Syria's Secret Library

by Mike Thomson

  Amjad sounded quite emotional and there was a pause before he seemed ready to continue our conversation. His thoughts then turned to what might have happened to all the books that were looted from the library. He wondered, somewhat optimistically, whether some of their owners might have seen them on sale and demanded them back. After all, he pointed out, their names and addresses were written inside the covers. I doubted if he truly believed that might happen. But there again, Amjad is clearly an optimistic boy who believes anything is possible: ‘If the secret library is rebuilt,’ he told me, ‘I can tell you I will be the first person in line to go in. I would love my old job back! I would soon have the library just like it was before. It would be looking good and organised in no time, I promise you.’

  When I asked young Amjad what plans he had for the future, he simply replied: ‘I haven’t yet given it much thought.’ It struck me, somewhat sadly, that he was more focused on reliving the past than planning his future. I could only hope that with so much of his life still to come he would soon find another project or cause to pour his boundless energy and enthusiasm into. As a voice in the background began calling his name, Amjad made me promise to come and see him when I was next in Syria, before hurriedly saying goodbye.

  A fortnight later, near the beginning of November 2016, I got a text from Sara telling me that she had managed to find a place near her displacement camp, where she could get online more easily than before and was happy to talk if I would like to call her. Delighted to hear this, I replied immediately, saying that I would try and ring her that afternoon. The first thing I noticed on hearing Sara’s voice was how much happier she seemed than the last time we spoke. And before I had even asked any questions about her family, she told me: ‘I got to see my mother at last! She came and visited me, here at the camp. I still can’t quite believe that it happened.’ After Sara had been evacuated to Idlib province, her mother promised to find a way to come and see her there. Sara wasn’t sure how serious this pledge was, or whether it was even feasible for her mother to make this long journey, but she had lived in hope. ‘It was like living in a different world when she finally arrived here in Idlib. I was so happy, so very, very happy. Throughout the seven days she was here I kept shouting out, Mother, Mother, Mother! I repeated that word again and again while I looked at her. It was me trying to get used to the idea that my dear mother was actually here, in person, with me.’

  It was marvellous to hear Sara sounding so happy. What an unbelievable transformation this was. Sara described how she had been in phone contact with the driver of her mother’s car throughout her long journey from Damascus. It took them twenty-four hours to get to Idlib because there were so many military checkpoints on the way. She told me that every time she heard that her mother’s car was approaching one of these, her heart would start thumping and her mouth would go dry. At any point she might be arrested or turned around. There was danger, too, in between these posts. By this point in the war, numerous militia groups roamed the countryside, many of them little more than bandits, intent on kidnapping or robbery. Even at this stage, Sara found it hard to imagine her mother actually arriving. ‘I had come to wonder whether I still really had a mother,’ she said. ‘You see, I hadn’t seen her for so long or heard her voice. It had been years since we hugged or even talked on the phone.’

  Every time Sara was reassured by the driver that they had got through one checkpoint, she simply transferred her worries to the next one they would meet. As the time of her mother’s expected arrival neared, she waited patiently, listening for her phone to ring or for a knock on the door. Then, when the light began to fade, her fears grew. Driving in wartime Syria was often scary enough in broad daylight, but far more dangerous after dark. Finally, just when she had become convinced that something terrible had happened, Sara saw her mother’s car pull up outside her home: ‘It was completely dark when she got here. There was no light anywhere. So when I opened the door of the minivan cab I couldn’t see her at all. But that didn’t matter. I just followed the sweet smell of the scent she always wears. I was so overcome with emotion that I couldn’t think of anything to say. All I could do was touch her face, over and over again. I became very, very emotional. We both did. We could have drowned in each other’s tears, we cried so much. All night long I would wake up and touch her face. I had to be sure that it wasn’t a dream, that she really was here with me.’

  The following morning, Sara continued, she looked at her mother and thought how much older she seemed since she had last seen her. Gently stroking her face she told her how much her features seemed to have changed. With tears welling in her eyes, her mother replied that their long separation was the cause of that, it had aged her so much. Over the next few days they did their best to make up for lost time by talking, walking and just being together.

  Finally, the time came for her mother to return to Damascus: ‘I knew she had to go,’ Sara said, ‘but I was terribly sad. When her car drove away I felt I was in shock. I found it really hard to handle my emotions.’

  As her mother’s car drove off on the long journey back to Damascus, Sara said she kept staring at it, trying to imprint the image on her mind. She could then conjure it up whenever she doubted that the visit had actually happened. I sensed the smile on Sara’s face fade away, just like the disappearing car her mother had been in. Memories of being separated all over again had brought her close to tears.

  Despite Sara’s anguish and grief, there was no evident self-pity, just a lingering, stoic sadness and a determination to carry on, come what may. I wondered if her situation was made worse by the fact that this devoted teacher no longer had young pupils to care for. It seemed that calming their fears had helped soothe hers too. Then a smile returned to her voice. Sara told me how a small number of children she had taught in Daraya had recently arrived in Idlib with their families. Although they had been dispersed in different camps, some quite a distance from hers, it had, nonetheless, greatly lifted her spirits. ‘I don’t get to see them often. But when I do it makes me so happy. I’m filled with hope again. At the same time, I do feel sorry for them. We can’t give them the many things that we could in Daraya. This is because the community here is quite divided. Not everyone thinks the same way as we did back home. But there isn’t much we can do about this. We are migrants now, we are refugees.’

  By late 2016, Sara was one of more than six million people inside Syria displaced by the war, a number swollen by the tens of thousands evacuated from besieged Eastern Aleppo, after it fell to government forces in December that year. A further five million Syrians had fled the country and become refugees abroad.

  These are mind-boggling numbers, so big that it is hard to visualise the human beings involved. While much is made in the West of the huge number of refugees who have fled their country, I find it even more incredible that the six million people displaced inside Syria decided to stay. People like Sara, Abdul Basit, Anas and their friends, who somehow retain hope that one day they will be able to go home.

  After Daraya was evacuated I feared I might never again hear from those I had become so close to. People who had trustingly shared their darkest thoughts and brightest dreams with a faraway stranger they had never actually met. Yet, rather amazingly, I had managed to get back in touch with just about everybody. All had been deeply saddened to leave behind their treasured secret library and then to hear of its destruction. Yet as we talked it became clear that even though their adored library was gone, the spirit that created it and the inspiration it brought clearly lived on inside them all.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Over the next months, I would get random texts from Anas, Abdul Basit, Sara and others telling me about what was happening where they were, as well as birthdays and all kinds of other personal news. One of the most moving and happy of these messages had come from Abdul Basit in late November 2016, though unfortunately I didn’t see it until nearly two months after he sent it. The problem was that he had both changed his num
ber and sent it via the Telegram app, which I rarely monitored, instead of the usual WhatsApp. He had written simply: ‘Mike, my fiancée finally made it to Idlib and we plan to get married.’ Feeling absolutely delighted, I sent him what was by now, a very belated text congratulating them both. Far from taking offence at my slow response Abdul Basit immediately texted back a string of emojis, from thumbs up and big red hearts to beaming faces and flowers. I loved the way he and his friends were so affectionate and supportive of each other, as this must have been enormously valuable for them all on arrival in alien Idlib. And without their close-knit network I probably wouldn’t have been able to keep in contact with the group for so long, or found them all again after the somewhat chaotic evacuation of Daraya.

  One illustration of this was being reunited with Abu Malik al-Shami, Daraya’s very own ‘Banksy’, who was among those evacuated to Idlib. His arrival was relayed to me by Malik who had asked him to contact me. That same afternoon I received a photo of one of his pictures. Emblazoned on a crumbling white wall, near the town of Jisr al-Shughur, deep in the Idlib countryside, was a large tree. Its trunk was shaped like a rifle, with a subtly drawn trigger halfway up. Every leaf that sprouted from its twisting branches bore a one-word message such as ‘hope’, ‘love’, ‘honesty’, ‘ethics’, ‘charity’ and ‘justice’, and beneath the tree, in dark-blue letters fringed in white, was the word ‘Daraya’. Abu Malik had clearly lost no time in getting down to work in his new home and once more his artistic skills were being used to both raise local morale and oppose President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But, as he told me over the phone the next day, some in his new home town did not appreciate his work, or the views of his friends: ‘Achieving our goals here is proving more difficult than we had imagined. Not just because of the ongoing war but also because of the numerous armed groups in this city. Many of them don’t share our vision of the revolution and often fight among themselves.’

  In Abu Malik’s view most of these armed groups had little interest in what was happening, or had happened, elsewhere in Syria. Their sole concern seemed to be to keep control of as much of Idlib as possible. But Abu Malik insisted that he was not letting this hold him back. He was making plans to further the revolution by doing more street art all over the province. As in Daraya, some people in Idlib who had heard about his work, had invited him to paint his murals on their walls and buildings. Most lived in areas where there had been intensive bombing and believed the drawings would help generate hope, just as they had in Daraya. Abu Malik was also in the process of teaming up with artists elsewhere in the country: ‘I recently got in touch with some illustrators in other areas of Syria,’ he told me, ‘and we now have a project aimed at creating more projects like mine. We want to encourage others elsewhere to do the kind of drawings I did in Daraya. There will also be a mixture of slogans, big banners, writings and paintings reflecting the revolution. My work will be inspired by daily life here in Idlib.’

  Abu Malik was also making plans for the city of Idlib itself, where he was preparing to launch a big project, with some local artists, aimed at bringing a whole new look to the town. ‘I can’t wait to get started,’ he said, the excitement in his voice palpable. ‘What we want to do is change the image that people have of Idlib. We want to show the world that it’s not just a place full of Islamist extremists. There are many other very energetic people here, with lots of good things to say on many different subjects. Idlib isn’t only about Islamism, it really isn’t. We’re going to site the project right in the centre of Idlib in a very sensitive area.’

  Abu Malik was clearly not looking for a quiet life. The area he referred to was home to a large number of the Islamist militia who neither liked his art nor shared his views on free speech, democracy and human rights. ‘We know that we’ll be facing opposition from these Islamist extremists, but this is not going to stop us going ahead with the project.’ His enthusiasm overflowed as he outlined his plans, even though he knew they would almost certainly lead to direct confrontation with the Islamists he mentioned. This surprised me. After all, Abu Malik had only just escaped besieged and bombarded Daraya, a place where sudden, violent death could strike at any moment. Now he was risking more of the same. Why, I asked him, was he carrying on with a project that was endangering those he worked with as well as himself? ‘If we go about this randomly, without planning everything very carefully, then, yes, it could well be very dangerous for us all,’ he replied. ‘That is why we are now talking to members of the Free Syrian Army here to see if they will agree to protect us. We are also having discussions with the local administration. So, in answer to your question, yes, it is risky, but I think it’s a risk well worth taking.’

  Abu Malik’s defiance was not to last. When I spoke to him a few weeks later he told me that he had been forced to suspend his planned graffiti project because of the deteriorating security situation in Idlib. The al-Qaeda-linked Islamist extremists he had defied so bravely before had become more threatening and warned that he could be arrested, or worse, if he set up his planned exhibition without their consent. For the moment at least, Abu Malik had decided not to push things any further, but many in Idlib continued to resist the diktats of armed groups like these, with some even staging street protests against their hard-line policies. Although the FSA broadly backed such demonstrations, nobody knew if they were strong enough to take on the increasingly powerful extremists. Abu Malik told me: ‘It is still unclear who is in charge of Idlib city and violence continues to be a big worry. The FSA is very supportive of the people involved but I don’t think they want street battles with al-Nusra.’

  Sometimes news from the exiled Daraya community would reach me at the most unexpected times. One Saturday evening in mid-March 2017, I was at a club in central London, listening to a band. The six-strong ensemble were managed by a neighbour of mine and a bunch of us, middle-aged wannabe hipsters, were ‘dancing’ away at the front. Fortified by glasses of wine, fine music and good company, I had forgotten the world outside, until I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. When the song finished I pulled it out to discover that I had a WhatsApp voice message. I pressed play, more out of habit than curiosity and retreated to a corner away from the crowd to hear what it said. It was Anas. ‘Hi, Mike. I got married on Tuesday!’

  As the crowd around me danced I stared at the screen of my phone and a feeling I can only describe as elation washed through me. For so many years in Daraya, Anas had waited for his fiancée, not knowing from one day to the next if she was alive, risking his life daily to run the library and help at the hospital. And now, in Idlib, they were finally united. I felt very touched that he had chosen to tell me. Here I was, a person he had never met, thousands of miles away from his troubled land, and yet he’d chosen to include me in such happy, intimate news.

  I listened to those seven words again and again and as I did so, tears rolled down my face. Seeing this my wife Jane rushed over, suspecting I had received some terrible news; as she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and asked what had happened, I smiled and told her what the message said. That’s wonderful, she shouted, having heard me talk about Anas several times before. I suddenly needed to tell her more about him, more about Abdul Basit and Sara and Ayham and Muhammad and Amjad and Abu Malik and Omar, and more about the secret library. I suddenly wanted to celebrate them, to give voice to their courage and their tenacity, so I pulled Jane through the throng and out through the nearest fire exit. And there, in the cool night air, it all poured out of me. I was still going strong some time later, when the door behind us opened, and people spilled out into the cool night air. Then I felt my phone vibrate again. It was another WhatsApp voice message, this time from Anas’s fiancée herself: ‘Hi, Mike, my name is Asmaa. I am very happy because I have got married to Anas. I am so proud of his work on the secret library…’ The rest of her words were drowned out by street noise, but hearing that short, sweet message, was truly uplifting. I texted them both back, saying ‘CONGRATULATIONS!
’ in capital letters and wished them every possible happiness.

  My euphoria was not to last long. Just after dawn on Tuesday, 4 April 2017, when many were still asleep in their beds, planes appeared over the town of Khan Shaykhun, just over forty miles south of Idlib city. Moments later a huge explosion shook the town. This was no ordinary bomb. A sinister-looking yellow mushroom cloud billowed skywards and hung like a poisonous shroud over the area. What some later described as a ‘winter fog’ swirled through the streets. People’s eyes began to sting, their pupils dilated and they struggled to breathe. Then they died. Rescue workers arriving at the scene, many of whom fell victim to the same symptoms, found people lying on the floor unable to move. Their face and skin had turned blue, foam oozing from their mouths. In all, more than eighty people died in what was later confirmed as a chemical attack on the town by pro-government forces.

  The world was outraged and retribution pledged, but there had been talk before of punishment for President Bashar al-Assad if such ‘red lines’ were crossed and little had happened then. In August 2013, President Obama had hinted at launching a military strike against his forces after a chemical attack on the Ghouta area near Damascus left more than 1400 people dead. Yet even though a UN chemical weapons team confirmed that the nerve agent sarin had been used, retaliation never came. However, Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, did take action four years later after the chemical attack on Khan Shaykhun in Idlib. On Thursday, 6 April 2017, he ordered a missile strike against an airbase used by Syrian forces to launch the sarin nerve agent attack. At least fourteen people were killed, most of them Syrian soldiers and Shia militia, but coming events were to show that the move did little to deter Assad from using chemicals weapons.