Librarians
Source: International Herald Tribune/NYT
“How a librarian saved Basra’s treasured books”
From the article, “Alia Muhammad Baker’s house is full of books. There are books in stacks, books in the cupboards, books bundled into flour sacks like lumpy aid rations. Books fill an old refrigerator. Pull aside a window curtain, and there is no view, just more books…All told, Baker says, the books number about 30,000. And then there are the periodicals. These books are fugitives, and Baker, a 50-year-old librarian in stout shoes, is the engineer of their underground railroad. As British forces stormed Basra in early April, she spirited the volumes out of the city’s Central Library, over a two-meter (7-foot) wall, to the backroom of a restaurant and later into trucks to carry them to her home. Even friends and library employees have been enlisted as caretakers for the troves of books she rescued. The books constitute about 70 percent – all there was time to save – of what was the library’s collection.

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