Shah Muhammad Rais first opened his bookshop within the Afghan capital in 1974. By 2003, when his story was made well-known by the bestselling novel The Bookseller of Kabul, the enterprise had collected about 100,000 books, in several languages, about literature, historical past and politics. The gathering included works of fiction and nonfiction, with every thing from richly illustrated kids’s tales to dense tutorial tomes.
After the Taliban stormed Kabul in 2021, Rais fled to the UK, telling the Guardian final yr that he feared the group would destroy his cherished enterprise. His fears got here true.
Final December, the Taliban turned up on the bookshop, locked the doorways and ordered the workers handy over all of the passwords for Rais’s web site and catalogue, earlier than destroying the archive he had been constructing since he first opened the store.
“Once I heard what had occurred I couldn’t speak, I used to be frozen. My thoughts was not working,” stated Rais, who’s now nearly blind. He was so grief-stricken that he thought of taking his personal life.
“For 2 weeks after this occurred I wished to finish my life. However all of the sudden I obtained my vitality again,” he stated. He resolved to rebuild his distinctive assortment from scratch. As a result of his on-line enterprise was world, he already had many contacts in nations akin to Iran and Pakistan and throughout central Asia. Rais, who speaks six languages, signed a take care of an Indian IT firm to create a brand new web site – Indo Aryana E book Co.
Now new books are being printed in India from pdfs and mailed into Afghanistan. Lately an internet order was positioned by somebody in Mexico to ship a replica of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry to an deal with in Kabul. The guide is banned in Afghanistan, however the order was positioned within the morning and had been delivered to the Kabul deal with by the afternoon.
Rais is very eager to assist in giving women and girls in Afghanistan entry to books regardless of the Taliban ban on their schooling. He’s utilizing his contacts to get free or subsidised books to them of their houses or hidden faculties. Even bus drivers assist: secreting of their automobiles packages of books needing to be delivered discreetly, whereas driving throughout Afghanistan.
He says that no matter book-banning edicts the Taliban points, a inhabitants thirsty for books are discovering methods round them. He describes himself as a “proud Muslim” however says he abhors all types of extremism and believes that individuals from all faiths and cultures can reside collectively in concord. “Books are an excellent, low-cost weapon to struggle towards extremism,” he stated.
His love affair with books started on the age of 17 when he learn a replica of Shakespeare’s Othello for the primary time. He has reread it greater than 10 instances. Promoting books has repeatedly obtained him into hassle, with two stints in jail after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and compelled closure of his store within the mid-Nineteen Nineties by the Taliban.
“Once I was launched from jail by the Soviets I wiped the mud off the bookshelves in my store and began once more,” he stated. Like Ray Bradbury’s dystopian 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, which stands towards censorship and in defence of literature, and is a guide beforehand stocked in his store, Rais says his resolve to maintain books alive won’t falter. His message to the Taliban is a defiant one.
“In case you destroy my bookstore 100 instances I’ll rebuild it.”
