The Al Saqi bookstore has not survived the pandemic, Brexit and the political and economic chaos in Lebanon, from where the publishing house created by the couple prints and ships most of its books.
However, since its opening in 1978 by Salwa, her husband André and a friend of the couple, the bookshop, nestled in a white colonnaded building not far from Paddington station, had become an essential place.
For visitors from the Middle East, there was "nothing cultural", recalls Salwa, so success soon came: "They went to Oxford Street (the main shopping street), to Knightsbridge (the district of the famous Harrod's store) and Al Saqi bookstore".
The bookstore also sells essays in English on the Arab world to promote "an idea of the Middle East different from the violent images conveyed by television or in the newspapers", she explains.
Shelter"
With success, the couple created a publishing company, first of translation into English of Arab authors, such as "The Crusades seen by the Arabs" by the Franco-Lebanese Amin Maalouf, and a few years later, another in Lebanon of books in Arabic.
For more than 40 years, many writers have come to present their works there, like the famous Syrian poet Adonis.
A meeting place, sometimes even a "refuge" for immigrants uprooted by war or economic crises in the Near and Middle East, the Al Saqi bookstore has always fiercely defended its independence and its spirit of openness.
"People felt they had friends here who would understand them," because the events that affected them "happened in so many countries in the Middle East," Salwa said.
The shelves of the London bookstore Al Saqi on December 14, 2022 © Isabel INFANTES / AFP/Archives
And even if the owners have always been careful to stay away from politics, the bookstore has not escaped the upheavals of geopolitics.
At his own risk and peril sometimes, as when Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" came out in 1988, when his window was smashed.
"We never believed in censorship. (...) we didn't want to ban anything," recalls Salwa.
The couple also came under fire when they published a translation by Israeli Abba Eban of a work by Egyptian author Tawfiq al-Hakim.
"People were outraged (...) It was before the peace process, but it was just the intellectual union between an Egyptian and an Israeli".
Spread Arab culture
The announcement of the closure of the bookstore at the end of the month sparked an avalanche of messages of sadness.
Ouissal Harize, whose profile displays the flag of Algeria, "thanks" on Twitter the bookstore "for being a home, far from home".
Or Nasri Atallah who evokes "a pillar of my whole life in London, and of my father before me".
"It was like a sanctuary in London, so it's very bad news, really," said Farah Otozbeer, a 24-year-old Egyptian student, just graduated from the London School of Economics and who, passing through London to receive his diploma, insisted on coming one last time.
The announcement of the closure of the London bookstore Al Saqi at the end of the month sparked an avalanche of messages of sadness © Isabel INFANTES / AFP/Archives
The bookstore "has always been a place where Arabic-speaking people come from all over the Middle East to buy books that they could not buy in their countries", because of censorship in particular.
But she also had a big role in "translating literature and essays into English and distributing them to an English-speaking public", regrets Joseph Devine, English employee of the bookstore and former student in Arabic.
After Covid-19, the bookstore hoped to bounce back, but the current economic crisis in the United Kingdom, with skyrocketing costs, and the chaotic situation in Lebanon dampened Salwa's hopes: "When we fled Lebanon, we didn't "We didn't have family in London. They were our family, the employees and even some customers have become like our family, and we are losing all of that today".
© 2023 AFP