into pieces at a checkpoint. If his bride-to-be could find a safe passage to Idlib, it seemed certain that no checkpoint or siege would separate them again. But with the war tilting ever further in favour of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the odds were lengthening against such a fairy tale ending.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Having managed to trace many of those I’d come to know in Daraya, I was now intent on discovering what had happened to their beloved secret library. The omens did not look good. From what I gleaned from various sources, Daraya was now completely abandoned. All who lived there had been evacuated and only Syrian army soldiers were said to walk the streets. But, I wondered, had the soldiers discovered the secret library yet? In the hope of finding that out for myself, I applied to the Syrian authorities for a visa, along with permission to go to Daraya.

  Several weeks passed without any response and then, one bright and sunny day in early October 2016, my phone pinged. The text wasn’t from the Syrian government, which seemed determined to ignore my visa request, but Malik al-Rifaii. Now in Idlib, he had a very pertinent question for me. It read: ‘Have you heard what has happened to the library?’

  Ever since the evacuation I hadn’t heard any news about the fate of Daraya, never mind the secret library itself. Given that the only people likely to have access to it by this point were Syrian troops, any news seemed unlikely to be favourable. No, I told Malik, feeling distinctly uneasy, I hadn’t heard anything about the library. Had he? While I waited for his reply, which could take hours as he appeared to have gone offline, I typed the words ‘library’ and ‘Daraya’ into Google and hit return.

  The following CNN headline, dated 6 October 2016, immediately appeared: ‘Uncovering a secret underground library in Syria’. Could this, I wondered, be merely a late follow-up of my documentary on the library a few months before, or had something big just happened to it? I clicked on the video next to the brief description of the story and, after a short wait, it became clear that this was, indeed, an update. Film of bombs exploding in rubble-strewn streets was followed by what looked like very recent shots of a desolate city landscape, devoid of almost any signs of life. Then came scenes that appeared to be inside the secret library. At this point, CNN Senior International Correspondent Frederik Pleitgen revealed how his TV crew had been one of the first to be granted access to Daraya since the evacuation. He went on to say that as he was driving through the deserted town, he spotted men in uniforms carrying piles of b
ooks out of a basement. The camera followed their path into a dark, unlit room. Hundreds if not thousands of books came into view. Some still sat neatly on long wooden shelves, but others lay in messy piles on the floor. Outside, a pick-up truck laden with books was shown driving away, doubtless soon to return for more literary loot. Shocked and saddened, my eyes stayed glued to the screen. I was in no doubt about what I was looking at. The location of the treasured secret library was clearly secret no longer, and it had evidently been looted and destroyed. Once-adored books, some soiled by footprints, lay face-down and discarded on the floor, others were stacked in crates like two-a-penny trinkets at a car boot sale. This extraordinary collection of poetry and prose, saved from numerous bombed buildings under sniper fire, was being carted away. Built up over years with love and devotion, destroyed in hours, by a couple of squaddies with a pick-up truck.

  The sacking of Daraya’s secret library seemed not only heartless, but also made no obvious sense. While it may have earned those behind the looting a few dollars, what harm could this large collection of books have done to Assad’s regime? Many were textbooks, their contents instructive, rather than ideological or political, and those who created the library had been looking for ways to rebuild their nation, not destroy it. Not only that but they were gone anyway, and even if they managed to get back some day, it would surely be better from the regime’s point of view to have their opponents spending their time reading books, rather than picking up weapons.

  Eager to know more about what had happened, I called CNN’s head office and asked to speak to Frederik Pleitgen. I must confess to having had mixed emotions at this point. Firstly, I was frustrated that my request for a Syrian visa and access to Daraya had been completely ignored while CNN’s had been waved through. Also, due to a kind of journalistic pride, I have always felt uncomfortable asking other reporters for information on stories they had covered, but this was different. This was all about a place that the people I had become so fond of treasured more than any other. Added to all this was the concern that as a journalist from a rival news organisation I might not get much co-operation anyway. In the event, I need not have worried.