On This Day in History: October 10

Saving the books of the Library of Basra

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Look, I know you’re still pissed about what happened with the Library of Alexandria, so here is a feel-good story about books that were saved. It happened in Basra during the American-led invasion of Iraq. During the invasion the local government holed up with its guards in the library. Knowing the building was likely to get blown to shit in the fighting, the librarian organized the secret removal and safe storage of thousands of books.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: October 10, 2004--

George W. fucking Bush fucking Jr. What a brainless invertebrate cockblob. He let his veep, that corrupt dick Dick Cheney, talk him into a war in Iraq because wEapOnS oF mAsS dEsTruCtiOn. It wasn’t a UN-sanctioned operation and most countries said yeah no, so George’s coalition of the willing to commit a war crime consisted of only a few countries. And they blew the shit out of the place, including libraries.

This wasn’t the first time an important library was destroyed by invading hordes in the country. Iraq has a long memory, and one such recollection is of the destruction of the Grand Library of Baghdad in the 13th century by Mongol invaders. Alia Baqer was the chief librarian of Basra’s central library, and she’d be damned if she would allow history to repeat on her watch.

Basra is the second largest city in Iraq; it came under siege in the spring of 2003. When the Iraqi defenders placed an anti-aircraft gun on top of the library, she begged the governor to let her move the books to safety but was denied. So Alia said well fuck you guys and plotted a stealthy removal of the books herself.

Baqer organized her staff along with some locals to cart the most important books to the restaurant next to the library, where they were then smuggled to various homes via cars and trucks for safekeeping. “Most of these books were rare and important ones,” Baqer said. “Regrettably, we lost a lot of books in the fire.” What fire? The fire that Alia Baqer anticipated. They managed to secret away 30,000 books, but in April of 2003, 10 days after troops entered Basra, the central library was burnt to the ground in the fighting. The fire destroyed approximately 20,000 books that Alia and her staff had not had time to remove. Alia Baqer later said that she saw these books as her children and wept for those she was unable to save. Yet she was proud of having saved two-thirds of the library’s contents.

The staff and friends kept the tens of thousands of rescued books hidden in their homes for several months. The library was rebuilt and reopened on October 10, 2004. Alia Baqer was reinstated as chief librarian and the books she and others risked their lives to save were placed on its shelves.

Alia Baqer died in August of 2021 from COVID-19.

Thanks, Heather, for the suggestion of today’s topic.

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