I am utterly horrified and disgusted at the flagrant abuse of police in Jerusalem, ransacking a Palestinian owned bookshop and arresting the booksellers, who are well known in the cultural society of the city (supposedly “offending books” include a child’s colouring book, for god’s sake) and who have appeared here at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, one of the pre-eminent literary festivals on our planet.
Ever since I was a small boy, I have been a reader, long before I was a bookseller, and even as a child I read of regimes that censor, ban and burn books and intimidate writers, reporters, librarians and journalists.
Even as a child I knew this for what it was – the act of the utter barbarian. It is an act designed to despoil culture, the free expression and interchange of thoughts and ideas, to instil fear so no-one will speak out. It is the antithesis of civilisation. For thousands of years, from the earliest days of our ability to create written language, writing has been seen as the epitome of civilisation.
Humans are creatures of language and story, and the written word, this marvellous, astonishing creation of our brains is a remarkable thing that allows us to share the thoughts of a poet gone for thousands of years or the life of a person alive today in another country, it is truly an amazing creation. And these barbarian bastards try to trample on it. Because they, like all bullies and cowards, are afraid of it.
But the barbarians come, and the barbarians go, throughout history. Books, the thoughts and dreams and passions and emotions of human beings shaped into a form all can share – the written word – it endures, always, it endures and finds a way to remain, and after the last barbarian has slunk shame-faced back into the shadows when light returns, we will continue to write and read and share words.
