Mohammed Saad spent 35 years building a library of 50,000 to 100,000 books in Beit Lahiya. On December 7, 2023, it was destroyed. After being displaced 16 times, Saad returned and pulled roughly 12,000 surviving volumes from the rubble, hauling them to Deir el-Balah where he erected a tent library called Athar — meaning both "impact" and "historical relics." Children come daily, buying books at symbolic prices of 5 to 15 shekels ($1.63–$4.89). Omar Hamad, 30, displaced from Beit Hanoon, has taken a more systematic approach. He mapped the locations of destroyed libraries across northern Gaza and Gaza City, contacted their owners, and extracted approximately 3,000 books. Some came from rubble, others were donated by families of people killed in the war, and some were reprinted. Among his recoveries: a 1956 edition of The Catastrophe of Palestine, found in the ruins of the Islamic University of Gaza. The repair chain is a small economy unto itself. Jameel Mikdad, 71, a bookbinder with 45 years of experience, continues his craft despite losing his own shop. The economics are brutal: a 3kg container of white glue that cost 30–35 shekels ($9.78–$11.48) before the war now runs 450–500 shekels ($146.74–$163.05) — a roughly 1,300% price increase driven by Israel's siege. Repairing a single book can take two days to a week, and the cost sometimes exceeds the book's market value. Hamad's Phoenix Library operates on a lending model rather than sales. Readers borrow one or two books per week after paying a refundable 50-shekel ($16.30) deposit. The collection spans literature, medicine, law, history, economics, science, and children's books. Hamad also organizes delivery initiatives to schools — many of which now operate from crowded tents. The scale of educational destruction is staggering. UNICEF reports approximately 98 percent of school buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or damaged. Some 700,000 children have been deprived of regular in-person education since October 2023. UNESCO has documented widespread damage to cultural sites and institutions including libraries. Books that survive become load-bearing infrastructure for an entire generation's education. Not every book can be saved. Hamad estimates some recovered volumes were 80 to 90 percent damaged and had to be abandoned. Others — riddled with bullet holes or scorched by fire — were kept not for reading but as physical evidence. "We took them with us so they could remain witnesses to this crime," Hamad said. The dual function of these objects — as tools for learning and as documentation of destruction — captures the reality of what is being built and what is being lost simultaneously. The story of 10-year-old Aya al-Shawa receiving The Adventure of the Empty House by Arthur Conan Doyle completes one cycle of this system: a book destroyed, recovered, repaired, and returned to a child's hands. It is a micro-infrastructure story — individuals building a parallel knowledge distribution network with almost no resources, under siege conditions, because the formal system has been annihilated.
