Alia Muhammad Baker's house is full of books. There are books in stacks, books in the cupboards, books bundled into flour sacks like lumpy aid rations. Books fill an old refrigerator. Pull aside a window curtain, and there is no view, just more books.
There are English books, Arabic books and a Spanish-language Koran. There are manuscripts, some hundreds of years old, on the finer points of Arabic grammar and the art of telling time. There is a biography of the Prophet Muhammad from about 1300. All told, Ms. Baker says, the books number about 30,000. And then there are the periodicals.
These books are fugitives, and Ms. Baker, a 50-year-old librarian in stout shoes, is the engineer of their underground railroad. As the British forces stormed Basra in early April, she spirited the volumes out of the city's Central Library, over a seven-foot wall, to the back room of a restaurant and then later into trucks to carry them to her home. Even friends and library employees have been enlisted as caretakers for troves of the books.
The books constitute about 70 percent -- all there was time to save -- of what was the library's collection. Nine days later, the library building was burned in a mysterious fire.
The books' survival is all the more remarkable because, in Baghdad, looters left both the National Library and a government building containing thousands of illuminated Korans in smoldering ruins. Even some manuscripts taken from the Basra library to be studied in Baghdad were destroyed.
Despite what was saved, Ms. Baker, Basra's chief librarian for 14 years, mourns what was left behind.
''It was like a battle when the books got burned,'' she said. ''I imagined that those books, those history and culture and philosophy books, were crying, 'Why, why, why?' ''
Before the war began, Ms. Baker requested permission from Basra's governor to move the books to safety, but he refused without explanation.
Ms. Baker, however, is not easily deterred. Although the library did not allow lending, over the years she often slipped books into the hands of readers and sent them home.
''In the Koran, the first thing God said to Muhammad was 'Read,' '' she said.
Under Ms. Baker's guidance, the library became a salon, where doctors, lawyers, professors and artists met each afternoon. ''My office wasn't a room for dignitaries,'' she said. ''It was a room for gatherings.''
As soon as the war started, government offices were moved into the library, a modern assemblage of tall cubes. An antiaircraft gun was placed on the roof.
Ms. Baker and others said this was part of a calculated plan by the government, which assumed that the library would be spared bombing, or if not, the bombing would generate ill will against the allied forces.
Ms. Baker kept going to work, but every evening she filled her car with books and quietly took them home.
On April 6, the day the British entered the city, the job took on a new urgency. At noon, Ms. Baker called and found that the government workers had left the library undefended. The next morning, as artillery fire filled the air, she checked on the library.
First she called the restaurant next door, the Hamdan, and asked one of the owners, Anis Muhammad, for help. At the library she discovered that carpets, furniture and lights had already been looted.
''What could I do?'' Mr. Muhammad said as he remembered Ms. Baker's plea. ''It is the whole history of Basra.''
Mr. Muhammad, 49, enlisted his brothers and employees. Armful after armful of books was taken from the library, passed over the wall to waiting hands and stacked in the Hamdan's empty dining rooms.
Shopkeepers from across the street joined in. Then some of the neighbors began to help.