On November 27, 2024, a fragile ceasefire took effect in Lebanon following two months of intense Israeli bombardment mostly in southern Lebanon and Dahiyeh, Beirut’s southern suburb. Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah’s party headquarters is located, is composed of multiple neighborhoods with varied social, economic, and urban histories, and is also home to numerous warehouses, printers, and bookbinders on which the Lebanese book industry relies.
On the evening of October 20, Mohamed Hadi, of Dar al Rafidain publishing house, saw one of his five branches destroyed. The second floor of the building in Dahiyeh housed his bookstore and publishing house offices where management, editing, layout, accounting, and marketing were centralized. “We must rebuild all our work and archives, and our employees are scattered throughout Lebanon without homes,” Mohamed Hadi said.
A few weeks earlier, on September 28, Jihad Baydoun of Dar al Kotob al Ilmiyah, saw his 7,500-square-meter (80,729.3 sq-ft.) warehouse spanning two underground floors destroyed by an airstrike. The warehouse lies buried under four collapsed buildings. Of his 7,500 titles, Jihad Baydoun lost stock of 1,500 titles in all — or an estimated 2,520,000 bound books.
Disruptions to production and distribution
The various book fairs around the Middle East, in particular in the Gulf states, are important sources of revenue for Lebanese publishers. But they take an initial risk by even deciding to travel—finding tickets to leave isn’t easy, and those who leave risk being stranded abroad if the airport closes. Until the ceasefire, the national airline, Middle East Airlines, was the only company serving Beirut and while several airlines resumed flights in December, the long term viability of the ceasefire is uncertain.
It’s particularly risky for publishers “especially if we’re stuck in a country where we don’t have family or with a limited visa,” Rana Idriss, publisher of Dar al Adab, one of the oldest and most prestigious publishing houses in the Middle East, said.
But there are also stories of luck and courage: Idriss, with uncanny foresight, had decided two months before October 7, 2023, to move the 500,000 books she had in her Dahiyeh warehouse since 1953, including her best-selling titles, closer to her office near central Beirut, to reduce the time she spent stuck in traffic. The move was costly, but the books in Dahiyeh were relocated to a second warehouse owned by Dar al Adab, and the less successful books from the second warehouse were sent to Dahiyeh. Idriss was recently able to check on her warehouse in Haret Hreik in Dahiyeh; the door had blown open from the pressure of explosions, but she said locals put a new lock on the warehouse.
In November while she was preparing for the Sharjah Book Fair, Idriss had eight main titles in production, including 4,000 copies of the second volume of a possible trilogy by Palestinian prisoner Basim Khandaqji, whose first book, A Mask, the Color of the Sky won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2024. Idriss was also printing the debut novel by Yemeni author Ahmad As Salami, Open Sky.
Dar al Adab’s printer was in a relatively calm region, said Idriss. But her bookbinder was in Dahiyeh. On September 17, two days after the death of her acclaimed author Elias Khoury and the day of his funeral, the deadly pager explosions attributed to Israel took place in the afternoon, followed by the walkie-talkie attacks the following day. Ten days later, significant military action took place in Haret Hreik. “I didn’t dare ask my bookbinder how he was doing with the work,” Idriss said.
A few days later, she called the binder who told her he would go to Dahiyeh with his sons and three cars to retrieve Dar al Adab’s 18,000 books, as well as his binding machines, which they would dismantle to take to a workshop loaned to her by a colleague in a safe location.
“That’s how Basim Khandaqji’s book, which had to be smuggled out of prison, ended up being printed and bound and arrived in Sharjah,” said Idriss.
War’s broader impact
Other publishers such as Hassan Yaghi of Dar al-Tanweer, who also has a branch in Tunisia, said that “everything has changed in a year. We couldn’t print our books in Dahiyeh anymore. Employees became refugees.” Hassan Yaghi’s home is 100 meters from the Dahiyeh region, and all his windows exploded due to bombings.
Originally from southern Lebanon, Hassan Yaghi said all his family members have become homeless and he must stay “strong to support them.” He had “dreamed of another world,” he added. “I studied European philosophers, I believed in democracy, I educated my children with these beliefs but I doubt this European democracy today.”
Salah Chebaro—the son of late publisher Bassam Chebaro, founder the publishing house Arab Scientific Publishers and who was posthumously honored at this year Sharjah Book Fair—founded the Arabic language online bookstore Neelwafurat in 1998. Chebaro said that following the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, he understood that a new phase of the war, until then still low-intensity, had begun. When the air raids on Dahiyeh began, eight of his 40 employees became refugees. “Everyone was panicked, our warehouse isn’t far from Dahiyeh, and the publishers I work with often have their printers and warehouses there. Printers outside of Dahiyeh were overloaded with work.”
And in Beirut, “which we thought was an undeclared safety zone, [Israeli] drones began flying over the city.”
Neelwafurat sells books from 1,000 publishers based in the Middle East, of which 40% come from Syrian and Lebanese publishers. The border crossings with Syria were bombed and then closed temporarily, meaning books from Syrian publishers could no longer reach him. When all airlines besides Middle East Airlines stopped flying into Beirut, packages previously handled by DHL and Aramex which had their own planes had to be handed over to Middle East Airlines.
“All our orders were delayed with titles that weren’t reaching us. When customers don’t receive their orders, they stop buying from us.” Neelwafurat’s sales dropped by 50%, noted Salah Chebaro. “And 50% is good compared to others.”
Although Lebanese publishers have faced multiple challenges for years, all agreed that since the civil war ended in 1990, they never experienced challenges as trying as those they faced over the past two months. If the ceasefire remains in place and the airport stays open, there remains some hope for a return to near-normalcy. Nevertheless, the challenges persist.
A version of this article originally appeared in the French publishing trade journal Livres Hebdo.
