The Europe Challenge

My backpack is heavy today. I had to carry all six of the Arabic books that I’ve finished reading, to exchange them for new ones at the Echo Mobile Library without having to return home after work. The library van stops for an hour at different squares across Athens, and I have to run to catch it downtown at Victoria Square. Becka, the founder of the library, promised a collection of new books, and she will again allow me to borrow six books at a time, not just two. 

 

I reached the square just in time. Becka was there with her warm smile. I sat inside the van, checking out the new books, and suddenly my eyes landed on a familiar title. I held the book in my hand and closed my eyes, praying I would find the missing pages, 190-198, still there: pages I had been looking for since I was a child. Then I began to remember. 

 

Everything started with a rock. It was 2001, in Gaza city. I was 12 years old, the Twin Towers in New York had just been attacked, and the second intifada (uprising) had already broken out around Palestine. I was in an UNRWA-run school when a rock broke through the glass window at 11.00, resting at our teacher Omar’s feet. I liked teacher Omar. It is amazing how much teachers can impact our lives; each one of us has a favourite teacher who we will always remember. I can still recall the smell of his cologne mixed with tobacco, and the way he always smoked in class while walking between the rows of students, hiding the tip of the cigarette in the palm of his hand like a soldier in the battlefield. His hair was always shiny and neat, and he somehow managed to wear ironed shirts even when the electricity was out for days. 

 

Everything started with a rock that rested at Mr Omar’s feet. By the time the whole class had turned to see what was going on outside, there were another 20 rocks flying in the air towards us. These rocks came from the older students’ demonstration against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The older students were demanding that we should be let out to join them, but Mr Omar tried hard to stop us from leaving the classroom. We could hear the Israeli army’s Apache helicopter fighters dropping bombs in the distance. Mr Omar took the scared students who did not want to join the demonstration, leading us to a safe room in the basement. He said: ‘You stay here until I go and talk to the other teachers and bring the keys to the room.’ 

 

This basement room was the school library that no one visited. Everything was dusty and old; we opened the windows to let the light in so that we could see. The bookshelves looked like the walls of a cave, and there was a nice smell of leather and oak. ‘How did I not know about this room until now?’ I thought. ‘How come no one took us to the school library before, or even told us that there was one?’ 

 

I was fascinated by the books; something about the atmosphere that day made me fall in love with libraries and books forever. I stood there reading the names of the books and their authors, and everything around me started to fade: the shouting of the student demonstration and the sound of the helicopter bombings. And in that moment, on a high shelf, I found some books that changed my life, making me who I am today. 

 

I stood on  a chair and reached for a big volume of poetry by Mahmoud Darwish, one of Palestine’s most famous poets. I opened it at random and started reading: 

 

‘Between Rita and my eyes 

There is a rifle 

And whoever knows Rita 

Kneels and prays 

To the divinity in those honey-coloured eyes 

Ah, Rita 

Between us there are a million sparrows and images 

And many rendezvous 

Fired at by a rifle’ 

 

Mr Omar and the other teachers kept returning with more students, going back and forth until the whole library was full. But at this point I didn’t care; I had already sunk body and soul into Darwish’s poetry. All I wanted was for the chaos and the bombing to last a bit longer so that I could stay. I asked if I could take the book; the teacher said no, but I was told I could come back and read it in my free time. 

 

After that day, all UNRWA schools stayed closed for 10 days due to the high number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli attacks. 

 

When we went back to school, the first thing I did was go to the headmaster to suggest that I could clean the library. The headmaster smiled, showing a line of yellow and missing teeth, and gave me a copy of the keys. It was the first set of keys I had ever carried for something I really loved. I started gathering students who loved books and reading; together we cleaned all the shelves, tables, and chairs and reorganised all the books. I discovered the Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani, the Syrian writer Ghada Al-Samman, and the Lebanese poet Adonis. I would spend hours there, missing out on lots of classes just to sit and read books in this place: my new home. On Fridays, when everyone went to pray at the mosque, I would jump over the school wall and hide in the library, losing myself in stories. 

 

I soon became responsible for overseeing the school library. One of my duties was to choose the themes for the school’s morning assemblies. After singing the Palestinian national anthem and raising the flag, I would read aloud short stories, poetry, and political articles that I did not understand fully at the time. I started to become well-known among the students and the teachers; more students wanted to be my friend, which left me feeling happy and contented. 

 

One day I overheard my elder sister, Asmaa, and her best friend, Iman, talking about a sex scene in a novel by Hanna Mina called Hikait Bahar (A Sailor’s Tale). The next day I went to look for the book in the school library. I was very excited when I found it. I took it and went to the sea. When I approached page 190, I discovered that several pages had been torn out of the book, which I realised must have been the sex scene pages. I was so disappointed that I could not sleep. I went to another school library looking for the book. I searched every bookshelf I saw, everywhere I went. I started reading all the novels I found by Hanna Mina; I really liked the simplicity of his stories, as well as his beautiful metaphors. But I could not forget about pages 190-198.  

 

Another day I went with a small group from our school to visit the national library in Gaza City. It was the biggest library I had ever entered. It had two big floors with thousands of books in Arabic, English, and French, with lots of tables with nice lamps and a beautiful garden. There was free hot tea with sage or mint, and my school made memberships for the whole group so that we could come back and borrow books. Of course, I started looking for A Sailor’s Tale. I found it, but this time the lines on pages 190-198 had been crossed out with black ink. I tried to read through the ink but I couldn’t; I was able to read only one sentence which drove me even crazier. It read: ‘And then he closed her mouth with his hand to lower her loud moaning and carried her, and pushed her back against the wall, her legs were crossed behind his back’. I went many times to re-read the sentence and to try to read more, but with no success. 

 

I became a regular visitor to the national library, and one day – while I was looking through the English section – I stumbled upon a medical book. While going through the pictures and reading the comments under them, I found a whole chapter with pictures of women’s bodies. It was the first time I had seen a woman’s full naked body, the first time I saw breasts and private parts. I felt like a thief – that everyone in the library knew this book and what I was looking at. My face blushed, my ears were hot, and I felt something come alive down there that stopped me from leaving the table. When I finally pulled myself together and put the book back in a hidden place that only I could find, I realised that my jeans were wet. I felt very embarrassed, leaving the library in a hurry. 

 

In the following weeks, I returned many times to the library to look at the book and its pictures, and I began to have more confidence that I was not doing anything wrong. I started to discover my own body, my own desires, feelings, and sensitivities. I was slowly growing up with the library books. Books and war had made me grow older, wiser, as well as making me want to listen instead of talk. It is strange how beauty and ugliness can influence you in the same time and place. 

 

The national library of Gaza was taken over by the Hamas government in 2007. Sadly, most of the interesting books, including my secret hidden ones, were removed or censored. Sadly, too, our school was bombed by the Israeli army in 2008. Later, a big part of the library was destroyed by another Israeli operation in 2014. It was rebuilt, then destroyed again in 2023. I sometimes wonder what teacher Omar is doing right now, if he is alive or dead, if he left Gaza, or if he is still there. I wonder what happened to all the books in my lovely school library, which was my second home throughout my primary school years. 

 

The chanting of a passing demonstration at Victoria Square brought me back from my memories. I’m still sitting in the library van holding A Sailor’s Tale; I opened it at pages 190-198, and I was happy to finally find them intact! I used to struggle to find Arabic books in my first couple of years in Athens, but now a few multilanguage libraries have been created, allowing me the pleasure of enjoying a book in my native language. It has now been seven years since I moved here. Athens has been so generous, giving me a home, friends, a new language, and most importantly, the freedom of movement that I had never experienced before.  

 

I was born in the Gaza strip as a refugee from a refugee family. I miss the books I left behind in our family house in Gaza City, which has been bombed and destroyed in the devastating war that rages as I write in 2024. I have always been a refugee wherever I go, moving from place to place. Libraries are home because home is where we keep our books. 

 

‘Even the wind wants to become a cart 

Pulled by butterflies. 

My wishes are flowers 

staining my days. 

I was wounded early, and early I learned 

that wound made me. 

I still follow the child 

who still walks inside me. 

Now he stands at a staircase made 

of light 

Searching for a corner to rest in 

and to read the face of night again 

I was born in a village, 

small and secretive like a womb. 

I never left it. 

I love the ocean not the shores’ 

 

Celebrating Childhood by Adonis, translated by Khalid Mattawa 

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About the Author

Abdallah Alghoul (b. 1988) is one of six winners of the How a Library Changed My Life writing competition. Born to a family of 11 in Rafah, Palestine, he later studied filmmaking in Cairo, Egypt. Abdallah’s first short documentary focused on workers in Gaza’s tunnel network; after graduating, he returned to Gaza to make a feature film, but the war of 2014 forced him to emigrate. He now lives in Athens, Greece, where he works on home renovations.