Syria,Damascus-Turning the Page Again

By Dalia Haidar
Photos Fadi al-Hamwi

Hidden in a backstreet in Damascus’s trendy Shaalan neighbourhood, Etana Books is an unexpected sight amid all the cheap shoe shops and trendy fashion labels.

Young people are relaxing on the large leather sofas and browsing through the books displayed on the shelves. Upstairs those seeking a quieter atmosphere are working at the desks in the reading room.

“Etana is Syria’s first private library,” Maen Abdulsalam, the library’s founder, said. “We sell books, but we also offer readers a place to come and browse through our collection and study. People can make themselves at home here: they can have a coffee, read, relax…”

For a monthly fee of SYP 750 (USD 16.50), Etana members can browse through the library’s collection of Arabic and translated foreign fiction, non-fiction and children’s books and spend the day reading or studying in the reading room.

To some, the idea of opening a new library at a time when the number of Arab and Syrian readers is rapidly decreasing may sound strange.

Abdulsalam, however, does not think so. “I don’t agree with the theory that people don’t read,” he said. “If you make books available, people will read more.”

Fewer readers

Syrian intellectuals, on the other hand, say the number of people who read regularly in Syria has fallen to such depths that the country now has a full-blown ‘reading crisis’ on its hands.

In an attempt to highlight the problem of the decreasing number of readers, Samar Haddad, the owner of Atlas publishing house in Damascus, organised a two-day conference in Damascus last month, inviting writers and critics from across the Arab world and beyond to identify the root of Syria’s reading problem.

“For the past two years, people have been commenting on this reading crisis and giving their personal view of the situation,” Khalid el-Ekhtiar, a journalist and the conference press representative, said. “But this conference is the first attempt at formally addressing this issue.”

Haddad, who took over her father’s bookshop 20 years ago and has worked in the publishing business ever since, says she has seen book sales plummet over the last few years.

“We used to sell between 200 and 300 books a month,” she said. “Today, we barely sell 50 books a year.”

In her eyes it is part of a broader cultural phenomenon. “It is not just about the fact that fewer people read, which is usually excused by the rising price of books,” she said. “It is a real cultural crisis.”

In order to get a clearer picture of reading habits in Syria, Haddad conducted a survey among 1,000 Syrians, targeting educated people from different social environments.

“We knew that people weren’t reading as they used to, but when you see the numbers it is shocking,” Ekhtiar said. “It makes you realise how serious the problem is.”

The survey found that 32 percent of the interviewees never read, while 54.5 percent said they had read between one and five books over the past year. Among those who did not read, 74.4 percent said they did not have enough time to read, while over 40 percent said they do not like reading. Thirty-three percent do not read because, they said, they do not have enough income to buy books.

“People should stop saying that the drop in reading rates is caused by the rising price of books, government censorship and so on, because people have even stopped reading cheap, uncensored books,” Ekhtiar said.

Among the readers the majority of those who had read more than five books last year had chosen fiction, with scientific and non-fiction books coming in second and third place respectively. Political, historical and religious books came in at the bottom of the list.

Political and social trends

Mazen Arafe, director of cultural activities at the Al-Assad Library and organiser of the annual Damascus International Book Fair, said that while the term ‘crisis’ is perhaps exaggerated, people are reading less than 20 or 30 years ago. He ascribes this decrease to political and social factors.

“At the time, cultural life was very much connected to political and social trends and reading was seen as an activity that contributed to self-development,” he said. “It was seen as a way of exploring the world.”

Arafe argues that the trend towards less reading can be linked to a feeling of disappointment in the region at the power of cultural movements to influence political and social injustices. He said this led the general public to abandon social and political publications in favour of light reading.

Arafe is one of many Arab intellectuals who relate the changes on the region’s cultural scene to political events in the 20th century.

Saker Abu al-Fakher, a Palestinian writer and intellectual, believes the 1967 defeat in the Arab-Israeli war was a turning point in the region’s intellectual life, heralding a period of lively social and cultural debate.

“The 1967 defeat initiated a period of more lively cultural debate and criticism as the generation born during the 1948 Palestinian Nakba sought to change the political realities in a bid to retrieve Arab dignity,” he said during his conference presentation.

The 1973 war on the other hand did nothing to further develop the cultural debate in the Arab world as many did not perceive it as a full victory for the Arabs, according to Abu al-Fakher. “Since then people have retreated from political and social debate and returned to reading fiction and romances.”

The advent of the internet also plays a role according to Abu al-Fakher, not only reshaping the way we access information, but also restructuring family relations and creating a rift between ‘old-fashioned’ parents and ‘new-style’ children.

“The reading crisis is in some ways also linked to changes in the way knowledge is transferred,” Abu al-Fakher said. “In the past the older generation passed down its knowledge to the younger generation. But today parents no longer know more than their children. On the contrary, in many domains, children are teaching their parents.”

New forms of reading

Amal Kneizeh, head of the Maktabeh Al-Aela (The Family Library), one of the oldest libraries in Damascus, believes the tradition of reading will never really fade away.

“Computers and the internet will not replace reading forever,” she said. “Those who really love reading will start missing the feeling of holding a book in their hands. They will miss that intimacy.”

With this in mind, Kneizeh wants to renovate her old-fashioned library to suit modern tastes. This is very much what Etana Books has sought to do as well, according to Abdulsalam.

“The Syrian library system no longer appeals to Syrian youth,” he said. “The way it presents books makes it look like they are marketing a product, not a book. Books should be perceived as a set of ideas, not as a product that you buy and walk out with.”