IRAQ: Baghdad's famous book-selling street begins slow recovery after devastating blast

Devastated by a deadly blast four months ago, Baghdad's historic book-selling street of al-Moutanabi, formerly an intellectual hub, is slowly recovering as bookstores re-open for business for the few people who brave the ruined area. Baghdad's famous al-Moutanabi Street -- once a bustling intellectual hub lined with bookshops, stalls and cafes filled with members of the country's intelligentsia -- is slowly recovering from a devastating blast that killed scores of Iraqis and destroyed shops and goods, leaving the historic booksellers' district charred and deserted. Blackened and heavily damaged buildings and shops still stand in al-Moutanabi as witness to the powerful March 5 blast, when a suicide car bomber killed over 30 people, setting property ablaze and turning tens of thousands of publications into ashes. Four months on, the street is slowly returning to life as owners rebuild and restock a number of bookstores and a few shoppers brave the street. Some al-Moutanabi business owners received 500 U.S. dollars in compensation and brand new wooden stalls from the International Relief and Development (IRD) fund, a non-governmental organisation. But the street, with its charred facades, rubble, slow reconstruction work and scattering of pedestrians is still a far cry from the thriving book market which once heaved with shoppers, students and book lovers who used to fill al-Moutanabi before the blast. "The street was vibrant and full of people. Because of the crowd you could only see heads. It used to be busy and crowded before the blast and books were laid out on the ground, but now the street is dead," said Aboud Mohammed al-Falluji who inherited his father's printing shop on al-Moutanabi. Al-Falluji said that, despite repeated promises, the government had not compensated them for the loss of business resulting from the blast. "We have not received assistance from any official and no official has come to see us," al-Falluji said. Al-Moutanabi Street, a part of Baghdad's central historical area, has suffered much over the past few decades. Three decades of Baath party coercion put an end to the days when the region's publishing industry was encapsulated in the maxim: "Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, Baghdad reads." The U.S.-led invasion of the country and the subsequent fighting and destruction have dealt another heavy blow to the street known to Arabs around the region as a hub of intellectual life. Around the corner are the bakeries which, during Ottoman time, used to provide nearby Turkish garrisons with bread. Named after a great 10th century Iraqi poet, al-Moutanabi Street functioned for decades as a permanent book exhibit, lined with bookstores, news stands and outdoor bookstalls. It was especially famous for its Friday book market, where secondhand, rare and first-edition books were sold and traded. The pavement on both sides would be covered with everything from well-thumbed paperback novels to imported academic textbooks, dictionaries and science text books. During the reign of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, customers would follow dealers into their labyrinthine storage rooms off adjacent courtyards to buy books banned by the regime. But weekends in Baghdad are not what they used to be. A curfew, introduced following the sectarian violence that broke out after the bomb attack on the Golden Shrine of Samarra in February 2006, confines people to their homes on Fridays from 1100 a.m. to 1500 p.m. throughout much of the country, in a measure aimed at preventing political and religious agitation often associated with Friday prayers. Most Baghdad residents now stay away from al-Moutanabi, yet a few devotees continue to brave the street. "I am a person who, if I don't pass by al-Moutanabi street almost everyday, I feel an emptiness in my life, I feel that something is missing that day," said Ghazi Mohammed Hussein, a tourist guide in the nearby ancient al-Mustansiriya School, a historical construction built during the Abbasid period. The devastation caused by the March 5 blast claimed the street's old and famous al-Shahbander cafe, a former magnet for the country's writers and intelligentsia and writers. "As you see a large number of the shops have been damaged, including the al-Shahbander Cafe where five people were martyred. Moreover, a large number of shops and the goods in them were totally destroyed and the people who ran them were martyred," said Nawwar Mundher Abdullah, a bookshop owner whose father was killed and in the blast. Abdullah's shop was also devastated in the attack. The gutted cafe building testifies to the carnage with a black banner fixed to its charred walls, mourning the death of the son and four grandsons of the coffee shop owner Haj Mohammed al-Khishali. Before the blast, poets, painters and novelists would sit on al-Shahbandar's white wooden benches, sip sweet tea or strong black coffee and smoke water pipes, while playing dominoes or debating the latest political and cultural trends in the country.

ITN Source | July 9, 2007

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