The 112th Goftegu (Year VII) public debate of Armanshahr was held with the title of “Commemorating International Book and Children’s Book Days” at the Esteghlal High School’s hall, in cooperation with the French Institute Afghanistan, PEN Afghanistan, and Zaryab Publishing House on 18 April 2013. The first part of the programme was a book fair for publishers where Armanshahr Publications, Ghalam, Saeed and Zaryab displayed their books. Subsequently, Fahrenheit 451, directed by François Truffaut (the famous French director and a pioneer of the new wave of the French cinema) was screened.
In the second part, Ms Khaleda Forough, poet and producer of a literary programme for Tolou TV, spoke about the importance of writing books for children, Mr Kaveh Jobran, poet and writer on the topic of “why we do not read books? and Mr Manuchehr Faradiss, writer and director of Zaryab publishing house, discussed the challenges facing printing and publishing in Afghanistan.
The moderator Mr Rooholamin Amini opened the meeting with the following words: “Given the present-day conditions in Afghanistan, it is logical to have few participants in discussions about books. We can realise this from the number of this meeting’s participants. The film which was screened today was about dictatorship; an environment where the fire-fighters’ duty has changed; they no longer fight fire, but alight fire and burn books. If that catastrophe were to happen in Afghanistan, where we have experienced it in our history, there would remain no books, because defenders and readers of books are very few in this country.
“I express my condolences to Afghanistan for the emptiness of the hall where books are commemorated. There may not be a more painful event in a society. When a city is destroyed, it can be reconstructed; streets can be repaired, but the departure of culture from a land is very hard to redress. We are living in a country, which has had great people such as the Mowlana, Attar, Ferdowsi, Rudaki, Sanai, Hafiz and Khayyam and has more than 1000 years history of thought, philosophy, poetry and civility. Nevertheless, today we are mourning the book not celebrating it.”
Ms Khaleda Forough was the first speaker, who concentrated on the importance of writing for children: “I read somewhere that ‘all children are poets’, but what can keep them as poets? In other countries, they give knowledge to children by different ways of reading, they even inform children of meter in poetry, they sing them rhyme and melody of poetry and read them stories to awaken their interest in reading and they gradually begin writing and composing. In our country, children are in critical conditions. They do not have bread to survive let alone time to read.
“Who should give the feeling to children to read and write for them in their own language? Who would encourage them to get to know life? The answer is: nobody! In other countries, the governments encourage them. In our country, neither the government nor the families have any idea for the upbringing of children; many families do not know these things or if they do, they do not take them seriously. Children are used to begging. Some of them have lost their families and are forced to beg for money. There are families that force their children to beg. There are very few happy children here. Nevertheless, they must be befriended with poetry books, songs and stories. If that friendship is established in the most critical period of life between the child and books, it will never go away.”
She emphasised the need to familiarise children with books: “Children get to know books through translations of stories, mostly by Iranian writers. What has been done in our land is not adequate. We cannot force anybody to compose poems, songs and stories if they do not have the natural tendency towards it. Books written for children must bring knowledge of their surroundings to them, because they have a world free of lies. Those books must contain moral messages. However, under the present conditions, people are likely to do this, because our writers offer sacrifices regardless of what they write.”
The second speaker, Mr Kaveh Jobran, discussed the problem of failure to read: “Not reading is a worldwide crisis. There are other reasons in modern societies, including digitalisation and excessive hedonism worldwide, which have pushed away the new generations from books and towards sports, sex and alcohol. That crisis is totally different in pre-modern countries. We have to deal with different issues to find the root of the crisis in these countries.
“In our country, failure to read is not just a cultural problem; it has historical roots, which can be examined in three spheres: politics, religion and society.”
He expounded his idea about the political sphere: “In the past 100 years, the governments were opposed to books and promoted denial of knowledge among the people. Kings were always afraid of promoting knowledge and books among the people. They prevented the free flow of information so that knowledge would not cause the fall of governments and monarchies. We should remember the historic statement of Commander Nasrollah, brother of Emir Habibullah who warned the king, ‘knowledge gives birth to constitutionalism and constitutionalism is the opposite of the king’s rule.’ It is no coincidence that Emir Habibullah Kalkani totally omitted the discipline of knowledge. It was also the case after the [1978] coup d’état, with the difference that there was not a total ban. Books were categorised: books that favoured the ruling ideology were promoted and the readers and writers of books that did not favour the ideology, were burnt. There were many people who likely were buried in the Pul-e Charkhi torture chambers by reading ideological books. That trend continued under the mujahedin, when the victorious Jihadists burnt books in the Writers Association and laughed. There is no question about the Taleban era, because the regime was fully hostile to knowledge. That has been also the case in the past 10 years.”
He went on: “The second sphere is religion. Religious misunderstandings have led to stands against books. Our mullahs categorise books as blasphemous and Islamic and excommunicate the former. One of the publishers published two books a few months ago. One of them (Obscurity, by Taqi Bakhtiari) was burnt and thrown at the writer’s door. The second book (Let me breathe, by Aziz Ruyesh) incited one of our Jihadist leaders and the same happened to him. These incidents indicate hostility to books that harm books and people involved with books.”
As to the third sphere, he explained: “The third sphere is the society. Our educational institutions, under the influence of politics and religion, have promoted the habit of denial of knowledge and books among the people. It has such a deep root in history that the people have become a hard deterrent against books and book reading. Avoiding books has become one of our universal characters. That is the reason why having books at home was a crime in the past. Parents were afraid when they saw their sons reading books and would try to prevent them. They believed that reading books would deprive the home of security. Those who read books today are in danger, but those who do not read enjoy every kind of security.”
Mr Jobran concluded: “Our history is the history of opposition to books and knowledge and that is a universal character of ours. Much time and great power is needed to change it.”
Mr Manuchehr Faradiss, who addressed the challenges of printing and publishing, said: “the situation of publishing books has been improving in the last 10 years. In the past 10 years, a large number of books have been published in our country, which is worthy of attention in our history of printing and publishing. Even though there are no concrete figures, from the viewpoint of quantity under the present cultural disorder, the number of titles is considerable. It is difficult to distinguish between booksellers and publishers. Many of the publishers are booksellers, but most of them are not professionals. Most publishers do not have adequate knowledge of publishing, printing and the fine aspects of the issue. For most of them, editing, layout and design, format and even the imprint are not important. They are mostly intermediaries between the writer and the printing press. Problems of editing, cover design and other issues are not important for them. We have a publisher who has published about 70 titles, but he cannot write and read. That is why publishing is a commercial commodity for them before being a cultural commodity. Nevertheless, one may refer to a few publishers who started work in the past four years, who are professionals and complied with the principles of publishing and printing.”
Referring to lack of proper place for bookshops, Mr Faradiss pointed out: “You will be sad if you go to the book market in Kabul. None of the government departments have felt responsible to allocate a proper place to bookshops. They do not show any interest if there is no money involved. Word processing is another problem and that has deteriorated the condition of editing. We do not have editors who can earn a living. Those who edit are not on top of their task. There are few books that do not have grammatical problems.”
He added: “Readership is one more problem. Most lecturers of leading universities do not read books; students are not interested either. Books and book reading is usual for teachers and pupils in schools. The usual print-run of the books is 1000 copies, but even that number does not sell in a year. We are said to have a population of 30 million people, but the best-selling book in the past decade sold 3000 copies. In the absence of readership, publishers have to raise the book price in order to return a part of the investment by selling 300 copies.”
Mr Faradiss expressed hopes as well: “Despite the problems, the situation of publishing has improved. Several new publishers have started working. Books have better binding and size today in comparison with 10 years ago. We have three relatively standard bookshops today. A large number of fictions have been published and some of them have been well received. Young professors are interested in books and can raise interest in the next generation. Fortunately, there is no censorship before publishing and that assists the publishers. Some of the Iranian writers are now interested in publishing their books in Afghanistan. That is a good accomplishment. I hope the next government will show more interest in culture and have cultural officials, unlike the people who are now physically present in the ministries, make excuses about lack of budget and fail to expend half of their budget by the end of the year.”
At the end, the speakers answered questions from the audience.
Representative of the media, including TV 1, Khorshid TV, Aryana TV, BBC Persian TV, Maywand TV, Radio Salam Vatandar, Radio Amo and Annis Radio.
