Shah Muhammad Rais, 69, arrived in the UK on September 26 and claimed asylum at the airport. He is waiting for his case to be processed and is currently living next to other asylum seekers from various conflict zones. “The UK was the only door that opened for me to be safe from the Taliban,” he told the Guardian. Shah Mohammad Rais’ store in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2007. Photo: Musadeq Sadeq/AP Members of his family, including his nine children and four grandchildren, are scattered in different parts of the world. But his bookstore in Kabul is still open after the Taliban took over, along with an online bookstore. He proudly hands over his business card – Shah M Book Co, printers, publishers, booksellers, Shah Muhammad Rais, managing director. But times are tough for independent bookstores, and Rais isn’t sure if the store, founded in 1974 – and which has endured nearly five tumultuous decades – can withstand the current challenges from the Taliban. “Very few buy books now,” he says sadly. One of the consequences of the Taliban takeover was a mass exodus of intellectuals and others who were part of the book market demographic when British and American forces were on the ground in Afghanistan. “I’ll keep the bookstore open as long as possible, maybe the Taliban will ban it or destroy it,” he shrugs. Rice lived under different rules in Afghanistan and was imprisoned twice during the Soviet era, first in 1979 for a year and then again for a year and a half after his release. He says he experienced torture and ill-treatment while in prison, including sleep deprivation and being forced to live in freezing conditions. Åsne Seierstad, a Norwegian journalist, traveled to Afghanistan immediately after 9/11 and returned the following spring to write an account of life in the country through an intimate portrait of the life of an Afghan family – the bookseller Rais, his two wives and his family. The book was based on her narrative and observations after being invited to move in with the family, with whom she lived for five months. Rais became famous after the book was published in 2002, which topped international bestseller charts and has been translated into dozens of languages. However, he and his family members took legal action against the author and claimed the book was inaccurate and invasive. After a protracted legal battle, an appeals court in Norway cleared the author of violating the family’s privacy and concluded that the book’s facts were accurate. Shah Mohammad Rais in his shop in 2007. Photo: Musadeq Sadeq/AP Rais’ bookstore is believed to have the largest collection of books on Afghanistan, expressing a variety of different views of historical events, all under one roof. Along with textbooks for students in fields such as medicine, engineering and languages are many rare books that Rice has found safe hiding places for in case his store is targeted. “I have safe places in Iran and Pakistan for some of the books,” he says. He speaks six languages and says with regret that he has forgotten a seventh that he could previously speak – Russian. After earning his master’s degree in civil engineering at Kabul University, he thought that it would not be possible to make a living from engineering and decided to try to turn his love of books, which he had developed as a teenager, into a business. Along with his vast and diverse collection of Afghan books he adores the classics, including works by Tolstoy, Balzac and Hemingway, and his favorite, the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi. “I loved reading Shakespeare’s Othello in Persian,” he says. “From 2002 to 2020 I sold over 15,000 copies of European and American literature,” says Rais. He says his goal has always been to reflect multiple viewpoints on important historical events rather than taking one side or the other. “I’m on the side of honesty,” he says. “The Soviets put me in jail for collecting Mullah Omar’s decrees and other jihadist papers that I received in Pakistan. I said to the judge: “Tomorrow we will need these papers to study the Afghan jihad – to understand your enemies.” In better times his bookshop was a focal point for intellectuals from diverse backgrounds to congregate, sit on mattresses and listen to international news on a good quality radio and discuss political and philosophical issues of the day. Now Rais’s future is uncertain as he anxiously awaits the outcome of his asylum claim. And especially distressingly for a book lover, he now suffers from impaired vision. But his energy and enthusiasm are undiminished. “If I am given permission to work in the UK, I would love to open an Afghan reading room in the British Library. I am writing a book about the land, culture and history of Afghanistan, and I would like to open a multicultural, multilingual bookstore here for people from the region – from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran. This is what I dream of.”
