Burning libraries...attacking book bazaars...

From an NYT article on the bomb-blast in a book market in Baghdad...

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The latest violence follows the attack by a suicide car bomber on Monday in Baghdad. The powerful bomb hit a book market, slicing through the heart of the capital’s intellectual scene and killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 65.

The book market along Mutanabi Street was a throwback to the Baghdad of old, the days of students browsing for texts, turbaned clerics hunting down religious tomes and cafe intellectuals debating politics over backgammon.

In the hours after the noontime explosion at the book market on Monday, books and stationery, some tied in charred bundles, littered the block. Plumes of black smoke billowed above ornate buildings dating to the Ottoman Empire. The storied Shahbandar cafe, where elderly writers puffed away the afternoon on water pipes, lay in ruins.

Firefighters unleashed powerful sprays of water, only to have flames reignite because the paper had been transformed into kindling.

This part of Baghdad dates back centuries, to the era when the Abbasid caliphate ruled over the Islamic world. On Monday, victims lacerated by shrapnel were carried over shards of glass to waiting ambulances.

“There are no Americans or Iraqi politicians here — there are only Iraqi intellectuals who represent themselves and their homeland, plus stationery and book dealers,” said Abdul Baqi Faidhullah, 61, a poet who frequently visits the street. “Those who did this are like savage machines intent on harvesting souls and killing all bright minds.”
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"harvesting souls"...how poignant...