The problem with one particular publication, a bookseller in the Afghan capital Kabul explained, is not so much that it is by Michelle Obama, but that she is not wearing a hijab on the photo gracing the cover.
The former US first lady’s memoir Becoming goes back on the stack, ready for a curious reader.
The Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement seized the city in August and have declared Afghanistan an Islamic Emirate.
Photo: AFP
They have not yet ordered bookshops to shut, nor imposed censorship, but a climate of tension prevails and an economic crisis has hit earnings.
Near the university, Kabul’s book market was once a fashionable haven for the young intellectual crowd, but now about half the stores and stalls have closed.
Others are open, but readers are left in the dark as lights are turned off to save electricity.
Abdul Amin Hossaini, a middle-aged bookseller in a knit pullover and heavy square spectacles, said that business was good before the fall of the city.
“We had at least 50 customers or books sold a day, now it’s almost nothing,” he said.
“I was beginning my dream to start a publishing company for children’s books,” he added, describing how he was writing books about the lives of his two daughters.
Under the previous Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001, sellers of books they regarded as “profane” were forced to close, and some were ransacked.
In the two months since their return, the movement’s fighters have not directly troubled the booksellers of Kabul’s Pol-e-Sorkh District, but the fear remains.
One stallholder, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that he had withdrawn the popular works of reformist Iranian theologian Abdolkarim Soroush from sale, but in Saadat Books, which specializes in English-language texts, the selection is eclectic.
Alongside a dusty copy of Gustave Flaubert’s masterpiece Madame Bovary there are seedy tales from Los Angeles by the transgressive German-American poet and author Charles Bukowski.
Stacks of science fiction lie alongside works on human evolution by Israeli intellectual Yuval Noah Harari.
“I am very surprised it’s still open,” said customer Mustafa Barak, a 23-year-old law student, who comes every week to satisfy his passion for ideas.
“I just want to continue to learn new things, to improve my knowledge, to have an intellectual life,” Barak said.
“We are in this situation because we can’t read. Knowledge is what is left to us to try to fight this,” he added.
On this visit, Barak chose a book on personal development, The Art of Thinking Clearly by Swiss entrepreneur Rolf Dobelli.
Kabul’s most famous bookshop, Shah M Book Co, has been nicknamed Afghanistan’s “national archive.”
Its proprietor since 1974, Shah Muhammad Rais, left for London on a business visa last month, although he intends to return.
However, the premises in Kabul remain open, as they did under previous changes in regime.
Rais’ story inspired a bestseller by Norwegian writer Asne Seierstad, The Bookseller of Kabul, but his famous store has so far not attracted the attention of the new Taliban regime.
In the low-ceilinged corridors, more than 17,000 titles in English, Dari, Farsi and Pashto recount the history of Afghanistan — many of them rare treasures, available for online sale.
“We stay open because we are keeping the heritage of the Afghan people, and a way for them to be able to study it,” store manager Suleiman Shah said.
“Even the government doesn’t have the archives and books on the country that we have. We are the memory of this country,” he added
A day earlier, two Taliban members in civilian clothes visited for the first time in two decades.
“They were looking for something I didn’t have, a religious book,” Shah said.
The missing book was the Ya Sin, the 36th Surah that warns of the fate awaiting non-believers and of the limitless power of God to protect the faithful and to promise their resurrection. It is sometimes known as the heart of the Koran.
“They looked quickly around the shop,” the manager says of the Taliban’s visit.
“They stopped at the postcard stand, they wanted to make sure I had nothing romantic,” he said.
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