Three breaks in the walls

In the May issue of The Supporter (number 34), monthly newsletter of the Medical Foundation, there's a piece by Hassan Bahri about his time in a Syrian prison:

In that black abyss many lives withered away unconsoled, and thousands of vigorous dreams vanished, shattered against those yellow walls as they tried to reach loved ones far away, in cities and villages of broken dreams. But in there, more than two years after we arrived, we finally had access to some books from the prison 'library'.

Prison, the master of annihilation, can kill even books. It gave these books its muted yellow colour. Mites feasted on their pages, and moisture eroded them. Nevertheless, the great thoughts captured in written words refused to die away, resisting many years of oblivion, waiting for us, as we waited for them.

If the importance of books can be measured by their impact on the reader, those books were the best. Three books, three breaks in the walls, gave meaning to our empty days, and a new horizon to our shared existence, already losing its pulse. The first book was from the Andalucian philosopher Ibn Rashid (Averroes), the second was The Bridge over the Drina by the Bosnian writer Ivo Andric. And the third, Adrift in Soho by the English writer, Colin Wilson.
.....
Three books - seventy readers. We divided up the days from six in the morning until twelve at night, and made a schedule for who would read which, in what order. And suddenly a change came over our lives; they centred round those books. Lucky the man who was ten pages ahead of another; he knew better, and more...

And always there were people competing to get ahead. A group of us would take a nap by day, and wake up at three or four in the morning to win a book and two or three hours of free reading...

In that mysterious air with its faint yellow light, I opened the doors of prison to find myself hand in hand with Colin Wilson, walking in the heart of London.

I'd like to be able to say read the rest. The piece is called 'The Right to Dream'. Bahri eventually got to London, but he concludes 'London rejected me, before I had a chance to add my name to her neglected lovers'.