If the seller himself catches me, I play nice and demand to know where he was: I was trying to find him to pay him his money.” With the kidnapped books in hand, my father would make runs to the parking lot to place them in the car trunk, before returning to search for new victims. We’d conclude the trip with a private meeting in a corner of the shop, as far as possible from the bookseller and his customers, calculating the overall cost, estimating the probability of a discount, and assessing if there were books to leave on hold until our next visit. The basement contained many books printed in Iraq prior to the Gulf War, after which they could not be showcased, due to an official ban on anything Iraqi in Kuwait—whether it was a book printed in Iraq, a cassette tape of Iraqi singers, or even a TV show whose closing credits included the name of an Iraqi actress!
Author: Mona Kareem
Published at: 2025-11-07 14:00:00
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