Bid to revive the book reading culture in Kabul

KABUL (SW): Khodadad Amiri has a bookstore in Kabul where he rents books to readers as it was common back in the 1970s in Kabul.

Khodadad himself studies at the Economics Faculty in Kabul University. In conversation with Salam Watandar, he said that he knows how passionate students are about reading books and that was why he decided to do something to revive the old tradition of renting books to those who love reading them.

The small bookstore established by this student is a small one with hundreds of books on a wide range of subjects like literature, philosophy and sociology.

Anyone who wants to read these book can pay a meager rent and enjoy reading. For example, if someone wants to read the novel One hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez , he or she can rent the novel for afn 5 per day hence read the whole novel in five to six days for as little as afn 30.

Khodadad informed that currently he has some 50 regular customers who rent books from him.  With the money earned, he tries to buy even more interesting books from different bookstores in the city and put them on the shelves of his own bookstore for rent.

He lamented that he does not have enough space in his bookstore to store more and more books. But, Khudadad added he shows every single book to the customers and talks with them in details about the books and writers.

As noted above, this initiative by Khodadad is not new in Kabul. In the past, citizens would allocate shelves in their shops, cafés etc for books to promote the culture of reading and help citizens become literate.

ENDS