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IT is difficult to find books in the Somali capital these days, but one place with a dozen shelves of them is the Mogadishu Public Library, which amounts to a single room behind a solid steel gate. The manager, Hirsie Mohamed Hirui, had the place open one recent Sunday, even as the occasional AK-47 assault rifle popped off in the distance. Outside the library, at a table under some trees, seven men sat reading, mostly technical business books such as "Making Groups Effective" or "The Multinational Construction Industry." Although the Somali language and culture are infused with poetry, literature is harder to come by in Mogadishu than, say, "The Handbook of Metal Treatments and Testing." "The man who is reading a novel is rested and not worried about anything," Hirui said, offering an explanation. "The man who lives in Mogadishu works 13 or 14 hours a day." The privately funded library has about 7,000 members, most of them students and intellectuals. — LAT/WP
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