Khalid Mohammed/Associated PressPeople walked through rubble after a suicide car bomb exploded near the well-known Mutanabi book market in central Baghdad on Monday.
I've worked in books for over five years now. Booksellers are some of the nicest, smartest, and most progressive people I've ever met. I'm guessing that this is probably true across the world. In this Baghdad book district, Shiites and Sunnis peacefully ran stores right next to each other. I just don't understand the extremest targeting in this war...high schools, soccer fields, hospitals, bookstores. The more this goes on, the more I agree with Sam Harris.
From Shelf Awareness:
Sadly a suicide bomber struck the book market on Mutanabi Street in Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 20, wounding more than 65, destroying many bookstores and stationery shops and wrecking the Shahbandar café, "where elderly writers puffed away the afternoon on water pipes," as the New York Times put it.
"There are no Americans or Iraqi politicians here--there are only Iraqi intellectuals who represent themselves and their homeland, plus stationery and book dealers," Abdul Baqi Faidhullah, a poet, told the paper.
Wissam Arif, an engineer and book lover, said, "Those terrorists do not represent Islam. They are fighting science. . . . . Yesterday they killed the prophets and today they are killing the books. But hopefully the just, the science and the light will win. We'll be patient until we achieve victory."
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