How One Man’s Love for Books Takes Shobak to the Book Fair Every Year

In the small village of Shobak, at Shebeen El-Kom in Qalyubia, a community-wide love for reading grows year by year, as more and more residents join the village’s annual trip to Egypt’s capital for the Cairo International Book Fair. A trip that began with only the family of Dr Kamal Salem, the Local Society Development Association’s treasurer, now brings hundreds of readers to the fair.

“As a local association, we didn’t want our efforts to be restricted only in efforts like the distribution of meals in Ramadan,” Dr. Salem tells CairoScene. “So we created the slogan, ‘Feeding Minds as Well as Tummies’ to raise cultural awareness in the community.”

Prior to the fair trips, Dr. Salem was heavily involved in fostering a love for reading within the bounds of the village, as he held weekly reading nights for children every Thursday called ‘Yalla Nehky’. In these meetings, young children would be shielded from their phones and the ever-demanding buzz of social media for a couple of hours, and Dr. Salem read them a book that would gradually get them to fall in love with reading. Every week, each attending child would be given a book, so that by the end of the year each child had a library of 52 books.

When residents heard that Dr. Salem’s family made an annual trip to Cairo International Book Fair, a small group approached him, wondering if they could tag along. The following year, in 2021, the Local Society Development Association announced free trips to the fair, and 75 individuals signed up. Year by year, this number doubled and tripled until now, in 2025, when 1,750 readers from Shobak in 45 buses made their way to the Cairo International Book Fair. At that point, the trip cost EGP 75 per person, and included a small meal as well as transportation to and from the fair.

Over the years, Dr. Salem was overjoyed to notice the gradual increase in involvement of Shobak residents in the fair. “In 2024, a 70-year-old man joined the trip, and we made him trip leader in appreciation.” Another year, one of the trip-goers donated the cost of renting one of the buses, and asked to dedicate that bus to orphans, disabled people, and people who were financially unable to fund their trips to the fair. The love for reading, and the responsibility to help others foster that same love, became a pillar of Shobak’s community.

Fundamentally, Shobak’s trips to the Cairo International Book Fair rely on community involvement. On every bus, there are two volunteers, there to help fair visitors navigate the grounds and direct them to their desired sections. The Local Association also allocates funds to finance the literary needs of those who are unable to buy books themselves.

“With minimal resources, big dreams, and endless dedication, our Local Association came to bear the responsibility of cultural awareness in the community,” Dr. Salem says. “It became our responsibility to raise an enlightened, well-read generation that understands the importance of the smile of a child exploring the world of literature.”

Between overheard conversations of Shobak residents encouraging one another to attend the book fair, one message that especially affected Dr. Salem was from a young girl, who thanked him for the book fair trips that brought her dream to life.

Dr. Salem’s personal love for reading proved to be contagious, spreading not only to the residents of his village but also to neighbouring towns. “This year, five villages in Qalyubia are making the same trip to the Cairo International Book Fair,” Dr. Salem says. “Some of the Local Associations there reached out to us, asking for help with trip organisation according to our experience.”

In 2024, Shobak’s Local Society Development Association received an award from the National Reading Programme in Egypt for their efforts in cultivating an eagerness to learn in their village community. The award ceremony was attended by many Shobak residents, bringing tears to their eyes and a sense of pride to their hearts. These trips had become, as they called them, “a collective journey for the love of knowledge.”