“The same sensation of freedom I felt at my first protest,” he remembered.Ī detonation interrupted the internet connection. Muaddamani took his time standing up, the book against his chest. Slipping through these pages as if fleeing into the unknown. With saving a little piece, however tiny, of the town’s archives. With escaping, for a second, the routine of war. An unsettling sensation that comes with opening the door to knowledge. He turned to the first page, deciphered the few words he recognised. The title was in English, something about self-awareness, a psychology book. His nails flicked against the dust-blackened cover, as if against the strings of a musical instrument.

With one slow movement, he knelt on the ground and picked one at random. The wood floor was carpeted with books, scattered amid the debris. Muaddamani cautiously felt his way to the living room, illuminated by a single sliver of sunlight. The disfigured building belonged to a school director who had fled the city and left everything behind. An explosion had ripped off the house’s front door. After a moment of hesitation, he followed his friends through a gouged-out wall.

For him, books smacked of lies and propaganda. What’s the point of saving books when you can’t even save lives? He’d never been a big reader. They had found books that they wanted to rescue in the ruins of an obliterated house. One day in late 2013, Muaddamani’s friends called him – they needed some help. At night, he uploaded his videos to the internet. He filmed houses ripped apart, hospitals overflowing with the injured, burials for the victims, traces of a war invisible and inaccessible to foreign media. In the daytime, he roamed the devastated streets of Darayya. He joined the media centre run by the new local council. In the city under siege, he got hold of a video camera and finally realised his childhood dream: he would expose the truth. Muaddamani and other young rebels had stayed, not to defend their city, but to keep something in it alive. He remembered everything about his “first time”: his heart on fire.

He had joined one of the first demonstrations in Darayya calling for change, in 2011.

The rebel librarian