To print a book in the days of the Bashar al-Assad regime, one first had to think of the censors. Was the book political in nature? Off to the ministry of information. Religious? To the ministry of religious affairs (awqaf). Literature? To the Union of Arab Books. All were a front for the Syrian security services, who would pore over the suggested titles, and in the best-case scenario, approve the book with exhaustive line-by-line corrections, or in the worst-case scenario, reject the book in its entirety.
Even with approval, a book’s shelf life could be short. Syria’s relations with Iraq had worsened: security services would visit stores and order them to remove any books that spoke highly of the Iraqi government. An author had declared his opposition to the Assad regime: a knock on the door – get rid of this one too.
