Transcript from Four Questions with Laila Hussein Moustafa

Question Two: Your piece touches on strategies to safeguard knowledge in libraries during conflict. Considering the cultural heritage at stake, how can these preservation efforts contribute to maintaining a sense of identity and continuity within communities faced with such devastation?

Laila Hussein Moustafa: People in every war that I was reading about, it was a line or a sentence saying that during war, even people are trying to run away to escape physically, like to protect themselves physically, where they lose their house or they run away from their house to protect themselves. They also have the willing of <?>, the museum is looted or library is burned. Or even before the conf, before the, the damage happened to the culture sites, including library and archives. They run to these places, actually, to try to save whatever they can. And we saw this case on Iraq when the looting started in the in the National Library and Museum and the archives, those who moved the materials from the library were actually the local, it wasn’t the librarians. Not to say that the librarians cannot do this, but those who lives around and they have also knowledge of what’s inside the value, what’s inside.

They know this is something they have to save because this is part of their heritage. This is part of their history in this, in this library or museum. So we heard this in Iraq, and also we heard this during World War II. We read about this in Timbuktu when the civil war also started, people run to the national or to the run to the library of where the manuscript are storage. And they moved it outside of the city before the attackers comes, because the attackers come. Because they understand that the conflict history of the conflicts through the wars is always attacking people and whatever, whatever record can say, these people exist. And people understand this from stories they heard from readings. So protecting this, their stories is actually part of surviving. And their stories is always in the library, because there is history books. There is things to show the record of these people exist. And this is why it’s very important. In, in every wars that I read about how library was protected, it was protected by the local, it was protected by the local, because the local knows what’s…they are nearby actually. It’s not just,

They know they are nearby. And history taught all of us that when war comes or conflict, library and archives and museum are a target. So the local always…they are the first group they run to save and protect the materials inside the library. And we saw this in World War II that most of the collection of the Jewish in Germany and Poland were saved by the local. By…and also we saw this in Bosnia and Serbia war in the nineties. We saw also the damage of the Iraq national and museum library. It’s in many wars. And I wrote about this and I was looking always how some of these books was protected. And I find that mostly by people live nearby, by the local who get the sense of we have to go and help.

And we saw this clearly actually in Timbuktu, in Mali when the Civil War was just shows the signs of civil war started in Mali. The local went to the, I don’t want to say public library because it’s not public library, private libraries. And they moved all the manuscript, the 18-19th century manuscript outside of Timbuktu. And this was done by people who has the knowledge of what’s inside the libraries. And they know the country very well. They know where they can go and hide this materials. And part of people doing this, actually it just because, you know, if they, it’s books carry their history. Books, has stories of those people and their generation before them and reading about them will go through books and archives and the newspapers that the archives collected. And this is why people, they try to survive through reading about their history and through protecting their history through books and libraries.