In “Resurrecting the Book Market of Baghdad” at Narratively, Aditi Sriram writes that Baghdad’s Al-Mutanabbi Street once “appeared to be made of books: they littered the sidewalks, waved from tables and carts, sat on shelves inside bookstores, and peeped at passersby through the windows.”
In 2007, a bomb destroyed the street, and far away in San Francisco, bookseller Beau Beausoleil read about it.
“My bookstore would have been on that street,” he says.
He didn’t raise money. Instead he energized his contacts and their contacts in the literary and artist community to make broadsides and art about what had happened, give poetry readings, and spread awareness.
In addition, writes Sriram, “after several years of trying, Beausoleil finally got through to the director of Baghdad’s national library—which he described as a ‘gigantic moat around a public figure’—and was delighted when Dr. Saad Eskander immediately understood his hope to take the Iraqi people’s suffering ‘into ourselves and acknowledge it, and respond to it.’
“Beausoleil’s voice lightens as he recalls Eskander’s positive reaction. ‘He said, “I want these broadsides for the national library, for the archive. I think it’s important that the Iraqi people see this work.” ‘ …
“The 130 broadsides [will] start to be exhibited at the national library in Baghdad in late 2016 and anniversary readings [will] take place every year all over the U.S. and U.K.”
Photo: AP/Khalid Mohammed
Iraqi men look at books displayed on Al-Mutanabbi Street in December 2007, nine months after a bombing. 
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