My name is Ibrahim Khatib, from Taftanaz, Syria.

I graduated from Aleppo University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities-english literature. I had collected about four hundred books in my library; novels such as ” Pride and Prejudice”, “Silas Marner” and “Wuthering Heights”, plays such as ” Anthony and Cleopatra”, “Doctor Faustus” and “Waiting for Godot” and poetry by Wordsworth and Coleridge.

The Assad army and his barbarian gangs burnt my house on the third of April 2012. My furniture, computer and my library were destroyed. I lost about four hundred books of english literature. I entered my burned house and saw what was my library, now only ashes.

At that time, I felt that Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, John Milton and Jane Austen died again, this time at the hands of Assad’s gangs.

His barbarian soldiers do not know about people who love books and keep them like their baby. Really, I was the father of four hundred babies and they were all killed.
That terrorist president who is killing children in Homs and Idlib can also burn books and masterpieces. The regime who burn the culture of other civilisations wants Syria to be under developed.

I was hopeless for two weeks then I refreshed my power and established an organisation called “Taftanaz Students Group” and we publish a magazine called “Revolutionary Words” to enlighten my people and to be more civilised . We need to know that the importance of books is equal to the gun and even more important when Assad goes.

Ian Pannell, the reporter of BBC, came to my house to witness this massacre, the killing of literature. He told his people in Britain about what happened in Syria.
After two months, I received a present, the “Kobo e reader” which is a perfect library. It is easy to use , saves a lot of books and encourages me to read more. Really, it is the civilised window for every reader.

I thank all who helped me to have this perfect means to save all my books in the future.

Ibrahim Khatib

Ibrahim with his e-reader

I hope he will be able to write a post for the blog soon. In the meantime, he has thanked everyone who has donated a book.

When our messenger finally reached his hometown, he found out that Abu Mohammed and his family had fled to Turkey.

Days and days of detective work ensued, until finally Abu’s whereabouts on the Turkish side were established.

At this point, it was discovered that in all the travelling the Kobo reader had been smashed!

The e-reader got smashed in transit

Another e-reader was procured (it had to come from London) and synced (proving, I guess, that Abu Mohammed’s books are always safe, far away in some cloud storage!)

When our messenger finally went to Turkey and contact was made with Abu Mohammed (through Facebook) he had gone back into Syria!!

So now the reader is in Turkey, but Abu Mohammed is in Syria again.

Nevertheless, they are nearly united.

Stay tuned.

Thanks Carlos!

Hopefully that will generate some more donations!

I am sorry I can’t thank people personally, but I can’t see people’s email addresses on the gift, only their name (Kobo has a bit of a way to go in their product development, let me tell you!).

So thanks to Sara, Bryan, Helen, Ali, Chris, Joanna, Kitty, Yvette, Brooke, Jane, Simon, Lorraine, Jack, Lou, Cath, Alison, Ingrid, Ian, Jose Rodrigo, Salim, Martha, Tim, Glynn, Sue, Romain…. and many others.

This is brilliant!

Thanks Sue (and for the book!)