“When I think about Daraya, this is the picture etched in my mind. In my head, I watch it stream by in black and white to the rhythm of Mahmoud Darwish’s voice reading State of Siege.”
It’s an unforgettable image. Ahmad’s final memory of Daraya’s incredible, unexpected library sanctuary.
“Save Syria” graffiti, painted on a wall in Daraya by Abu Malek al-Shami, a cofounder of the library. (Photograph © Abu Malek al-Shami, 2016)
In just one month, the young activists we now know as the book collectors saved around fifteen thousand books from the rubble of Daraya. (Photograph © Mohammad al-Eman, 2013)
Ustez—“the Professor,” from whom the young men in the library learned not only English but also tactics of nonviolent resistance—searches for books. (Photograph © Mohammad al-Eman, 2013)
This photo, posted by Humans of Syria on Facebook, was the journalist Delphine Minoui’s first encounter with the book collectors of Daraya. She tracked down their contact information and reached them a few days later via WhatsApp; they were in constant touch over the course of the rest of the siege. (Photograph © Ahmad Muaddamani, 2015)
Activists and anti-Assad fighters were regular visitors to the library. “Books help us stay human,” they used to say. (Photograph © Ahmad Muaddamani, 2015)
An English class held in the library, which, over time, became a kind of underground university. Every week, dozens of activists and residents came in for lectures on a wide range of subjects. They even managed Skype conferences with Syrian academics and dissidents in exile. (Photograph © Ahmad Muaddamani, 2014)
The artist and activist Abu Malek transforms the ruins of Daraya with his work and gives hope human form with his graffiti. (Photograph © Ahmad Muaddamani, 2015)
Omar, pictured here, a booklover and anti-Assad fighter, built himself a mini library at the front, with selected volumes carefully stored behind sandbags. (Photograph © Malik Alrifaii, 2015)
When bombs stop falling during a brief truce, the women of Daraya seize the opportunity to protest against the siege, hoping to gain attention from the international community. (Photograph © Fadi Dabbas, 2015)
On the first page of each collected book, the young librarians wrote the name of its owner in the hope of reuniting them when the war was over. (Photograph © Ahmad Muaddamani, 2014)
A view of the cloud created by a barrel bomb, which suggests the damage this artillery caused to the city. (Photograph © Fadi Dabbas, 2013)
Shadi’s favorite camera helped document the siege. After it was destroyed during a regime attack, he was left with just his cell phone and mini Sony cameras. (Photograph © Shadi Matar, 2016)
More graffiti by Abu Malek al-Shami. This one, painted in a destroyed school, reads: “We used to joke around and say, I hope the school falls down. And now it has fallen.” (Photograph © Ahmad Muaddamani, 2015)
Every day Ahmad and his activist friends would survey the bombed streets of besieged Daraya to film and document the war in the absence of professional reporters and foreign media. (Photograph © Ahmad Muaddamani, 2015)
A group selfie, taken in the basement of one of the many houses that the book collectors searched. Among other young activists from Daraya, Ahmad Muaddamani stands on the far left and Shadi Matar appears on the bottom right. (Photograph © Mohammad al-Eman, 2015)
Ahmad’s love of books is irrepressible. Within a year of the evacuation from Daraya, he and his friends founded a mobile library in Idlib, which immediately achieved great popularity among the children and women of the province. (Photograph © Mohammad al-Eman, 2016)
The author with four of Daraya’s activists, when they reunited in Istanbul in 2018. From left: Ustez, Shadi, Hussam (Jihad), Delphine, Ahmad (Photograph © Marie Tihon, 2018)
THE BOOK COLLECTORS OF DARAYA
Ahmad Muaddamani is a cofounder of Daraya’s secret library. Born in 1993, Ahmad was a student of civil engineering before the war. From the start of the Syrian uprising, he participated in revolutionary activities, and when the siege began, he joined the media center run by the local council. After the forced evacuation of Daraya, he launched and managed a mobile library in the province of Idlib with a group of friends. He now lives in Gaziantep, Turkey, where he works for a number of peacebuilding and humanitarian programs focusing on Syria.
Omar Abu Anas was born in 1992 in Daraya. His engineering studies were interrupted by the 2011 revolution, in which he actively participated. When violence erupted, Omar joined the Free Syrian Army, taking up arms to protect the inhabitants of Daraya against the brutality of the regime. A peacemaker at heart, he always believed in the power of books and was one of the first of the book collectors to gather and bring them to the basement that later became a secret library. In 2016, one month before the end of the siege, Omar was killed by a regime strike.
Born in 1991, Shadi Matar participated in the 2011 street demonstrations despite his parents’ fear and opposition. When the siege started, he joined the media center of Daraya and started taking photos and videos as a citizen journalist eager to document the war. In the absence of independent and foreign media, his work provided a picture different from the regime propaganda. In July 2016, he was injured by a mortar shell. Immediately after the end of the siege, Shadi came to Turkey to undergo surgery. After three years in Istanbul, where his parents live, he was granted asylum in France. He now lives in Bordeaux, where he is hoping to resume his studies to become a professional cameraman.
Hussam Ayash (Jihad Dalein) was born in Daraya in 1984. He became an active member of the Daraya local council and its media center soon after the revolution. Passionate about books, especially psychology and self-help, he also participated in launching a local magazine called Karkabeh during the siege. After being evacuated to Idlib, where he lived for a few months, he moved to Gaziantep, Turkey, where he married a young Syrian activist from Raqqa. He works for an NGO helping the Syrian White Helmets of the Civil Defense.
Abu Malek al-Shami, nicknamed “the Banksy of Syria,” brought light to the city by painting graffiti and murals on its ruins. A cofounder of Daraya’s library, Abu Malek al-Shami is among those who still live in Idlib, the last rebel stronghold, which the Syrian regime, backed by Russia and Iran, is trying to regain. His paints remain his best weapon: he designs new murals for Idlib’s buildings that have been destroyed by the barrel bombs.
Abu el-Ezz (Ezzat Kassas), born in 1993, is one of the cofounders of Daraya’s secret library, in which he actively participated, first as a book-rescuer, then as a codirector. In 2015, he was severely injured by a barrel bomb attack while on his way to the underground library. Shortly after recovering, he insisted on resuming his work, eager to promote education and culture in the face of war. Today, Abu el-Ezz lives in Istanbul.
Ustez (Muhammad Shihadeh), forty-two, is one of the pillars of the Daraya Shebab (Daraya Youth), a group of activists who, in the 1990s, launched a series of peaceful initiatives to inspire democratic values in Syrian society. Their vision of nonviolent resistance had a crucial impact on Daraya’s new generation of activists during the siege. Nicknamed “Ustez,” or “Professor,” Muhammad Shihadeh supported the young revolutionaries through his wisdom, advice, and English classes. He now lives with his family in Gaziantep, where he works as a freelance translator.
Daraya’s underground library was a collective dream, realized through the involvement of many, including the essential contributions of Homam al-Toun, Ayman al-Toun, Saed Sakka, Maher Khoulani, Muhammad al-Dabbas, Amer Kattan, Rami Sakka, Muhammad Abu Ubada, Abdul Basit al-Ahmar, Malik Alrifaii, Ayham Sakka, Rateb Abu el-Fouz, and countless other anonymous heroes who kept the light of Daraya shining by saving books and celebrating education.
READERS’ FAVORITES FROM THE LIBRARY AT DARAYA
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Kitab al Ibar (The Book of Lessons) by Ibn Khaldun
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Shell by Mustafa Khalifa
&nb
sp; The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Psychology and You by Julia C. Berryman, Elizabeth M. Ockleford, Kevin Howells, David J. Hargreaves, and Diane J. Wildbur.
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray
State of Siege by Mahmoud Darwish
ALSO MENTIONED:
“A Sleeper in the Valley” by Arthur Rimbaud
poetry of Nizar Qabbani
Syrian theologian Ibn Qayyim
theater of Shakespeare and Molière
Marcel Proust
J. M. Coetzee
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
1984 by George Orwell
NOTES
1. Mahmoud Darwish, State of Siege, trans. Munir Akash and Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010), 3.
2. Darwish, State of Siege, 49, 155.
3. Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete, ed. and trans. Wyatt Mason (New York: Modern Library, 2002), 37.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I could only keep half my promise: this book is finally out in the world, but it won’t find a place, as I had hoped, on the shelves of the library in Daraya, back under regime control.
These pages now belong to Ahmad, Shadi, Jihad (alias Hussam), Abu Malek al-Shami, Abu el-Ezz, and their faithful siege companions. They are a testament to their commitment to peaceful resistance and their unflagging desire for life and democracy, which they defended to the end.
I want to express my infinite gratitude for their trust and their availability. In the lulls of their war, they never stopped wanting to bear witness.
I’d also like to thank Muhammad Shihadeh, the irreplaceable Ustez, for his generosity and openness during our long discussions when he came to Istanbul. Our conversations allowed me to clarify certain facts and more clearly understand Daraya’s unique situation and history.
As I was writing this book, I relied on the professionalism and enthusiasm of two outstanding young Syrian interpreters and, at the time, aspiring reporters, Sarah Dadouch and Asmaa al Omar. Invariably patient and receptive, they demonstrated an exceptional work ethic and great attentiveness, including when translating messages sent, however early in the morning or late at night, from Daraya. I have no doubt that Sarah and Asmaa will make phenomenal reporters, thanks to their love of country and passion for journalism.
The Book Collectors wouldn’t have ended up in its current form without the encouragement of the Spanish novelist Luisa Etxenike. She was a precious source of aid when I was haunted by the eternal question of how to make the invisible visible, and grappling with how best to shape this story.
The faithful first reader of many of my books, my friend the filmmaker Katia Jarjoura, provided, once again, a critical and objective perspective on my work. I am incredibly grateful for her help.
I’m particularly indebted to Hala Moughania for her thoughtful and detailed feedback. Her insightful comments proved invaluable.
I’d also like to warmly thank my researcher friend Carole André-Dessornes for her advice and kind support.
Finally, I want to end this book with a special thought for Omar, the young rebel-reader gone too soon, and for his dreams cut short. I hope his memory allows his family and friends to find the strength necessary to continue their quest for freedom.
ALSO BY DELPHINE MINOUI
I’m Writing You from Tehran
I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Delphine Minoui, a recipient of the Albert Londres Prize for her reporting on Iraq and Iran, is a journalist and Middle East correspondent for Le Figaro. Born in Paris in 1974 to a French mother and an Iranian father, she now lives in Istanbul. She is the author of I’m Writing You from Tehran. She also directed Daraya: A Library Under Bombs, an award-winning documentary film about Daraya’s brave librarians. You can sign up for email updates here.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Lara Vergnaud is a translator of prose, creative nonfiction, and scholarly works from the French. She is the recipient of two PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants and a French Voices Grand Prize, and has been nominated for the National Translation Award. She lives in Washington, DC.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Epigraph
Prologue
Begin Reading
Epilogue
The Book Collectors of Daraya
Readers’ Favorites from the Library at Daraya
Notes
Acknowledgments
Also by Delphine Minoui
A Note About the Author and Translator
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2017 by Éditions du Seuil
Translation copyright © 2020 by Lara Vergnaud
All rights reserved
Originally published in French in 2017 by Éditions du Seuil, France, as Les passeurs de livres de Daraya
English translation published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2020
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following previously published material:
“Sleeper in the Valley” from Rimbaud Complete, by Arthur Rimbaud, translated by Wyatt Mason, translation copyright © 2002 by Wyatt Mason. Used by permission of Modern Library, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Excerpts from State of Siege, by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Munir Akash and Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore, translation copyright © 2010. Used by permission of Syracuse University Press.
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-72029-2
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