People browse publications at a bookshop in Damascus on January 26, 2025. Novels recounting the ordeal of political prisoners rub shoulders with texts of radical Islamic theology in Damascus’ bookshops after the ouster of president Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. Agence France-Presse

DAMASCUS — Books recounting torture in Syrian prisons or texts on radical Islamic theology now sit openly in Damascus bookstores, no longer traded in secret after iron-fisted ruler Bashar al-Assad’s ouster.

“If I had asked about a (certain) book just two months ago, I could have disappeared or ended up in prison,” said student Amr al-Laham, 25, who was perusing stores near Damascus University.

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He has finally found a copy of “Al-Maabar” (The Passage) by Syrian author Hanan Asad, which recounts the conflict in Aleppo from a crossing point linking the city’s rebel-held east with the government-held west, before Assad’s forces retook complete control in 2016.

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Last month, Islamist-led rebels captured the northern city in a lightning offensive, going on to take Damascus and toppling Assad, ending more than half a century of his family’s oppressive rule.

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“Before, we were afraid of being marked by the intelligence services” for buying works including those considered leftist or from the ultra-conservative Salafi Muslim movement, Laham said.

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While many say the future is uncertain after Assad’s fall, Syrians for now can breathe more easily, free from the omnipresent security apparatus in a country battered by war since 2011 after Assad brutally repressed peaceful anti-government protests.

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Syria’s myriad security agencies terrorized the population, torturing and killing opponents and denying basic rights such as freedom of expression.

READ: Ousted Syrian leader Assad flees to Moscow after fall of Damascus

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Assad brutally repressed any hint of dissent and his father Hafez before him did the same, notoriously crushing a Muslim Brotherhood-led rebellion in the 1980s.

‘Didn’t dare ask’

Several books that were previously banned and only available to Syrians if they were pirated online now frequently pop up on footpath displays or inside bookshops.

They include “The Shell”, by Syrian author Mustafa Khalifa, a devastating tale of an atheist who is mistaken for a radical Islamist and detained for years inside Syria’s infamous Tadmur prison.

Another is “My Aunt’s House” — an expression used by Syrians to refer to prison — by Iraqi author Ahmed Khairi Alomari.

Prison literature “was totally forbidden”, said a bookshop owner in his fifties, identifying himself as Abu Yamen.

“Before, people didn’t even dare to ask — they knew what awaited them,” he told AFP.

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Elsewhere, the owner of a high-profile publishing house said that since the 1980s, he had stopped printing all political works except some “very general (essays) on political thinking that did not deal with a particular region or country”.

Even so, Assad’s “security services used to call us in to ask about our work and our sales — who came to see us, what they bought, what people were asking for”, he told AFP, requesting anonymity.

He said security services were often “uncultured” when it came to literature, recalling an investigator who insisted he wanted to question Ibn Taymiyya, a Sunni Muslim theologian who died in the 14th century.

‘Sold in secret’

In shelves at the entrance of his Damascus bookshop, Abdel Rahman Suruji displays leather-bound works emblazoned with golden calligraphy of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, a medieval Muslim theologian and important Salafi ideologue.

Also on display are tomes by Sayyed Qotb, a theoretician behind the Muslim Brotherhood who inspired its radicalization.

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“All these books were prohibited. We sold them in secret, just to those who we could trust — students we knew or researchers,” said Suruji, 62.

Now, they are in “high demand”, he said, adding that his new customers include Damascus residents and Syrians who have returned from abroad or visiting from former rebel bastions in the country’s north.

Suruji said that although he learnt to tell a real student from an informant, a dozen security agents went through his bookshop from top to bottom in 2010, confiscating “more than 600 books”.

Mustafa al-Kani, 25, a student of Islamic theology, came to check the price of a collection of Sayyed Qotb’s works.

“During the revolution, we were afraid of looking for certain books. We couldn’t have them in our possession, we used to read them online,” he said.

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“Just publishing a quote from Sayyed Qotb could get you thrown into jailjollibee.bet,” he added.

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