Global Courant
It has been almost two years since the Taliban took Kabul. I, like many Afghans who have worked hard to get a good education, have a hard time. Knowledge seems to lose its value and books are no longer considered a prized possession.
When Taliban fighters arrived in the Afghan capital in August 2021, many of my friends rushed to the airport to try to leave, losing their perspective in their homeland. The brain drain was huge.
People with master’s degrees, PhDs, with multiple published books, professors, educators, doctors, engineers, scientists, writers, poets, painters – many learned people fled. A colleague of mine – Alireza Ahmadi, who worked as a reporter – also joined the crowd at the airport.
Before he left, he wrote on his Facebook page that he had sold 60 of his books on a variety of subjects for 50 afghans (less than $1). He never left the country; he was killed in the airport bombing by the Islamic State in Khorasan province.
I, too, decided to give away all my books – all 300 hundred books, on topics such as international law, human rights, women’s rights, and the English language. I donated them to public libraries, thinking they would be of no value to me in a Taliban-ruled country.
I started looking for ways to leave the country. Evacuation was not an option for me so I decided to go to Iran, hoping to find a safe haven there like millions of other Afghans. But like my compatriots, I was met with contempt and hostility there. Soon I lost all hope that I could make a living in Iran. But I did find something that kept me going: my old love of books.
Walking through Enqelab Square in Tehran one day, I couldn’t resist entering the bookstores. I ended up spending most of what little money I had on human and women’s rights books that I had never seen in Afghanistan. Armed with these books, I decided to go back home and try to return to my old way of life – surrounded by books and engaged in intellectual pursuits.
Upon returning, I began work on a book on women’s political rights within the international legal system and within Islam, which I completed in about a year. I sent my manuscript to several publishers, but was repeatedly rejected because they considered the subject too sensitive and thought it would be impossible to get permission to publish it.
Eventually, Ali Kohistani of Mother Press agreed to take the book. He prepared the necessary documentation and submitted the manuscript to the Taliban Ministry of Information and Culture to request formal permission for publication. Soon after, the book review committee sent me a long list of questions and critiques for me to answer.
I revised the book based on the feedback they sent, but it wasn’t enough to get approval. We have been waiting for a definitive answer for five months now and my desperation is growing by the day.
Kohistani has gone to the ministry many times to inquire about the manuscript, to no avail. He told me that he has five other books he plans to publish this year, but none have been approved by the ministry.
Other publishers also suffer from the arbitrariness of the committee’s decisions and the long delays. They say that books that the Taliban want to publish that fall within their ideology do not face the same challenges. They see in this painstaking process an attempt to suppress any thought that disagrees with the Taliban’s thinking.
Delays in publishing permission and censorship are by no means the only problems facing the Afghan book industry.
Dozens of bookstores and publishers have closed in the past two years. In the book complex in the Pul-e-Surkh area of Kabul, where I frequented before the Taliban takeover, most of the bookshops are now closed.
The Taliban’s decision to ban girls and women from attending secondary school and university means they are buying fewer books. Boys and young men have also dropped out of school and university because they are demotivated to pursue an education that cannot guarantee them employment. This has seriously shrunk the booksellers’ customer base.
In addition, the Taliban government has levied high taxes on book sales, further reducing the declining revenues of bookstore owners and publishers.
Libraries across the country have also lost their readers, as fewer people go there to study or borrow books. Various book clubs, literary associations and reading initiatives have also ceased their activities. It is no longer seen as a value to own, read or write books.
Overnight, the Afghan book publishing industry has evolved from a thriving sector – arguably the most successful homegrown sector – to a struggling and high-risk venture. Afghans have gone from being avid readers to being unable to afford books. I have evolved from a proud author and book owner to a desperate man who has tried to hold on to an intellectual life in Afghanistan but failed.
It is extremely painful to see this state of affairs in Afghanistan, a country with a long literary history and tradition. This land gave the world people like Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi (aka Rumi), Ibn Sina Balkhi (aka Avicenna) and Hakim Sanai Ghaznavi (aka Sanai).
Reading, writing and spreading knowledge have always been highly regarded in my country. Afghan rulers of various dynasties have respected freedom of thought and supported learning and knowledge production. Censorship, restricting education and devaluing books have never been part of Afghan tradition or culture.
No country in world history has ever prospered when its rulers suppressed knowledge, education and free speech. Afghanistan is moving towards darkness and ignorance and that scares me. Killing books and killing knowledge will have terrible consequences for the future of this country.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial view of Al Jazeera.
