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The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts
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Group Read of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
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Gabriela
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Jun 26, 2016 05:33PM
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I'm only about 50 pages in, but so far, I love it. I was a little afraid this was going to be another in the long line of white guys (and, to a somewhat lesser degree, women) going to Africa or Southeast Asia, and, somehow still managing to make the story all about themselves while wanting head pats for deigning to mention the actual people living wherever he went . This hasn't been the case at all.
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First off, I needed a map, which I took to be a sign that I should probably brush up on my knowledge of geography. I spent some years in off-shoot fundamentalist churches, where smoking, drinking, and dancing were taboo. So it was with some surprise that I read "In the early and mid-nineteenth century, Sufi reformers from the Inland Niger River Delta led a "jihad of the sword" that reached as far as Timbuktu. The jihadis killed pagan chieftains, banned tobacco, alcohol and music....."" (So we've been at this a while, I guess? Tobacco's been a no no for a long time? And how'd that happen? Sufi to Grace Baptist seems like quite a leap. People just like to outlaw what other people like to do? I'm sure there's a college class somewhere that would answer that for me, but I didn't get to it. So: mystery.)
"Under the new colonial rulers, French became the primary language taught in Mali's schools. As a result, several generations in Timbuktu and other towns in the region grew up without learning to speak Arabic, which doomed the works to irrelevance." (So when people fight for their language, for their native tongue, I need to remember the power of language. What happens if you cannot read your grandmother's letters?)
"It had taken a single skeptic to undermine Haidara's efforts to win over the population." We could go around the world with that but ... the power of one.
"Araouan, a crumbling village where it hadn't rained in forty years..." made me think of the drought in California.
"And he never lost a single manuscript." Some people would call that a miracle, or at least they would if the manuscripts related to their faith.
I saved these words just because I thought they were pretty: "Oh friend, when you go to Gao make a detour by Timbuktu and murmur my name to my friends, ... and bring them a greeting perfumed with an exile that yearns after the soil where its friends, family and neighbors reside."
"The north is huge and impoverished, with lots of unemployed and angry young men..." so ..... word to the wise.
..."and became a dominant player in the smuggling of tobacco across West and North Africa. Belmokhtar traded in both counterfeits produced in China and Vietnam and genuine Western brands, which typically entered West Africa from the United States and Europe through Ghana, Benin, Togo and Guinea and reached Mali by road or by boat along the Niger." So .... you'll be able to tell that I'm not a smoker when I say this .... but that seems like a great deal of trouble for cigarette.
"The station's eclectic programming had reflected the city's mix of ethnic groups and cultures: ..... call-in talk shows." So, right about there, I laughed. Listening to call-in talk shows doesn't bring out the best in me, and my tiny little mind had it narrowed down to going on in my part of the world. Not so.
"Everything happened little by little," Ibrahim Khalil Toure recalled. " And there we have it again. Little by little.
When we get to a place where one man is chopping off another man's hand over a cigarette, or condoning the rape of a woman because someone in the family broke a religious law, I'm never sure whether to blame the religion, or the people themselves ---whether the religion made them violent, or violent people dug up a religious reason to justify, in their own minds, their violent personalities. Whichever it is, reading this book at this time, against the backdrop of our current politics, drove home just how powerful is the urge some people have to overpower others and make them "behave."
As often happens when I read a good book, it spawned an addition to my reading list. I thought for a few pages that I might try to go to the Festival of the Desert someday, but I don't think that's going to happen.
That the books exist, that people hand copied manuscripts when they couldn't afford a copy, that one person copied and someone else came along to add marks, that great stores of knowledge can be hidden away and all but forgotten ---- that's a pretty cool treasure of new knowledge, for me.
And I kinda hope I get to see one of those beautiful manuscripts someday.
