Library Grafitti

I am strongly against writing in library books, not least because I find it incredible distracting to read something that someone else has already underlined and highlighted. In this particular copy of Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, I can see evidence of at least twelve separate library patrons guilty of defacing the pages with their ink. Sometimes the multitudes of graffiti artists have written comments in the margins, and others have come along and responded, to humorous results.

Mundhir al-Wandhawi and another Ba'thi pilot,seizing two airplanes, bombed ar-Rashid air base, destroying five MIGs on the ground and, by way of warning, fired a rocket at the presidential palace.

Pg. 1023-1024, referring to events during the start of the 1963 coup that brought the Ba'ath Party to power.

Written in the upper margin of page 1024 in red ink with an arrow pointing to the above book text is the comment, "Why not Tel Aviv? You fools!"

Just to the left of the red pen marks is a penciled reply, "Because they wanted to stay alive, moron."

If only paper books were so interactive. Now, if I were going to be so gauche as to write in a library book, I would have left a third comment, "And how about the fact that the air strikes had absolutely nothing to do with Tel Aviv?"