The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War

By Delphine Minoui

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR

"An urgent and compelling account of great bravery and passion." —Susan Orlean

Award-winning journalist Delphine Minoui recounts the true story of a band of young rebels, a besieged Syrian town, and an underground library built from the rubble of war

Reading is an act of resistance.

Daraya is a town outside Damascus, the very spot where the Syrian Civil War began. Long a site of peaceful
resistance to the Assad regimes, Daraya fell under siege in 2012. For four years, no one entered or left, and aid was blocked. Every single day, bombs fell on this place—a place of homes and families, schools and children, now emptied and broken into bits.

And then a group searching for survivors stumbled upon a cache of books in the rubble. In a week, they had six thousand volumes; in a month, fifteen thousand. A sanctuary was born: a library where people could escape the blockade, a paper fortress to protect their humanity.

The library offered a marvelous range of books—from Arabic poetry to American self-help, Shakespearean plays to stories of war in other times and places. The visitors shared photos and tales of their lives before the war, planned how to build a democracy, and tended the roots of their community despite shell-shocked soil.

In the midst of the siege, the journalist Delphine Minoui tracked down one of the library’s founders, twenty-three-year-old Ahmad. Over text messages, WhatsApp, and Facebook, Minoui came to know the young men who gathered in the library, exchanged ideas, learned English, and imagined how to shape the future, even as bombs kept falling from above. By telling their stories, Minoui makes a far-off, complicated war immediate and reveals these young men to be everyday heroes as inspiring as the books they read. The Book Collectors is a testament to their bravery and a celebration of the power of words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Nov 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9780374720292

Delphine Minoui

Delphine Minoui, a recipient of the Albert Londres Prize for her reporting on Iraq and Iran, is a 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 and The Book Collectors of Daraya.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Istanbul, October 15, 2015

It’s a remarkable image. A mysterious photo that somehow escaped the hell that is Syria without a trace of blood or bullets. Two men in profile, surrounded by walls of books. The first one leans over a text, open to the middle. The second scans a shelf. They’re young, in their twenties, one sporting a hooded sweatshirt, the other with a baseball hat secured firmly on his head. Artificial light frames their faces in an enclosed, windowless room, emphasizing the unexpectedness of the scene. A fragile parenthesis in the midst of war.

The photo fascinates me. I came across it by chance on Facebook, on the page kept by Humans of Syria, a collective of photographers. I read the caption: the secret library of Daraya. I repeat it out loud: secret library of Da-ra-ya. The three syllables crash into one another. Daraya, the rebel. Daraya, the besieged. Daraya, the starved. I’ve read—and written—a great deal about this suburb of Damascus, one of the cradles of 2011’s peaceful uprising. Since 2012, it has been surrounded and blasted by Bashar al-Assad’s forces. The idea that these young readers are hidden in an underground basement as bombs explode above their heads arouses my curiosity.

What’s the story behind this picture? What’s the hidden angle? The image haunts me, drawing me like a magnet to an inaccessible place: Syria has become too dangerous a destination. It takes me several calls on Skype and WhatsApp to track down the photographer, Ahmad Muaddamani. Ahmad is one of the cofounders of this secret haven. Through a spotty internet connection, their sole portal to the outside world, he tells me of his devastated city—houses in ruin, fire and dust, and amid the tumult, thousands of books saved from the rubble and reassembled in a refuge accessible to all of Daraya’s residents. He spends hours explaining this project to save their cultural heritage, born from the ashes of a town that won’t yield. He tells me about the incessant bombing. The empty stomachs. The soups made of leaves to stave off starvation. The voracious reading to nourish the mind. The library is their hidden fortress against the bombs. Books are their weapons of mass instruction.

His story is riveting. It rings out like an ode to peace that Syria’s leader is hell-bent on muffling. An underground chorus that the jihadists of Daesh want to eradicate. A new voice that sprang from loudspeakers at the early demonstrations of the antiregime uprising, and was nearly muted by the ongoing conflict. This unheard account of their revolution whispers: write me down.

It is a perilous undertaking. How can you describe something you can’t see, that you haven’t lived? How do you avoid falling into the trap of misinformation, knowing Assad is not the only one spreading it? Aside from the books they are reading, what kinds of ideas do these young men entertain? Are they really jihadists, as the regime would have us believe? Or mere rebels who refuse to surrender? In Istanbul, I calculate the distance separating me from Daraya: 932 miles. I study the myriad ways to get there. But there’s no point. Since my last trip to Damascus in 2010, when I was living in Beirut, I’ve been unable to get another press visa to access the Syrian capital. Even if I could get to Damascus, how would I reach the trapped suburb? This fall, even the United Nations was prevented from penetrating the barricades, failing in its attempts to send any humanitarian aid. Is there a tunnel, a back road, a secret path? On the other end of the line, Ahmad confirms that every usual route is blocked. All that’s left is the breach through Moadamiya, a neighboring town, used only by the most daring. Such a crossing happens at night, at the mercy of snipers.

But should the story of Daraya be buried simply because we can’t see past the wall erected by Assad? Should we settle for being passive witnesses to the incomparable barbarism unfolding live on our television sets?

If we look at this city only as it appears on a computer screen, we risk getting the story wrong. But looking away would condemn it to silence. Bashar al-Assad wanted to put Daraya in parentheses, to make it a footnote. I intend to make it the headline. To find other images, to fit them together with that first snapshot, the way you assemble the pieces of a puzzle.

A few days later, I call Ahmad to tell him my plan, anxious to hear his response.

At first, there’s a long silence at the other end of the Skype connection.

I repeat my request: I’d like to write a book about the library in Daraya.

A metallic clamor chokes the line. Another night full of this constant terror and danger—how ridiculous this project must seem to him. When the rain of bombs ends, his voice breaks through. "Ahlan wa sahlan!" Be my guest.

Hearing his enthusiasm, I smile at my screen. Ahmad will be my guide. I will be his willing scribe.

I make him a promise: one day, this book—their book—will join the other volumes in the library. It will be the living diary of Daraya.

At first Ahmad is a distant voice coming through my computer speakers. A fragile whisper from a hidden basement. When I first make contact with him on Skype, on October 15, 2015, he hasn’t left Daraya in nearly three years. Located fewer than five miles from Damascus, his town is a sarcophagus, surrounded and starved by the regime. He is one of twelve thousand survivors. In the beginning, I struggle to understand what he is saying. He mumbles, timid but keyed up, his words broken by the omnipresent crackling of explosions. Between detonations, I try to focus on his face. He appears on my computer screen, then disappears, at the mercy of an internet connection patched together from small satellite dishes smuggled from abroad in the early days of the revolution.

His image stretches and deforms like a Picasso portrait: round cheeks slant at an angle under black-rimmed glasses before breaking into a million cubic pieces and fading behind a thick black curtain. When the pixels come back together, I listen carefully and try to read his lips, chewing on my pencil.

He introduces himself. Ahmad, twenty-three years old, born in Daraya, one of eight children in his family. Before the revolution, he studied civil engineering at Damascus University. Before the revolution, he liked soccer, movies, and being around plants in his family’s nursery. Before the revolution, he dreamed of becoming a journalist. His father quickly dissuaded him from the idea, having himself spent twelve months in prison for a simple remark whispered to a friend. Insult to power, the court had ruled. That was 2003, when Ahmad was eleven. A somber memory that had burrowed deep inside him.

Then the revolution. When Syria rouses in March 2011, Ahmad is nineteen, a rebellious age. His father, still traumatized from jail, forbids him to go into the streets. Ahmad misses the first protest held in Daraya, but sneaks into the second one. He joins the crowd, chanting at the top of his lungs: One, one, one, the Syrian people are one. In his chest, inside this budding revolutionary, something rips, like a sheet of paper. His first sensation of freedom.

Weeks, then months go by. The protests are unending, too. Bashar al-Assad’s voice shouts menacingly from transistor radios. We will win. We will not yield. We will eliminate the dissenters. Regime forces shoot into the crowd. The first bullets whistle, but Ahmad and his friends chant even louder—Freedom! Freedom!—as other resisters take up weapons to protect themselves. Unable to imprison them all, Syria’s president decides to put their town under lockdown. It’s November 8, 2012. Like many others, Ahmad’s family pack their suitcases and escape to a neighboring town. They beg him to follow. He refuses—this is his revolution, his generation’s revolution. Ahmad gets hold of a video camera and finally realizes his childhood dream: he will expose the truth. He joins the media center run by the new local council. In the daytime, he roams the devastated streets of Daraya. He films houses ripped apart, hospitals overflowing with the injured, burials for the victims, traces of a war invisible and inaccessible to foreign media. At night, he uploads his videos to the internet. One year of paralyzing violence goes by, full of hope and uncertainty.

One day in late 2013, Ahmad’s friends call him—they need some help. They found books that they want to rescue in the ruins of an obliterated house.

Books? he repeats in surprise.

The idea strikes him as ludicrous. It’s the middle of a war. What’s the point of saving books when you can’t even save lives? He’d never been a big reader. For him, books smack of lies and propaganda. For him, books recall the portrait of Assad and his long giraffe neck that mocked him from his schoolbooks. After a moment of hesitation, he follows his friends through a gouged-out wall. An explosion has ripped off the house’s front door. The disfigured building belongs to a school director who fled the city and left everything behind. Ahmad cautiously feels his way to the living room, illuminated by a single sliver of sunlight. The wood floor is carpeted with books, scattered amid the debris. With one slow movement, he kneels to the ground and picks one at random. His nails flick against the dust-blackened cover, as if against the strings of a musical instrument. The title is in English, something about self-awareness, a psychology book, no doubt. Ahmad turns to the first page, deciphers the few words he recognizes. It turns out the subject doesn’t matter. He’s trembling. His insides turn to jelly. An unsettling sensation that comes with opening the door to knowledge. With escaping, for a second, the routine of war. With saving a little piece, however tiny, of the town’s archives. Slipping through these pages as if fleeing into the unknown.

Ahmad takes his time standing up, the book against his chest. His entire body is shaking.

The same sensation of freedom I felt at my first protest, he whispers through the computer

Reviews for The Book Collectors

[thewestwing-864351 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I found this to be a powerful book. This brings the Syrian war to a human level for the reader. I’m so glad stories like these can be written and told so they live on like the books in their secret library.

[iudita_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The title and blurb about this book are a bit misleading. The story has a weak connection to books or to the secret library. It mostly focuses on the conflict in Syria and the experience of the people living there. I think everyone who feels nervous or resentful about their country taking in refugees should read this. The conflict was absolutely horrible, violent and terrifying and it would be a nightmare to live through. As much as I appreciated this information, I didn't think it was a big success as a book. For me it would have worked better as a long essay. The human interest story with the library disappointed me.

[shelleyraec · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It was a caption under the photograph of two young Syrian men browsing the shelves of a library that piqued the interest of Delphine Minoui, an award winning French journalist - ‘The Secret Library of Daraya’.Curious as to how a library could operate in a place like Daraya, but unable to travel to Syria due to the region’s instability, Delphine reached out and made contact with one of the young men in the photo via Skype. Twenty three year old Ahmed was born in Daraya, and remained even after his family fled, determined to document the devastation and support the rebels. One afternoon he was called to help a group carrying books from a deserted, bombed out home, an idea that first struck him as absurd in the middle of a war zone. Yet from the moment he picked up his first book he was struck by what it represented - freedom. As the collection of scavenged tomes grew, a room was found for them in a basement, and the Secret Library of Daraya was born.Daraya is a suburb on the outskirts of Damascus. Declared a hotbed of terrorists by Syria’s ruler Bashar al-Assad for daring to peacefully protest his dictatorship, it was placed under siege and ringed with with his forces in 2011. I have to admit to having very little understanding of the conflict in Syria, so I appreciated that Minoui explains the events that led to Daraya’s position and the steady escalation that saw the suburb attacked with missiles, bombs, and even chemical weapons, including sarin and Napalm.Delphine has written The Book Collectors of Daraya by speaking with Ahmed, and his friends through an unreliable internet connection via Skype and WhatsApp. Initially her focus is on the library; how it came to be, which books are popular, and what it means to the residents of Daraya. It’s a delight to hear how the library and its books provides a refuge and haven from the devastation on their doorstep, how it provides a respite of normalcy, and brings people together. Non-readers become readers, free to choose something other than propaganda, soldiers take books with them to the frontline to read, trade, and discuss, in between wielding their Kalashnikovs.Unsurprisingly the miracle of the library does take somewhat of a backseat as Delphine learns of the daily hardships and horrors faced by the suburb’s residents. It’s a harrowing tale of danger, deprivation, and starvation as the siege drags on for more than five years. Not content to reduce Daraya to rubble, the Syrian dictator stops any attempts to provide food or essentials, determined to quash the rebels.There is a little repetition in the narrative of The Book Collectors of Daraya, but I found it well written and readable. Minoui adds a personal perspective, sharing her experience of terror attacks in her home of Istanbul, and in Paris, and freely admits her bias. I think she treats those she speaks with sensitively, and it’s clear she believes that it’s important their story is told. I particularly appreciated the inclusion of photographs that show the library, the men whom Delphine introduces us to, and the streets of Daraya.The Book Collectors of Daraya is as much about the Syrian civil war, and particularly the experience of the young men who established the library, as it is the library itself. Simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting, this book speaks of grief, and courage, of resilience, of humanity, and the power of books.

[samsattler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One day in late 2015 Delphine Minoui stumbled upon a picture on a Facebook page maintained by “Humans of Syria” that would ultimately change her life. It was a picture of two young men in what appeared to be a windowless library of some sort. One of the men was leaning over an open book, and the other was browsing one of the library’s crammed shelves. The photo was captioned simply, “The Secret Library of Daraya.” The French-Iranian author/reporter was well aware that Daraya was a Damascus suburb that had been under siege by Bashar al-Assad’s army since 2012. She knew that the city was completely surrounded, and that thousands of people were trapped there as everything was slowly being destroyed around them. And yet these two men were making use of a “secret” library somewhere in the city. How could that even be possible? She had to know their story, and after several calls on WhatsApp and Skype, she finally found the man who could answer all of her questions, photographer and library co-founder, Ahmad Muaddamani. The library, as it turns out, was filled by books that Ahmad and others found in the rubble of Daraya’s bombed out buildings. Their underground library relatively quickly became home to some 6,000 volumes, and would eventually grow to 15,000, each of them lovingly marked inside with the original owner’s name. That would be amazing enough, considering that all of this happened during the time an army was trying very hard to wipe out the city and every one of its inhabitants. But what is even more amazing is how the salvaged books helped make life bearable for so many of Daraya’s people. For some the books were an escape, a window into the outside world; for others they were a source of inspiration, a glimmer of hope that a better life for them was still possible; and for others, the books offered a whiff of the freedom that Bashar al-Assad was trying to steal from them. They could read and study whatever they wanted to, and the dictator could do nothing to stop them. ______________________________________________________________________“The conflict causing bloodshed in Syria has paradoxically brought them closer to books. Reading is the new foundation for the bubble of freedom they’ve constructed. They read to explore a concealed past, to learn, to evade insanity. Books are their best way to escape the war, if only temporarily. A melody of words against the dirge of bombs. Reading – a humble gesture that binds them to the mad hope of a return to peace.”______________________________________________________________________Bottom Line: The Book Collectors is a reminder of just how powerful the written word can be, and why dictators around the world consider the “wrong” books to be such a threat to their hold on power. They are right about that. Without Daraya’s secret library for inspiration and comfort, it is unlikely that the city’s fighters and civilians could have resisted their powerful enemy as long as they did. Inspirational as The Book Collectors is, its overall style is more reminiscent of a long newspaper article than a standalone nonfiction book. Considering that Minoui is a reporter and Middle East correspondent for France’s Le Figaro, this is understandable, if a bit regrettable. Uncorrected Digital Galley Provided by Publisher for Review Purposes