{"id":3314,"date":"2023-10-21T19:08:41","date_gmt":"2023-10-21T15:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publictribune.tv\/?p=3314"},"modified":"2025-12-01T17:08:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T12:38:06","slug":"%da%a9%d8%a7%d8%a8%d9%84%d8%9b-%d8%b4%d9%87%d8%b1%d9%90-%da%a9%d8%aa%d8%a7%d8%a8%da%a9%d9%8f%d8%b4%d8%a7%d9%86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeyartelevision.com\/en\/3314\/","title":{"rendered":"Kabul: A City of Book-Killings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Nazi Germany, a notorious ceremony was held known as the Book Burnings<\/em>\u2014an event in which any text deemed contrary to Nazism, or displeasing to Nazi ideology, was burned. Works of major writers from various fields were destroyed: anything related to Marxism and communism, and books by authors such as Walter Benjamin, Andr\u00e9 Gide, Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy. Like the Holocaust, this event can be understood as one of the moments in which the core of Nazism manifested itself fully. But here in Kabul, although the ruling regime is far too uneducated\u2014and too illiterate even\u2014to organize a so-called book burning, what they have done to books in practice is something that can be described most accurately as book-killing<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Mal\u012b Market\u2014Kabul\u2019s largest book market\u2014three floors once housed bookstores. Today, only one floor remains active, and even that has only a handful of shops. These remaining bookstores, unlike in the past, are no longer filled with a peaceful silence created by the dignity and presence of books. Instead, their silence now reflects suffocation\u2014a sign of their slow, painful decline. Even before August 15, books in this city were not greatly valued; the profession of bookselling was often dismissed as \u201cpointless\u201d or \u201cprofitless\u201d\u2014and the second part, at least, has always been true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dust has tried\u2014and failed, but not entirely\u2014to swallow Kabul\u2019s books. Its presence on the covers of the remaining volumes reveals their abandonment and isolation in those forgotten corners. Some bookstores in Kabul have not imported a single new book for years<\/em>. Partly because the book market has collapsed to an unprecedented degree, and partly because the books they imported long ago still remain unsold. Mahdi [a pseudonym], who manages one of Kabul\u2019s main bookstores, tells Public Tribune<\/em>:
\u201cOut of every ten customers who visit us, at least a few ask whether we buy their<\/em> books instead of selling ours.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He adds that booksellers live in constant worry about how the regime might treat books\u2014and those who keep them. Mahdi believes that the little spark of curiosity and enthusiasm young people once had for \u201cknowledge\u201d and \u201cawareness\u201d has been extinguished. Young people can see for themselves that those who today hold power, wealth, and influence in Kabul are not products of education<\/em> or reading<\/em>. They reached what they have through entirely different means\u2014and not through books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Books in Kabul have met the fate Borges once described as \u201cthe best thing placed in the worst possible place.\u201d Unlike other countries in the region and the world, bookselling and librarianship in Kabul have not taken shape even as an industry. Their commercial value\u2014their bourgeois dimension\u2014has not been enough to give books a market comparable to brand-name electronics, nor to ensure that demand consistently approaches supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is unreasonable to expect a \u201cbreadless\u201d population to buy, read, and love \u201cbooks.\u201d The way out of this swamp is not to encourage people\u2014one by one\u2014to read more. Rather, the material and concrete conditions of life must change so that speaking meaningfully about reading and about a thriving book culture becomes possible at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Nazi Germany, a notorious ceremony was held known as the Book Burnings\u2014an event in which any text deemed contrary to Nazism, or displeasing to Nazi ideology, was burned. Works of major writers from various fields were destroyed: anything related to Marxism and communism, and books by authors such as Walter Benjamin, Andr\u00e9 Gide, Dostoevsky, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[302,51],"tags":[279,108],"class_list":["post-3314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-city-stories","category-spotlight","tag-279","tag-108"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeyartelevision.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeyartelevision.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeyartelevision.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeyartelevision.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeyartelevision.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3314"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/deeyartelevision.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37752,"href":"https:\/\/deeyartelevision.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3314\/revisions\/37752"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeyartelevision.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeyartelevision.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeyartelevision.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeyartelevision.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}