[LINK] "Syria's last bookstores"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Monitor's Samer Mohammad Ismail describes the sad decline of the bookstore in Syria. Even before the civil war, it seems that literature was on the decline.

It was not the catastrophe alone that led to the disappearance of the most important bookstores in Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia and other cities. In fact, several bookstores had vanished long before the outbreak of the war.

This time, a more realistic version of the words Gabriel García Márquez wrote in “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” was experienced by Said al-Barghouthi, owner and manager of Kanaan Publishing and Distribution House.

Remembering the capital’s bookstores, he wrote, “My memory takes me back to the early 1950s. My school was close to the flea market — the only place in Damascus that sold stationery and some used school books at the time.”

Damascus did not have stores selling large numbers of books. Barghouthi added, “The city’s population at the time did not exceed 300,000 people, and the bookstore was more like a kiosk ... [selling] magazines, newspapers, books, cheese, sandwiches. Bookstores did not have the same significance as today and were not specialized in selling books.”

In the 1960s and 1970s — which means during the era of big dreams, as described by Barghouthi — bookstore frequenters would go together to find books. Bookstores flourished and filled the streets of Damascus. The Palestinian Semaan Haddad established the Atlas bookstore in al-Salihiyah Street, Mohammad Hussein al-Nouri established Al-Nouri bookstore in Al-Hijaz square and Mohammad Ziad Tanbakji established the Damascus bookstore; the oldest was Yaqadha bookstore.