It rings out like an ode to peace that Syria’s leader is hell-bent on muffling. Books are their weapons of mass instruction. The library is their hidden fortress against the bombs. The voracious reading to nourish the mind. The soups made of leaves to stave off starvation. He spends hours explaining this project to save their cultural heritage, born from the ashes of a town that won’t yield. 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. Ahmad is one of the cofounders of this secret haven. It takes me several calls on Skype and WhatsApp to track down the photographer, Ahmad Muaddamani. 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. The idea that these young readers are hidden in an underground basement as bombs explode above their heads arouses my curiosity. Since 2012, it has been surrounded and blasted by Bashar al-Assad’s forces. I’ve read-and written-a great deal about this suburb of Damascus, one of the cradles of 2011’s peaceful uprising. The three syllables crash into one another. I repeat it out loud: secret library of Da-ra-ya. I read the caption: the secret library of Daraya. I came across it by chance on Facebook, on the page kept by Humans of Syria, a collective of photographers. A fragile parenthesis in the midst of war. Artificial light frames their faces in an enclosed, windowless room, emphasizing the unexpectedness of the scene. They’re young, in their twenties, one sporting a hooded sweatshirt, the other with a baseball hat secured firmly on his head. The first one leans over a text, open to the middle. Two men in profile, surrounded by walls of books. A mysterious photo that somehow escaped the hell that is Syria without a trace of blood or bullets.
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