Thank you for downloading this program from the BBC World Service.

I'm Lena Xinjab with a season of memorable programs about my home country, Syria

and a decade of civil war. Today, Syria's secret library and how books, many thousands of them, on every

subject under the sun came to the rescue of a small community besieged by government forces.

Hello, this is assignment here on the BBC World Service.

I'm Lena Sindhrab hosting a special series of past editions of the

program from Syria and its 10 years of civil war. Literature has always been

vitally important in my home country and I have vivid memories of poetry

nights hosted in a Damascus hotel which drew writers and intellectuals from across the

whole Syria.

This week Mike Thompson brings us the story of a small

community besieged by government forces which mounted the most extraordinary

act of resistance.

Out of sight in a heavily bombed Damascus suburb with a crack of sniper's bullets echo through the streets a doorway leads down into another world. When you first walk in there's a narrow hallway you turn right, walk on and then you go through a door and all the way down the stairs. Then on your left you'll find suffers and tables. On your

right are all the different sections of books. Everything from science, literature, to social sciences and everything.

Derea, on the fringe of Damascus Damascus is besieged by the Syrian army and it's been that way

for almost four years. During that time the towns received only two aid convoys and is bombed and shelled almost daily.

I'm Mike Thompson and for this week's assignment,

residents of Durea tell us an extraordinary story.

About a secret repository of peace, learning and hope amid the terror.

A makeshift library housed in a basement room deep beneath the rubble.

I try to memorize everyone. There was so many good books that I kept skipping from one to another.

...