Bare ruined choirs

A London bookshop in 1940

Murder is murder, no matter where it occurs, but the bombing today in Baghdad's book market has a particular resonance. At least 20 people were killed when the bomb went off near a printer's office. Firefighters have had difficulty extinguishing the fire that followed, because the books and papers make such efficient fuel. The marketplace is said to be a historic center for Baghdad intellectuals.

It is as if someone thought, "While we're taking human life, let us also take something that makes human life different from other life: knowledge, art, the imagination, memory of the past." This is what the Northmen did in pillaged monastaries of ninth- century Ireland and England: burned and destroyed the books. One wonders how many copies of the Koran were incinerated in this attack.

It reminded me of the famous photograph, above, of a London bookshop the day after a bombing during the blitz of 1940. Will the booklovers of Baghdad all be killed or driven out, or will their need for learning draw them back, like these unknown figures, to the ruined stacks?