On the ancient Hamra Street in Beirut, a young man enters a library where he is accustomed to finding what he is looking for. He approaches confidently, asking about a specific book, as if the matter required nothing more than a passing question. The bookstore owner slowly raises his eyes, contemplates it for a moment, then shakes his head: “Burn.”
The word suddenly fell between them, short to the point of cruelty, and heavy to the point of silence. The young man hesitates, as if he did not hear well, or did not want to understand.
He asks again, this time in a tone closer to hope: “Okay… and when can it be available again?” The man shuts up. He looks at him with sad eyes, then says in a low voice: “There is nothing left… All the warehouses have become ashes.” The phrase chokes in his throat, as if it were the last of his ability to explain what happened.
Silence extends after that, like an open chasm. As if what was burned was not a single book, but something larger… difficult to name.
This sentence is no longer an exception in Beirut. During the recent military confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah, the same scene was repeated in more than one library, publishing house, and book warehouse.
The word “burned” no longer describes a single incident, but rather a reality that extended to hundreds of thousands of copies, complete titles, and archives accumulated by years and long lives of work.
During just the first two weeks of the recent war, 11 libraries were partially or completely damaged, including three completely destroyed, according to Lebanese Minister of Culture Ghassan Salama, who also indicated that some publishing houses were forcibly stopped working, and some were destroyed or damaged, as a result of the indiscriminate bombing of Beirut.
Beirut: the capital of the book and its fragile memory
To understand the magnitude of the tragedy, we must go back. Beirut was not just a publishing city; it was, for decades, the undisputed capital of Arab books.
Since the middle of the twentieth century, the Lebanese capital has become a haven for Arab writers and thinkers. In a time of strict censorship in many countries, this city opened its doors to forbidden texts and bold ideas.
Here freedom of expression flourished relatively, and authors in all fields found space to print their works when other capitals restricted them. Books were also published that changed intellectual and literary paths and shaped the awareness of generations.
As a result, the publishing industry flourished in Beirut, and a wide network of publishers, printing presses and libraries was formed, making the city a center for cultural production and distribution in the Arab world.
Beirut’s libraries turned into more than just points of sale, they were meeting spaces: where writers, students, researchers, and thinkers gathered and exchanged ideas with rare freedom.
But this position was not immune. During the wars that took place in Lebanon more than half a century ago, libraries and publishing houses paid a high price. A price that is not only measured by the lost buildings or stores, but also by what is erased from written memory, and what is interrupted from the chains of knowledge that were built silently over the years.
In every round of violence, there were shelves that emptied, titles that disappeared, and manuscripts that never found their way to the light. From the Lebanese Civil War to subsequent wars, the book in this country has remained vulnerable to fire, despite its ability to survive.
However, these spaces did not disappear completely. They were retreating, restored, and returning in new forms, as if they refused to be reduced to a moment of destruction.
But what the recent war reveals, perhaps more than ever before, is that the loss this time was not sporadic or fleeting, but rather touched upon the heart of the cultural scene itself, and put a question before its publishers and sponsors: How can knowledge be protected, when it also becomes a target?
Books in Beirut were not just cultural commodities, but rather an extension of individual and collective lives, and a mirror of the transformations of an entire society.
Every manuscript that was lost, and every edition that was burned, was not a loss for a single publishing house, but rather an interruption in a broader narrative, in which the stories of writers, publishers, and readers intersect. When these spaces are targeted, the harm does not stop at the borders of the place, but extends to what it represents: the idea that knowledge can find a safe home.
In the heart of this devastation, other narratives emerge, less vociferous, but no less important. Publishers are trying to rebuild what can be salvaged, bookstore owners are searching under the ashes for titles that have survived, and books are being hastily moved from danger zones to temporary homes.
In these small details, a different picture is formed: culture does not disappear completely, but rather declines, disperses, and then searches for a new form of survival.
Here are five stories from this fragmented scene: a male and female publisher who lost a lifetime’s stock, a publishing house whose archives burned, a library that was reduced to rubble, and another whose books were moved to a private house to survive the bombing. Five stories, and one question repeated in different forms: What happens to the memory of a city… when its books burn?
Publisher memory burnout
On an ordinary morning during the recent Israeli war on Lebanon, Bassam Kurdi received a phone call that changed everything. The man, residing in Morocco, heard words that were enough to depict the scene in his mind: The warehouse was destroyed, the books were burned, and everything he had accumulated during long years of work turned into ashes.
Kurdi, a veteran Damascene publisher, spent nearly half a century in the heart of the Arab cultural scene, moving between Beirut and Casablanca. Between 1977 and 2015, he served as general manager of a publishing house, before in 2016 he founded his independent house: the “Cultural Center for Books.” The project was an attempt to “build reverse bridges” between Morocco and the Levant.
In the warehouse that was destroyed, there were not just books, but the essence of an entire project. More than 500 titles on thought, literature, and history, by notable names such as Abdullah Al-Aroui and Saeed Benkrad, in addition to manuscripts that have not yet been published, which Kurdi describes as “priceless historical documents.”
During the Israeli air strike on the southern suburb of Beirut, one of the raids destroyed the 14-storey building, which contained the house’s store, and buried under its rubble about 250,000 copies.
When he received the news, he wrote on social media: “Half a century of continuous work wasted in one second… my life is miserable.” Kurdi says: “Not only were the books destroyed, but they also destroyed a Moroccan memory in Lebanon and a pioneering experience in the region.”
Although the financial loss is estimated at no less than two million dollars, Kurdi insists: “This destruction affected the stock of books, but it will not be able to destroy me as a person or as a publisher… I will return with the same determination.” In the end, the fire may have consumed paper, but it did not touch the idea that he carried for decades: that publishing is not a book business, but a memory industry.
400 thousand books… and a mother lost her “children”
For her part, Mayada Kayali’s loss was not reducible to numbers. The owner of Believers Without Borders, a Syrian publisher who left engineering to devote herself to publishing, found herself facing a void left by years of work.
Kayali recalls that moment over a short phone call with the CEO:
“Doctor… our warehouses have been destroyed.”
I quickly asked him: Are you okay? Was anyone hurt?
He replied: “I’m fine… but my heart is broken.”
As soon as I hung up the phone, I collapsed. The loss was enormous: about 400,000 books, representing nearly 400 titles, were completely burned. Some of these books were difficult to replace: basic intellectual works, translations related to rights and contracts, and an entire body of knowledge built up over years.
I looked at these books as if they were my children… They grew up with me one by one, and each book had a story and a lifespan of my life.
In a city like Beirut, the destruction of a book warehouse does not seem like a passing event. For Kayali, it is a harsh reminder of the fragility of knowledge in wartime. However, today she is working on making books available in digital formats, and reprinting basic titles, and summing it all up with a personal statement: “We can only rebuild and continue… We believe in the importance of our message, and we will continue.”
A cultural bridge under bombardment
“Dar Al-Rafidain” was founded on the idea of a bridge between two shores: Lebanon and Iraq. Since its founding in 2004, it has been not just a publishing project, but a transit space for ideas. A dual identity carried by its owner, Muhammad al-Hadi, the Lebanese-Iraqi: Iraqi works are printed in Beirut, and Lebanese products reach Iraq.
On October 15, 2024, Aldar’s team was following maps published by the Israeli army. When the mark appeared on the office building, it was a “moment of indescribable shock.”
Within it the entire publishing cycle was managed. On its shelves, years of work have accumulated: more than 1,300 titles, manuscripts, and archives that are difficult to count. The team was able to save only a few. Days later, an employee was able to enter the site and photograph what was left. Al-Hadi says: “We all cried…it was a cry like losing part of the family.”
Material losses were estimated at between $300 and $400,000, but what was lost exceeded the numbers. Within about a year, a large part of the building was restored, and life returned to it, albeit partially. But when the war resumed in March 2026, the team was forced to leave the place again.
Al-Hadi says: “Beirut is a city that grew up on the spirit of openness and life, and the destruction of a publishing house there is not a passing event, but rather a violation of the idea of culture itself.”
When the books become under rubble
In the southern suburbs of Beirut, Philosophia was more than a bookstore. Since its founding in 2017, it quickly turned into a live experience: open shelves, discussions, and seminars made the place a meeting place between readers and ideas, led by its owner, Abbas Fakih.
Then, suddenly, it all turned into rubble.
“It was the second time in a short period,” Fakih says. In front of him, books were under the rubble, some of them burning, and the wooden shelves were scattered. “I felt as if the library was a living being… a member of the family.”
Before he could comprehend the scene, another news reached him: the warehouse had completely burned down. There were rare books and manuscripts from various Arab publishing houses, some dating back to the 1970s, and first editions bearing the signatures of names such as Mahmoud Darwish, Samih Al-Qasim, Al-Tayeb Salih, and Ahmed Fouad Negm.
Material losses are estimated at at least $250,000, with more than twenty thousand titles burned. “The challenge today is not only the loss,” Fakih says, “but rather the lack of space and inventory… to rebuild everything from scratch.”
Today, Faqih issues a call to support the rebuilding of libraries as incubators of knowledge, holding on to a simple promise: that “philosophy” will rise again.
Saving books from war
In a southern suburb neighborhood, Katabkhana was born in the summer of 2025 as a project that seemed more like a challenge: a bookstore, a café, and a space for discussion. The business owner, Maryam Mirzadeh, says that opening it in these circumstances was “an act of advancement.”
One day before the library’s surroundings were bombed, life inside was going on as if it was defying the outside. Then danger began to approach. The warning came from a friend: “Empty the place immediately.”
The youth asked: “What is the priority?” Mirzada answered without hesitation: “Books, of course.”
In that moment, everything else fell away. Tables, chairs, plants and paintings were left behind. With the help of friends and young men, the rescue operation began. Boxes are hurriedly loaded, including a rare collection of ancient Persian books.
They succeeded. The books are out. Later, when Mirzadeh saw pictures of the damaged alleys, she saw her library still standing with minor damage… “Only the reader was displaced,” she says. Just then, she cried.
Today, the books have moved to her home, where she has taken refuge with her family. “I host a different kind of displaced,” she says, referring to the books that survived. For Mirzadeh, saving a library is saving part of one’s identity. “The book never dies,” she says confidently. “Kitabkhana will return… like a rose that grows from the rubble.”
