By ROBERT FISK
PESHAWAR - The dirt comes off on my hands, thick grey, sticky dust, moist with 100 palms, thickened by the dun-coloured exhaust from the Pakistani street.
Farid Anwari hands me a grubby white cloth to clean my fingers before I open the cover of a Sixties magazine called Aryana.
On the left is a photo of a diplomat, Chester Bowles, President John F. Kennedy's special envoy, on a mission to King Zahir Shah - the same old King who now languishes in Rome. And what is Bowles telling the Afghan monarch? "We greatly admire the people of Afghanistan and their long, proud heritage of national independence," says the caption.
Even the plastic "Old Books" sign on the window has seen better days and has peeled in the heat. Most Afghans are illiterate. The Anwari bookstore is for the intellectuals of Afghanistan, the last doctors and professors and civil servants passing through Peshawar, who want to preserve their culture - those who have not already sold their libraries in Kabul to stay alive.
Farid Anwari climbs on a stool and reaches for a volume in dark brown leather, blowing black dust from the cover. It is a collection of the first issues of one of Afghanistan's first newspapers, the Serajul Akhbar - the "News of the King" - published in 1895, in the reign of Habibullah Khan.
Anwari's father, Farhat, left Kabul six years ago; the former head of the arts and literature section of Afghan state television until the Taleban came along, he decided that art and literature could be dangerous and photos of living creatures blasphemous.
"We opened our little shop for economic reasons - we needed the money," Farid says. "But we also wanted to provide a service for Afghan intellectuals here in Peshawar and in other countries."
"The educated Afghans on their way to Western countries and America come here to save their culture and traditions by buying these books," Farid says.
"I bought some of them from the shopkeepers on the streets of Kabul. They bought them from professors and specialists who, because they had no money, have sold all their personal libraries. It's not their wish to do so, of course. They had to do it. Times were difficult for them."
Farid has received no books since the American bombardment of Afghanistan began last month; he last visited Kabul in July, bravely carrying with him on his return journey a parcel of antique books, many of them containing the dreaded images of human beings so loathed by the Taleban.
- INDEPENDENT
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