Learning From The Bookseller of Kabul

Travel and books are means of educating the mind.

Waiting for a three hour flight from Dubai to New Delhi, I browsed the shelves of a bookstore in the airport. I was intrigued by a book with the title, "The Bookseller of Kabul" by Asne Seierstad. I am a bookseller and thought it would be good to read the experiences of another bookseller living in  a country that shares some of the challenges of my own dear country.

Source:Goodreads

Yes, the book was about a bookseller, but there was more. I have paid but fleeting attention to the news about Afghanistan over the years. There was enough trouble in my own community to worry about.

As I turned the pages of this book, I got a close glimpse of one Afghani family. I learnt some of their culture. I saw the Taliban issues through the eyes of ordinary people who lived through it all.

Reading about Sultan Khan the bookseller, who is the subject of the book, rekindled the passion I have for selling books and for passing on the love of books to others around me. He saw books as a means of storing and passing on the on the history, the arts and culture of a people. He refused to allow the many travails of his nation to kill his passion.

As I read, I thought of the present travails of the book trade back home in Nigeria. Nothing that we experience is close to what the Bookseller of Kabul passed through. His books were set ablaze in a bonfire multiple times.He was imprisoned for operating a bookstore and for selling books that made people think. i concluded that the challenges I currently face as bookseller are not enough to make me give up. i will persevere in the business just like he did.

Amazing, isn't it? That a book about a man I'd never met and probably won't ever meet, and a country that I knew next to nothing about will have such a significant impact on me.

That's what books do.

Which books have you read that had significant impact on you?